He was home. He was safe.
He was alone.
The nightmare clung to him as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, head bowed, waiting for his pulse to steady. Four years, and still the dreams came. Four years, and still he woke reaching for men who were long since dead.
The physicians had assured him it would lessen with time. That such disturbances were temporary. That the mind, like the body, might recover if given sufficient rest. They spoke of time as though it were a remedy, as though grief and guilt might be eased by the mere passing of days.
They had not accounted for wounds that did not mend.
Dominic had ceased to expect peace somewhere in the darkness of that Spanish ravine. He had learned, instead, to endure.
He reached for his pocket watch on the nightstand and tilted it toward the faint moonlight filtering through the curtains. Half past two. He had slept for perhaps three hours—longer than usual, which meant the nightmare had had more time to build, to elaborate, to show him new variations on the same terrible theme.
Dominic rose at once, as though he might outrun the image. He dragged on his dressing gown and thrust his feet into slippers. Sleep would not return—not tonight. It never did, once the dreams had him.
The whisky would be waiting.
It always was.
He hesitated. Lately, he had begun to notice things—the level in the decanter falling faster than it ought, Graves’s quiet watchfulness, Mrs Potter’s disapproving silence. He was not yet lost to it. Not yet.
The library, then.
Books demanded nothing.
He took up a candle and stepped into the corridor.
***
Rovewood Hall at night was a different creature. The shadows lay deeper, the silence heavier, the past pressing close from every portrait and panel. He had once known these corridors intimately—had raced through them as a boy, unthinking, unafraid.
Now he moved through them like a stranger, a ghost haunting his own inheritance.
The library stood at the far end of the east wing. He pushed open the door, expecting darkness.
He found light.
A fire burned low upon the hearth. A lamp glowed beside the leather armchair—his armchair—casting a warm circle upon the floor.
And within that circle sat Miss Weston.
She was curled into the chair, a book resting open in her lap, a shawl drawn about her shoulders. Her hair had come loose, falling in soft waves that caught the firelight. One bare foot was tucked beneath her, the other just visible beneath the hem of her gown. There was ink upon her hand.
She looked, Dominic thought with a jolt he did not examine, as though she belonged.
“Your Grace.” She started, setting aside her book, reaching instinctively for her slippers. “Forgive me, I did not expect—”
“Do not rise.” The words came too quickly. He forced himself to soften them. “Pray do not trouble yourself. I merely—could not sleep.”
She settled again, though she remained watchful. “Nor could I, it seems. I hope I am not intruding. Mrs Potter informed me the library was open to the household in the evenings.”
“It is. You are not intruding.” He stepped further into the room, conscious of his disordered state—his uncombed hair, his rumpled clothes, the fatigue he could not conceal. “I did not expect to find it occupied at this hour.”
“I often read late.” She glanced down at the volume in her lap. “It quiets the mind. When it refuses to be quiet of its own accord.”
He remembered her voice in the darkness, that night of Thomas’s nightmare.Dreams can be very cruel. They bring back what we have lost, and makeus lose it all over again.He had stood in the shadows and heard her say it, and had recognised the truth of it in his own bones.
“What are you reading?” he asked, partly because he was curious and partly because he needed something to say that wasn’twhy are you sitting in my chair looking like you belong thereorhow do you know what it’s like when the quiet is too loud.
