He looked at her then, really looked, and for the first time he saw not the formidable dowager, but his mother as she must have been in the years before the Abbey and its obligations, bright, and hungry for the world’s pleasures, and perhaps a little bit afraid. He wondered whether she had ever been lonely.
“I am happy now,” he said, the words unfamiliar in his mouth, but true.
She nodded once, her gaze drifting to the cluster around the tree. “She is good for you,” she said so quietly he wasn’t sure he had heard it. “They all are.”
He squeezed her hands back, and for a moment they sat in silence, the only sound the crackle of the fire and the quiet but joyful noise of children.
When he released her, she patted his cheek and then sent him on his way with a smile that was part mischief, part blessing.
Victor caught Pearl’s eye, and for a second the space between them was alive with everything that had been and everything still to come.
The dowager rose and called the family to breakfast, a summons that set the girls into immediate, gleeful motion. Pearl quickly organized her gifts and the girls’ under the tree, then crossed to where Victor waited with the girls.
The family stood together in the center of the room, bathed in morning light. Outside, the frost glittered, and the sky blazed blue. Inside, laughter rose and collided, carrying with it the promise that, whatever the future held, they would face it—as one.
