“I’m sorry,” he said automatically. “I didn’t mean to—I know you don’t—”
“Don’t.” Dominic’s voice was rough. “Do not apologise. Not for that. Never for that.”
“But I got your coat wet.”
“Coats can be cleaned.” Dominic lifted a hand and brushed a tear from Thomas’s cheek with his thumb—a gesture so unexpectedly gentle that Lorraine felt something in her chest give way. “Feelings cannot. They must be borne.”
Thomas thought about that for a moment. “Miss Weston says that too,” he said. “She says it’s all right to be sad… just not forever.”
“Miss Weston is very wise.”
“I know.” Thomas glanced over at Lorraine, and a small, unsteady smile touched his face. “She makes me laugh sometimes. Even when I don’t want to.”
“Does she?” Dominic’s gaze followed, settling on Lorraine. It was different now—warmer, unguarded in a way she had not seen before. “I cannot say I’m surprised.”
The moment lingered. Lorraine knew she ought to look away—but did not. The firelight, the storm, the fragile intimacy of what she had just witnessed held her fast beneath the weight of his attention.
Thomas, mercifully unaware, tugged at Dominic’s sleeve. “Will you stay? With us? Until the storm is over?”
A pause. A choice.
“Yes,” Dominic said. “I will stay.”
They made camp in the library like explorers in a foreign land.
Lorraine gathered cushions and arranged them before the fire. Thomas collected his soldiers and began explaining their positions to Dominic with the gravity of a general addressing his commander. Dominic listened, asked questions,offered suggestions—and somehow, improbably, the three of them fell into an easy rhythm.
When the soldiers were put away, Thomas looked up.
“Miss Weston tells good stories,” he informed Dominic. “She does voices and everything.”
“Does she indeed?” Dominic settled into one of the leather chairs, Thomas curled at his feet. “Then I should very much like to hear one.”
Lorraine felt the faintest warmth rise to her cheeks. “I am not certain my stories are suitable for—”
“Please?” Thomas fixed her with a look that was difficult to refuse. “The one about the knight. With the dragon.”
She had invented it on a grey afternoon when he had been particularly withdrawn—a foolish tale about a knight afraid of everything except, inexplicably, dragons. She had never intended it for a wider audience.
But Thomas was watching her with hope, and Dominic with quiet interest, and the storm pressed at the windows.
“Very well.” She took the chair opposite Dominic’s. “Once upon a time, in a kingdom by the sea, there lived a knight named Sir Reginald Bumbleshire…”
The story grew as she told it. Sir Reginald feared mice, loud noises, the dark, and—most especially—his formidable Aunt Gertrude, who had opinions on everything. He was, in short, the most unlikely knight in the kingdom—until a dragon came to trouble the village, and he alone volunteered to face it.
“Because he was not afraid of dragons?” Thomas leaned forward.
“Because he was not afraid of dragons,” Lorraine said. “Everyone thought him very brave. In truth, he simply did not see what all the fuss was about. Dragons, he believed, were quite reasonable if approached politely.”
“What happened when he found it?”
“He invited it to tea.”
Thomas giggled. “You cannot have tea with a dragon.”
“Sir Reginald did not know that. So he set out a table before the cave, with his best china and a plate of cucumber sandwiches, and waited.”
“And the dragon came?”
