Dominic stood alone in the lamplight, shaking.
***
Julian departed the following morning in a flurry of warmth and noise, as was ever his way. He embraced Thomas—who had formed a swift and ardent attachment to the golden-haired lord—and promised to return bearing a book upon foxes. He kissed Mrs Potter’s hand, setting her to blush like a girl newly come out. He clasped Graves’s hand with genuine respect and praised the excellence of the game pie to the staff.
And he took Lorraine’s hand, holding it a moment longer than courtesy required, his gaze fixed upon her with an expression entirely devoid of flirtation—sincere, steady.
“Take care of them, Miss Weston,” he said softly. “Both of them. They have greater need of you than they yet perceive.”
“My lord—”
“Julian. If Dom may be Dominic, I insist upon being Julian.” He released her hand with a grin, his charm snapping back into place as though it had never been absent. “I expect an invitation to the wedding.”
“There is no—”
But he was already out the door, laughing over his shoulder as he mounted the carriage, his voice trailing behind him as the wheels crunched over the gravel drive.
Dominic watched from the entrance hall, one hand braced against the doorframe, and felt the house settle into silence around him—the familiar, pressing quiet of Rovewood without Julian’s irrepressible presence.
The silence that had once felt like safety now felt like suffocation.
***
He found her in the library.
Of course she was in the library. It was half past eleven, and Lorraine Weston sat in his chair—his sanctuary—wrapped in a grey shawl over a simple white nightgown, reading by the fire’s glow, her auburn hair unbound about her shoulders.
The house still held the faint echo of morning’s departure—the residual hush left in the wake of Julian’s absence.
She looked up when he entered. Her eyes—grey-green in the low light, deepening toward blue where the firelight touched them—widened slightly, then settled into something calm and expectant.
As though she had been waiting.
Perhaps she had.
“I must tell you something,” he said from the doorway. His voice sounded strange to his own ears—thin, unsteady, nothing like the controlled instrument he ordinarily wielded. “And you must hear it without… without attempting to mend it. Can you do that?”
She set aside her book. “Yes.”
He crossed the room and took the opposite chair—not so near as to touch her, yet near enough to see her face clearly in the firelight. Near enough that she could see his.
“You know of the ambush,” he began. “I told you—in this room, weeks ago. Of the hesitation. Of William. Of the men who died.”
“Yes.”
“I did not tell you everything.”
She did not speak. She simply waited, her hands folded in her lap, her gaze steady upon his face.
Dominic drew in a breath that burned like swallowed glass.
“It was October. The twenty-third. Four years ago.” His voice flattened, distant—the tone of a man reciting a report. It was the only way he could force the words free. “We received intelligence of an enemy position near the San Cristóbal fort. My commanding officer ordered a night reconnaissance. I was to lead two-and-thirty men into the ravine to assess their strength.”
He paused. The fire gave a soft crackle. Lorraine did not move.
“I knew something was amiss. The intelligence felt… wrong. Too convenient. Too neat. I said as much, and was told I erred on the side of caution—that the reports had been corroborated. I was ordered to proceed.”
“And you obeyed.”
