“It is.”
“Is that Henry?”
“That is Henry. He was thirteen here. He was always the easy one. Cassian painted him a great many times. I think Cassian loved him more than I have ever loved anyone, including Cassian, which is saying a great deal.”
“Joanna—”
“No, do not say anything kind, Alice, or I will cry. I have not cried about Henry in twelve years, and I do not propose to start at my brother’s house party. Look at the dog. He was called Romulus. Romulus lived to be eighteen which was tremendous for a dog his size. He died when I was nine. Cassian sat at his head during his last three nights. I do not think he slept on any of the three.”
“Oh, Joanna.”
Cassian did not move from the doorway. Alice had not, at any point in the last three minutes, seen him. She was standing in front of his only surviving painting in a pale yellow muslin dress that, in the four hours since the lake, had dried into the soft shape of a thing that had been very wet earlier. She was looking at the portrait of his brother with her face quite still, and she was, he realized after a moment, listening to his sister with the undivided attention she gave people she was trying very hard not to interrupt.
She is gathering up our family. She is gathering us up the way she gathers up her own family.
Oh… I am in a great deal of trouble.
“Joanna,” he said from the doorway.
They both turned.
Joanna, who had been about to say something else about Romulus, closed her mouth. She had long since learned to read his face in very small ways, and what she read on it now made her draw a slow breath and step back half a pace from the portrait.
“Cassian.”
“Joanna, the other guests are gathering for the card game in the long drawing room. Mrs. Pendleton was looking for you a quarter of an hour ago.”
“Was she?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” Joanna looked at him then looked at Alice.
She gave a small smile. She had just been told, in coded family language, that she might wish to be elsewhere.
“I shall go find Mrs. Pendleton,” she said.
“That would be kind of you, Joanna.”
“Alice, we will continue this tomorrow.”
“Yes, Joanna.”
Joanna left.
Cassian closed the gallery door.
He did not often close the gallery door. The gallery door had not, in twenty years, been closed for more than the interval required by a servant carrying a cleaning cloth. He closed it now. He turned the small brass key in the lock very quietly, set the key on the small console table by the door, and crossed the gallery to where Alice was standing in front of his brother’s portrait.
She did not turn around. She had heard him close the door, turn the key, and cross the gallery, but she had not turned around. She was still looking at Henry on the southern lawn at Langton at thirteen years old with Romulus the spaniel at his feet and an apple in his hand. His painted face was very bright and very open, the face of a boy who had not yet been hit by anything.
Cassian could see from the set of Alice’s shoulders that she was crying very quietly.
She cried without a sound with tears running down her face in two small straight lines and her hands very still at her sides. “Alice…”
“I am sorry, Your Grace.”
“Do not be sorry.”
