The room was fully lit. Three candelabra, the mantel lamp, the long curtains drawn. The piano stood uncovered at the far end with its lid raised, the keys catching the candlelight along their length. He had been in this room almost every week since September, and it still did the same thing to him—not the total dissolution it had been in the beginning, the edges coming apart, the ground going unreliable—but a version of it. A tightening at the sternum. One hard beat of the heart.
The image came.
He let it come. He had learned that fighting it made it slower to pass.
His father’s hands on the keys. The dark dried into the cracks between them. The quality of the breathing in the silence after.
He breathed in.
Annabelle’s voice in the dark, the night of the nightmare:you’re here. I’m here. Her hand flat on his chest, the warmth of it through the fabric, the weight of it. The way she had simply matched his breathing—not counting aloud, not making a performance of it—slow in, hold, slow out, until his body had found the same rhythm.
He breathed out. Held it. Let it go.
His heartbeat settled. The room came back fully: the chairs in their curved rows, the candlelight steady, Miles beside him saying nothing.
“She will play beautifully,” Miles said, after a moment.
“I know she will,” Dominic said.
Miles looked at him once, then looked back at the window.
The hall had acquired the sound of an evening assembling itself by the time they came downstairs. Coats being taken, voices moving through the corridor in the unhurried way voices moved when a gathering was finding its feet.
Lucien and Elinor arrived first. Lucien had left Charlotte at Fairmont House with the nurse; he came through the door, crossed the entrance hall directly, and put out his hand. Dominic took it, and the grip held one beat longer than a handshake required.
“Well then,” Lucien said.
“Well then,” Dominic said, and they were done with it.
Elinor kissed his cheek and looked at him squarely in the way she had of looking at people she had decided she liked. “She was anxious this morning,” she said. “Is she well?”
“She is well.”
“Good.” Elinor moved past him into the corridor, taking Lucien with her.
Helena arrived in primrose yellow, which she wore the way she wore everything: with the absolute conviction that it was correct. She stopped in front of Dominic, took both his arms, and said, “Is she ready?” When he confirmed it, she said, “Lady Rosenhall told Mrs. Aldgate this week that the Duchess of Silverford is the most accomplished pianist in her acquaintance. Mrs. Aldgate’s acquaintance numbers approximately four hundred people. I want you to have that figure.”
He thanked her. She moved on.
Lady Rosenhall herself arrived half a step behind Helena, already surveying the chair arrangement.
“Silverford.” She inclined her head. “The acoustics will be excellent with the curtains drawn.”
“The curtains are drawn.”
“I know.” A pause. “That is why I said it will be excellent.”
She went in without waiting for an answer.
Miles materialized at Dominic’s elbow. “Lady Rosenhall has just given you the highest compliment she gives anything,” he said, “and you accepted it without flinching. Four months ago, you would have asked Mrs. Howell what a curtain had to do with acoustics.”
“Four months ago, I was wrong about most things,” Dominic said.
Miles looked at him. “Yes,” he said, “you were,” and went to find wine.
Theodore and Cressida, the Ashmeres, arrived together. Theodore greeted Dominic with a handshake and a brief look at the room; Cressida found Helena at once, and the two of them fell into conversation within thirty seconds.
Other guests filtered through: Lucien’s parliamentary neighbors, an elder countess Annabelle had befriended in September, two ladies from their autumn calls who arrived together and positioned themselves with long practice near the refreshments.
