“The Hardings are delayed.” Dominic’s voice was flat. “Mrs Harding is unwell. Their arrival will be delayed by at least six weeks.”
“I see.” A pause. “Shall I inform Miss Weston?”
Miss Weston. The governess who had drawn speech from a silent child, and had regarded Dominic himself as though she perceived rather more than was convenient.
“I shall inform her myself.” The words came unbidden. “At a suitable time.”
Graves inclined his head and withdrew.
Dominic remained where he was, the letter before him, the ledgers untouched, the silence pressing in about him.
Six more weeks with Thomas beneath his roof. Six more weeks of avoiding the nursery wing, of glimpsing a fair head in passing, of knowing that William’s son slept within those walls—frightened and alone.
Six more weeks of Miss Weston.
He pushed the thought aside and returned his attention to the ledgers. Numbers, at least, made no demands of him.
***
It was the laughter that undid him.
Three days had passed since the letter from India. Three days of rigid routine: breakfast alone at six, estate business until noon, a solitary ride across the moors in the afternoon, dinner in the vast and echoing dining room, whisky in the study until exhaustion at last forced him toward a sleep that offered no rest.
He had not seen Thomas. He had not seen Miss Weston. This was by design.
But on the fourth morning, returning from the stables with mud upon his boots and rain clinging to his coat, he heard it.
Laughter.
High and bright, drifting down from above. A child’s laughter.
Dominic stopped in the centre of the entrance hall as though struck.
He could not recall the last time he had heard such a sound within these walls. Could not recall hearing Thomas make any sound beyond the stifled sobs of his first days here—sobs that had, in time, ceased altogether, replaced by a silence that was somehow worse.
But this—this was unmistakable.
This was joy.
He ought to turn away. Go to his study, pour a drink, bury himself in correspondence until the sound faded from memory. That would be the sensible course.
Instead, he found himself mounting the stairs.
The laughter grew clearer as he approached the nursery wing. There were voices now—Miss Weston’s, warm with amusement, saying something he could not quite distinguish. And then Thomas again, that unexpected burst of sound, followed by something perilously close to delight.
Dominic halted outside the nursery door. It stood slightly ajar, and through the narrow opening he saw—
Everything.
Miss Weston was upon her hands and knees in the centre of the carpet, her hair escaping its pins in unruly auburn curls. Opposite her crouched Thomas, his face flushed, his eyes alight. Between them lay a scattering of toy soldiers—the very set that had once been Dominic’s own, resurrected from some forgotten corner—arrayed across a battlefield of cushions and books.
“The cavalry advances from the east!” Miss Weston declared, with mock solemnity. “General Thomas, what are your orders?”
“Flank them!” Thomas swept a cluster of soldiers about a cushion. “We shall cut off their retreat!”
“A daring manoeuvre. But what of your infantry reserves?”
“They are concealed in the forest.” He indicated a potted plant pressed into service. “They will strike when the cavalry passes.”
