And Dominic Vane did not know how to deal with losing people.
He only knew how to freeze before the loss began.
***
The Hardings were installed in the blue guest rooms by late afternoon. Margaret had exhausted herself with emotion and retired to rest. James lingered in the drawing room, asking gentle questions about Thomas’s routine, his temperament, his health.
Lorraine answered with professional precision, framing everything as observation rather than the intimate, hard-won knowledge it truly was.
“He responds well to routine and affection. He is exceptionally bright—his reading is advanced for his age, and he has a genuine talent for drawing. He paints most mornings.”
“And the nightmares?” James asked. “His mother wrote, before she… She mentioned them.”
“Less frequent now. Once a fortnight, perhaps, where they were nightly when he first arrived.” Lorraine paused. “He sleeps with the compass His Grace gave him. He says it steadies him.”
James inclined his head slowly. “The Duke. He has been—how shall I phrase it—involved?”
The question was carefully chosen. Lorraine heard the truth beneath it:Has this man done right by my grandson?
“Very much so,” she said. “Thomas paints with him. Walks with him. Learns about birds from him. His Grace has been—” She paused, searching for a word that was honest without betraying too much. “He has been devoted.”
James absorbed this in silence, the thoughtful recalibration of a man accustomed to revising his judgments. “That surprises me, I confess. I had expected a rather more… severe gentleman. A brilliant officer, certainly—but remote. Difficult to know.”
Something passed between them—a quiet recognition beyond words. James Harding was not a man easily misled. He had spent a lifetime observing, interpreting, understanding what was spoken and what was withheld. He looked at Lorraine’s composure, and she had the uneasy certainty that he saw straight through it.
“Miss Weston,” he said gently, “you care for this child very deeply.”
“I do.”
“And for this household.”
A beat. “Yes.”
He did not pursue it. He was too experienced for blunt inquiry—too practised in learning more from silence than from speech. He merely inclined his head, thanked her, and withdrew to join his wife.
Lorraine remained alone in the drawing room as the winter light faded, listening to the old house settle around her, and tried—futilely—to reckon how many evenings remained to her.
***
She found Dominic in the corridor outside his study, pacing.
Not the measured stride of a man with purpose, but the tight, repetitive circuit of something contained—four steps, turn, four steps, turn—his hands clenched at his sides, his jaw set hard.
He stopped when he saw her.
For a moment, they simply looked at one another across the dim corridor—two people who had spent the day inhabiting versions of themselves that bore little resemblance to the truth.
“They are kind,” Lorraine said.
“Yes.” His voice was even. Controlled.
“Margaret loved William. James is intelligent—perceptive. Thomas showed them the compass. Told them about kestrels. Held my hand. He was braver than either of us.”
“I know. I was there.”
“You were in the room,” she said quietly. “That is not the same as being there.”
His jaw tightened. She saw it—the shift, the instinct to withdraw, to retreat into distance and formality, to place a title between them like a wall.
