“I do not know how to be what he requires,” Dominic said quietly. “I cannot look at him without seeing—” He broke off, the words catching.
“His father.”
He closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Tell me about him.” Her voice softened, inviting rather than pressing. “Not the battle. Not the end. Tell me who he was.”
For a long moment, Dominic said nothing. The fire shifted. The wind pressed faintly at the windows. And she waited.
“He was my friend,” he said at last. “My closest friend, in Spain. We rose through the ranks at much the same time—he with the infantry, I with the rifles—but we were often thrown together. He had the most appalling laugh…” The corner of his mouth moved, almost against his will. “The men used to wager upon what would set him off.”
“And what did?”
“Anything. Everything. He found amusement where the rest of us found none. Even in the worst of it… he would laugh.” Dominic’s gaze fixed upon the fire. “He was the best of us. And I got him killed.”
The words fell between them, stark and unadorned. He had never said them aloud before. Had carried them inside him for four years, a stone in his chest, and now they sat between him and this woman like an offering or a confession.
“You led an ambush,” Lorraine said quietly. “Mrs Potter told me something of it, though she knew little of the particulars.”
“I hesitated.” His voice roughened. “When the firing began—when it all came apart—I froze. A few seconds only, but enough. By the time I acted…” He exhaled. “Men were already dying.” He looked at her then. “If I had moved sooner—”
“You cannot know what might have been,” she said. “You never will.”
“I know what was. I know he died in my arms, asking me to care for his son. And I know I have failed that charge every day since Thomas came under my roof.”
“Then do not fail him tomorrow.”
He stared at her. “I beg your pardon?”
“Begin again.” Her gaze did not waver. “I do not pretend it is simple. But the child is here. He needs you—not the man you think you ought to be, but the man who stands before me now. Present. Trying.”
“And if that is not enough?”
“What if it is?” She set aside her glass and rose. The firelight outlined her, lending her a quiet intensity that held him fast. “Children do not require perfection, Your Grace. Only constancy. Only the knowledge that someone will come when they call.”
He rose as well, though he did not recall deciding to do so. They stood facing one another, the hearth between them.
“You make it sound straightforward.”
“It is not. Nothing worth having ever is.” A faint smile touched her lips. “But you came to breakfast. That mattered. Tomorrow, you might read to him. Or walk with him in the garden. Small things. They amount to more than you think.”
“You speak from experience.”
“I speak from determination.” The smile lingered, just a moment longer. “I am unwilling to believe that anyone is beyond mending. It may be a flaw.”
He almost smiled. He felt it—unexpected, unfamiliar—and checked it at once.
But she noticed. Of course she noticed. Her gaze lingered a fraction too long, and something in her expression softened—quiet, unguarded, and gone again before he could be certain of it.
“You should allow yourself that more often,” she said softly. “The smile. It becomes you.”
“I have had little cause to smile. These past years.”
“Perhaps that is changing.”
The fire shifted; a log settled, sending a brief shower of sparks upward. And Dominic found himself standing in his library in the small hours, facing a woman who had, in the space of a fortnight, unsettled a solitude he had believed unassailable.
He ought to withdraw. Ought to remember what she was to him, and what he must remain to her.
