Dear Madam,
Thank you for your kind inquiry after my health. I am pleased to report that I am well, and that my position at Rovewood Hall suits me very well indeed. The boy in my care is a credit to his late parents, and I find myself increasingly attached to the household.
I am most grateful for your generous offer of continued employment; however, I must decline it. My place, for the present, is here.
Your obedient servant,
Lorraine Weston
She sealed the letter and set it aside for the morning post. Then she extinguished the candle and lay in the darkness, listening to the house settle around her.
Somewhere below, she knew, Dominic was awake.
Goodnight, Dominic, she thought, and the name felt like a prayer on her tongue.
Sleep came at last—bringing with it dreams of firelight, of small carved horses, and of a man learning, slowly, to reach back.
Chapter Nine
“You’re going out, Your Grace? In this weather?”
Dominic paused in the entrance hall, one arm already in his greatcoat, and turned to find Graves regarding him with the particular expression of a butler who has formed an opinion but is too well-trained to express it.
“I require fresh air, Graves. The weather is immaterial.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Graves’s tone suggested the weather was, in fact, highly material, and that venturing out into a grey November afternoon bordered on folly. “Shall I have the groom saddle your horse?”
“No. I shall walk.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Dominic finished settling his coat about him and reached for his hat, ignoring the weight of Graves’s silent disapproval. The man was not wrong. The day was damp and bitter, the sort of cold that crept into one’s bones and lingered. A sensible man would remain indoors, close to the fire.
Dominic had never felt less inclined to sense.
It had been a week since the storm. A week of breakfasts with Thomas, of visits to the nursery, of careful, halting steps toward something resembling connection. A week of watching Lorraine move through his house as though she belonged to it. A week of lying awake at night, replaying the brush of her fingers against his, the sound of his name in her voice, the way she had looked at him in the firelight.
He was going mad. There was no other explanation. Four years of deliberate numbness, and now he could not seem to stopfeeling—could not stop wanting—could not stop thinking of a woman he had no right to want at all.
The air would steady him. It had to. Because if it did not, he would do something foolish—something he could not undo.
He stepped outside and let the cold strike him cleanly.
The grounds of Rovewood Hall stretched out before him, grey and brown and stripped of summer’s warmth. The formal gardens had been put to bed for the winter, their rosebushes wrapped in burlap, their pathways scattered with fallen leaves. Beyond them lay the wilder parkland—rolling hills dotted with ancient oaks, leading eventually to the moors that gave the estate its character.
Dominic set off along the main path, his boots grinding softly over gravel, his breath pale in the air. He walked without direction, allowing movement to stand in for thought.
It failed. Lorraine remained fixed in his mind, sharp and inescapable.
He had circled the ornamental lake and was nearing the eastern woods when he saw her.
She was coming toward him from the kitchen gardens, wrapped in a dark cloak, hood drawn against the wind. Her step was quick and purposeful. Her cheeks were bright with cold.
She saw him and stopped.
For a moment, they stood facing one another across the path, the wind moving between them.
“Your Grace.” She curtsied, precise and formal. “I did not expect to meet anyone out today.”
