“No one is sending you away,” Lorraine said, and was faintly astonished at the steadiness of her own voice. “Thomas, your grandparents love you. They wish only what is best for you.”
“What is best for me is here.” He said it without defiance—without anger or petulance. As a simple fact. The way one might say that winter follows autumn. “I want to stay at Rovewood. With you. And His Grace. And Jenny and Mrs Potter and Graves. And the kestrels.” He clutched Captain tighter; the compass swung against his chest. “This is my home. Papa’s compass points here.”
Lorraine opened her mouth—to reassure, to comfort, to attempt the impossible balance of honesty and kindness—but Thomas was already moving. He set Captain carefully upon the table, tucked the elephant into his pocket, and walked from the room without another word.
His footsteps receded down the corridor. The front door opened. Closed.
Lorraine was on her feet before the latch fell.
“Thomas—”
She reached the entrance hall in time to see him vanish around the east wing, moving with the determined purpose of a child who knew precisely where he was going and did not intend to be stopped.
She ran.
***
He heard the disturbance from his study—the raised voices, the scrape of chairs, Lorraine’s sharp call—and was already moving before his mind fully caught up.
The corridor. The entrance hall. Graves emerging from the pantry, alarm breaking through his usual composure. Mrs Potter at the kitchen door, flour still on her hands.
“Thomas is gone.” Lorraine stood just inside the open door, breathless, her colour high, her hair loosening from its pins. “He ran—I followed him as far as the east path, but I lost sight of him by the lower gardens. I did not see which way he turned.”
Behind her, Margaret Harding was weeping again. James had his arm around her, his own face drawn.
“Which direction?” Dominic asked. His voice had already shifted—precise, controlled, the voice of a man accustomed to command.
“East. Toward the moors. I think.” She shook her head, frustration cutting through the fear. “He was too quick.”
That was enough.
He knew.
Before she finished speaking, before thought could intervene—he knew.
The folly.
The old stone tower on the eastern ridge, where kestrels nested in spring and circled in winter. Where he had gone as a boy, lying in the grass with the sky above him and nothing yet to fear. Where he had taken Thomas on his birthday, the boy perched on his shoulders, pointing skyward.
“Stay here,” Dominic said. “All of you.”
“I am coming with—”
“Lorraine.” He turned to her. Their eyes met for the first time since she had called him a coward, and the impact was immediate—sharp, unguarded. “Please. Let me do this.”
Something flickered across her face—a struggle between protest and understanding. Then she pressed her lips together and nodded once.
He went.
***
The folly lay beyond the house, past the winter-bare gardens and across the lower meadow to the rising ridge. Dominic took the ground at a punishing pace, his stride devouring the frozen earth, his breath sharp in the February air.
He found Thomas exactly where he expected.
The boy sat upon the stone bench within the crumbling archway, knees drawn close, the compass open in his palm. He was not crying. He stared at the needle with fierce concentration, as though willing it to answer a question no adult would.
Dominic paused at the threshold. Braced a hand against the cold stone. Forced his breathing to steady—not from exertion, but from the sight before him.
