Lucien heard Grace hesitate. “Yes. I do get lonely. I am so used to chasing after all of you, busy all of the time. But we’ll become accustomed to the changes in time. You know, Will and I were alone in the nursery until you came along. Then Ethan and Bennet. You cried a great deal. Colic, the nurse said. But it didn’t last. Soon, you were smiling and knocking over towers of blocks and now, I can’t imagine life without you.”
“I can imagine life without Lord Everdene just fine.”
Grace swept the fall of her hair over one shoulder, baring the nape of her neck, the pale curve so vulnerable. “I know he can be…rather alarming, but you shouldn’t have bitten him.”
“His face was all…all so mad it looked like he’d eat me alive!”
“Oh, Avery. You know he would never?—”
“I don’t! He scares everybody. Ethan and Bennet. And the footmen and maids, too. I heard them talking. Even Papa. He didn’t want you to marry him either.”
“You mustn’t let your imagination run away with you. Lord Everdene is my husband.”
“It was like he—he changed into a monster when he found me under the bed, just like the ones in the stories Nanny told us.”
Hearing Avery talk, Lucien couldn’t stop childhood memories from crowding in. His father’s face suffused with fury, his eyes hot coals, teeth bared, his huge body seeming to blot out the sun as he raged, and Simon…So small and slight in his grasp. Something bitter rose in Lucien’s throat.
“A monster?” Grace said. “To be fair, I was the one who was scared, when I heard something under the bed.”
“Aren’t you afraid of him?” Avery asked.
She seemed to ponder it a moment. Lucien held his breath. “No. I just picture him the way he was that day at the lake, with mud dripping all over him, and a lily pad on his shoulder. And then he’s not so scary at all, don’t you think?”
“He was angry then, too. Looked like he’d explode.”
“He was also cold and wet, and we’d ruined his boots. But he dove in after me because he thought I was in danger.”
“He doesn’t even know how to have fun. Anyone would have known we were playing.”
She sighed. “Sometimes…I see him watching everyone else while they are talking or laughing or having fun…and he looks a bit…puzzled as if he doesn’t quite know how to join in.”
Even from a distance, Lucien could see the lad huff. “Maybe because nobodywantshim to.”
“I do.”
Two simple words that cut Lucien off at the knees.
He turned gently and shut the door before he went to his own bedchamber. He sat down at the desk.
The room was quiet. Spartan. Just the way he preferred it.
But not what Grace was used to.
Aren’t you lonely?Avery had asked Grace.
Lucien would never forget her face in that moment, the haunting sadness, her soft answer.
Yes.
Yes, she was.
Nearly an hour had passedwhen he heard a soft rap at his bedchamber door. “Come in.”
Grace entered. She was carrying a small medical kit. “Avery is finally asleep. I need to look at your hand.”
“Don’t mind it,” he said. He’d washed the blood off and bound it in a clean handkerchief.
“I won’t rest until I attend to it. Bites easily become putrid.”
