“Something other than my hand,” Lucien muttered.
The boy ducked his head, but not before Lucien saw a look of triumph. “I sneaked into the kitchen and took some hot cross buns and apples under the bed.”
Wonderful. No doubt the crumbs would be the perfect lure for mice.
“How did you even guess where my room was?” Grace asked.
“I peeked in all the bedrooms and saw that.” The boy gestured to Lord Admiral Nelson on her dressing table.
Damned resourceful little scoundrel, making his way all the way from The Willows and sneaking in with none of the servants noticing. Lucien would have to have a word with his staff.
He could have rung for the servants, but left the room to cool his temper, finding a maid and ordering food for the boy and a pitcher of warm water so he could wash up. When the servant delivered what was necessary, she didn’t quite close the door. Lucien knew he should get as far from the scene unfoldingas possible, but something held him in the corridor, as Grace helped settle her brother into the bed Lucien had been eager to share with her.
From the first moment the lad had hurled a mud pie at him, there had been a boldness in this pint-sized hellion who had tormented him. There was no doubt he was the leader of the brothers. And when Lucien and Grace had announced their marriage, Avery had actually struck him, something no grown man of Lucien’s acquaintance would have dared, leaving no doubt he planned to be a formidable adversary.
But now, he seemed so young and small, something about him making Lucien damned uncomfortable. Something familiar…He remembered chasing after Simon after their mother disappeared. Finding him huddled in the treehouse they’d built, shivering, hungry, trying to hide his tears. Knowing that when they returned home, he would receive a beating from their father.
Lucien shifted in the hallway until he was able to see brother and sister more clearly. Grace leaned over Avery, stroking his tumbled hair, his face red and hot and shining with tears.
“There, there…,” Grace said. “Tell me, why are you crying?”
“I hate Stepmama for marrying Papa and IhateLord Everdene for taking you away. I want things to go back to the way they used to be.”
Lucien saw Grace take a deep breath. “I know,” she said. “So do I sometimes. But things can’t always stay the same. Even if Mama were still alive and I hadn’t married, things would change. Look at how you’ve grown, just since this spring.”
Avery wiped his nose with the sleeve of Lucien’s borrowed shirt. Lucien remembered the defiance when he’d dragged the boy from beneath the bed. He’d fought like a wild thing—hell, bit like one as well—but there had been no tears.
Now, the boy and Grace both looked so vulnerable it made Lucien’s gut knot. He wanted to turn away, go to the study, lose himself in the piles of work waiting for him there. He wanted to go to his own bedchamber, shut the door, and pour himself brandy, do whatever he’d always done on the nights that sleep eluded him. But he stood there, feeling as if he was looking back in time to the boy he had been.
The boy who shrank away from any comforting touch. Steeled his shoulders, hardening any tears into an icy lump that grew harder and harder over the years until any tears were sharp as broken glass and the shell around him so tough he could no longer feel the touch of his mother’s hand.
Lucien wanted to turn and walk away, pull free of the thread that seemed strung between his chest and Grace.
The woman whose body he’d come to know, but whose heart…whose spirit had been beyond his long-hardened mindset to comprehend, even if he ever became reckless enough to want to discover its mysteries.
Her partially unlaced gown drooped off one shoulder, baring a creamy expanse he’d tasted just before they’d been interrupted. Tendrils of rich brown hair, threaded with red-gold strands, curled against her throat.
She crooned a poignant melody, one Lucien had never heard, a tale about stars. The lad quieted even more. But he didn’t sleep.
“Grace, am I going to hell?”
The lad’s soft query drifted to the door, burying itself in Lucien’s chest.
“Of course not! Why ever would you think such a thing? Where in the world did you get such a notion?” Grace asked.
“I heard Mrs. Kemble tell Stepmama that I am the wicked one and I’ll drag Bennet and Ethan down with me. She’s right, I’m the one that gets the others into trouble. I boosted Bennetup through the window to ruin the luncheon. I’m the one started moving things back where Mama had them. I’m the one who told Stepmama there was a ghost. Sometimes theangryjust boils up inside me and has to come out. So I have to join the navy, you see?”
“Bennet and Ethan wouldn’t know what to do without you. And Will and Ethan and Papa would be so sad. So would I. You would be far away on a ship somewhere. Whole years would go by and we’d not see you. We’d not even spend Christmas together. Who would play snapdragon and help cut down the Christmas tree?”
That seemed to make the boy stop to consider. He sniffed, then looked up at his sister. “Don’t you miss us, Grace?”
“Of course, I do. I miss tucking you into bed, and reading you stories.”
“And playing at the lake.”
“Yes, that, too.”
“Don’t you get lonely?”
