A brief silence. Then, softly, “It is of use, Your Grace. Thank you.”
The door closed behind her.
Dominic remained motionless in the grey morning light, his hand still resting against the scar upon his brow, listening as her footsteps faded along the corridor.
She looked at me,he thought,as though she could see something.
He did not know whether that was alarming—or something else entirely.
He reached for the whisky. Then stopped, his fingers hovering above the decanter. Slowly, he withdrew his hand, folding both upon the desk and staring down at them—the scarred knuckles, the calluses that had never quite faded, thehands that had held William as he died and could not seem to hold William’s son at all.
He likes birds.
So small a thing. So insignificant a fragment of knowledge. And yet it was the only thing Dominic could say with certainty of the boy who had lived beneath his roof these five months. Who bore William’s eyes. Who sat in the nursery awaiting removal to grandparents he had never seen, in a country he had never known, because the man meant to protect him could not bear the sight of his face.
Somewhere above, footsteps sounded—light, purposeful. Miss Weston, ascending to the nursery.
Dominic closed his eyes and saw William’s face, slack in death, lips still moving around words he had not been able to hear above the gunfire:
Take care of him. Promise me. Promise.
He had promised. He had held his dying friend and sworn upon everything sacred that Thomas would be safe, would be cherished, would want for nothing.
And then he had come home and discovered that to keep such a promise required a capacity for feeling he had left buried somewhere in the Spanish mud.
She looked at me as though she could see something.
He opened his eyes. The study was cold, the fire long dead, the morning grey and unwelcoming.
But somewhere above, a woman with storm-sea eyes was walking into his nursery, armed with nothing more than the knowledge that a broken little boy liked birds.
It was, Dominic thought, more than he had ever given any of the others to work with.
It was more than he had ever given Thomas at all.
Chapter Three
“He has been bathed and dressed, miss. Jenny saw to it first thing.”
Mrs Potter stood at the nursery door with the air of a woman presenting a prize horse at auction—hopeful, anxious, and braced for disappointment. Behind her, framed by the cheerful paper that only served to heighten the room’s unnatural stillness, Thomas Harding sat at a small table, his hands folded and his spine as rigid as a soldier’s.
He had been scrubbed to within an inch of his life. His fair hair lay plastered neatly against his skull, still damp at the edges. His clothes—a miniature suit of navy wool, perfectly pressed—fit him precisely and revealed nothing. He looked, Lorraine thought with a pang, like a doll arranged for display. Like something meant to be observed, rather than touched.
“Thank you, Mrs Potter.” Lorraine kept her tone light and unhurried. “That will be all for now. I shall ring if we require anything.”
The housekeeper hesitated. Her gaze moved from Lorraine to Thomas and back again, and in that glance, Lorraine read volumes:Four governesses. Five months. Please let this one succeed.
“Of course, miss.” Mrs Potter withdrew, closing the door softly behind her.
Lorraine did not immediately approach the table. Instead, she took her time surveying the nursery—the shelves of untouched toys, the rocking horse gathering dust in the corner, the window seat overlooking grey skies and bare branches. A beautiful room. A room designed for childhood—for play, for noise, for laughter.
It felt like a mausoleum.
Thomas watched her watching. His brown eyes followed her movements with the wariness of a creature accustomed to sudden change. Lorraine recognised that look. She had worn it herself, in those bleak months after her father’s death, when every knock at the door might herald another creditor, another demand, another fragment of her former life stripped away.
You are waiting, she thought,for me to hurt you. Or leave you. You are not certain which will come first—only that one of them must.
She moved to the bookshelf and let her fingers trail along the spines. Primers and moral tales, for the most part—the sort of improving volumes selected by adults and endured by children. But there, half-hidden behind a particularly drearytreatise on deportment, she discovered something more promising: a slim book bound in green cloth, its pages softened with use.
