“Your Grace,” she said softly, lowering her voice so it would not carry, “thank you. It meant a great deal to him.”
He stood very still. At such proximity, she could see the strain etched into his features—the weariness, the restraint, the faint lines that spoke of sleepless nights.
“I heard him,” he said, equally low. “Last night. The nightmare.”
So hehadbeen watching.
Lorraine felt a flicker of something sharp—frustration, perhaps—but it was tempered by something else. Something more hopeful.
“He has them often, I think. Though he does his best to conceal it.”
“You comforted him.” It was not phrased as a question.
“Someone had to.”
The words were sharper than she intended. She saw the effect of them—the faint recoil, quickly mastered—and felt a brief, unwelcome pang.
“He needs—” she began, then paused. Drew a breath. “He needs more than instruction, Your Grace. He needs a family.”
The Duke’s expression hardened at once, whatever warmth had briefly surfaced retreating behind a familiar barrier.
“The Hardings will provide that,” he said. “When they arrive.”
“The Hardings are strangers to him. You are not.”
A flash of something dangerous crossed his face. “You presume too much, Miss Weston.”
“Perhaps.” She lifted her chin. “But someone must, if he is to have what he needs.”
They stood there, the distance between them charged with something neither acknowledged. Lorraine became suddenly aware of his nearness—the breadth of him, the contained force—and of the fact that she had not stepped back.
She did not step back.
“Good day, Your Grace,” she said, evenly. “We shall expect you at dinner, perhaps.”
She closed the door before he could reply, and remained where she was, her back against it, her pulse unsteady, until his footsteps receded along the corridor.
This is dangerous,she thought.Dangerous indeed.
But when she turned, Thomas was watching her, a small, genuine smile upon his face.
And she found she did not regret a word.
Chapter Six
“No. No—hold the line—hold the line—”
Dominic woke with William’s name on his lips and the taste of gunpowder in his throat.
For a moment, he did not know where he was. The darkness pressed in, thick and absolute, and he was back in the ravine—the shouting, the musket fire, the heat of blood soaking through his coat. William’s weight in his arms. His mouth moving, words lost to the din. The sickening, metallic scent of it all.
Take care of him. Promise me.
He lurched upright, gasping, his hand striking out blindly for something solid. His fingers closed around the candlestick. Cold metal. Real.
Here.
Yorkshire, not Spain. Rovewood Hall, not Badajoz.
