A sniffle cut into his thoughts. His gaze snagged on a small figure near the viscount.
The girl couldn't have been more than six. She had Andrew's coloring with fair hair and wide blue eyes, and she was standing very still in a black dress that was slightly too long for her. Someone had pinned it hastily at the hem. She was holding wildflowers in one fist, and with the other she was gripping the skirt of the young woman beside her.
This was Charlotte. The youngest Hale.
The last time Sebastian had seen her, she'd been a baby in a cradle while Andrew cooed at her like an idiot. “She's going to be a terror, Seb. Look at that grip. She's got my finger and she won't give it back.”
Charlotte didn't look like a terror now. She looked like a child trying very hard to understand the deep grief going on all around her and not quite managing it. Her lips trembled and she gave another loud sniff.
Sebastian's bandaged hand curled into a fist at his side. The pain was clarifying.
The young woman beside Charlotte reached into a reticule, found her handkerchief and slipped it into Charlotte’s hand without interrupting the vicar’s monologue.
Sebastian focused his gaze on this woman, and it took several moments for him to realize that this must be Estella Hale. She'd been a gangly girl of twelve or thirteen last he’d seen her. All elbows and knees, trailing after Andrew and Sebastian during a summer visit to the Langley estate with a book tucked under one arm and a smudge of dirt on her nose.
She'd been a nuisance that summer. Appearing around corners with breathless questions about whatever they were doing. Hovering at the edge of the lake while they fished, pretending to read but really watching them over the top of her book. Andrew had been patient with her.
Andrew was patient with everyone.
But Sebastian had been seventeen, full of his own importance, and spectacularly uninterested in his friend's scrawny little sister. He'd called her "little Ella" back then, just like Andrew had, and he’d ruffled her hair, and…
Well, quite frankly, he’d not thought of that child again for years.
But the young woman standing beside the grave was not that child. She stood very straight, her gloved hands clasped in front of her. A veil obscured her face, but she was the stillest person in the churchyard.
While Sebastian watched, the solicitor leaned close to the viscount and murmured something, and the old man's face crumpled. Estella's hand moved and landed on her father's arm. The viscount steadied. Charlotte pressed closer to Estella's skirt, and Estella's other hand dropped to rest on her sister's hair. A brief touch, but the child settled too.
She was holding them up. Both of them. This girl, this seventeen-year-old girl whose brother was being lowered into the ground…
She was the one keeping the family upright.
Sebastian's throat closed.
The mourners began to shift as the vicar finished, breaking apart into small clusters, murmuring condolences as they drifted toward the lane.
Estella thanked each one. Sebastian couldn't hear her voice from this distance, but he watched her nod, and clasp hands, and incline her head with a quiet dignity that belied her years.
The viscount had drifted away, steered by the solicitor. Charlotte tugged at Estella's skirt and said something, and Estella bent down. She adjusted the girl's collar and smoothed her hair. Then she said something that made Charlotte's solemn little face relax, and then took her hand and led her toward the path.
They passed near the stone wall where Sebastian stood just as the wind picked up and caught the edge of Estella's mourning veil, whipping it back from her face.
The gangly girl was indeed gone. In her place was a young woman with fine, pale features and shadows beneath her eyes. Her chin was a fraction too pointed. Her cheekbones were too sharp. She wasn't eating enough, that much was obvious. And her eyes, when the veil lifted… They were Andrew's eyes. That same clear blue.
If he’d seen her anywhere else, he’d never have guessed she was that gangly girl he’d once known. He’d have said she was a delicate young lady. Poised, elegant, and yes…heart-achingly beautiful.
And she’s Andrew’s little sister.
The thought was sobering and put a stop to his appraising stare. His second thought was far more irksome.
Who is taking care of this girl?
She was thin. Too thin. The black dress hung on her frame as though it had been made for someone with far more substance. Her gloves were clean but worn at the fingertips.
Their father was clearly no use at the moment, their mother long dead, and the brother who was meant to hold it all together was now in the ground because Sebastian Vane had wanted one more weekend of careless, foolish fun.
Estella caught her fluttering veil and pulled it back into place, hiding her features once more.
Sebastian was likely the only one watching her closely enough to see the way her fingers trembled. The only sign of weakness.
