“James.” He spoke from two paces away. “Come away from the door.”
James did not come away from the door. Mrs. Greer came out from the room, and James went immediately to her apron pocket, pulling at it with both fists. The governess stepped in and drew him back by the shoulders.
“Let me play!” James’s chest heaved twice.
Then he went very still, and his face crumpled, and the tears came fast and silent, and he stood where Miss Hartley held him and shook.
Dominic stood in the corridor and said nothing. He looked at the boy and had no idea what to do with any of it.
“James,” he said, when he could. “You are making this considerably more difficult than it needs to be.” He stopped, took in a calming breath, and started again. “The room is closed. That is the end of it.”
James raised his face then, and his cheeks were wet, his eyes dark and furious.
“I hate you,” he said, then pulled himself free of Miss Hartley’s hold and ran up the stairs.
Dominic stood in the corridor.
“See that the boy has breakfast,” he instructed Mrs. Greer.
With that, he went to his study, sat at his desk, and did not open a single letter for twenty minutes.
Three notes.
That was all Lady Annabelle Stanton had given his nephew at Lucien’s ball. Three unremarkable notes on a pianoforte that had been considerably better left untouched, and now the boy could speak of nothing else, sleep through nothing else, and apparently be physically removed from one house only to reappear at another in pursuit of the same obsession.
Dominic picked up the first letter and set it down again.
None of this would have happened if she had simply gone on to rehearse her piece and ignored James in that room. Or better yet, alerted Dominic to his whereabouts and minded her own business.
He was aware this was not entirely fair.
What bothered him, sitting here now, was not the things she had said—those were merely correct—but the candlelight on the line of her throat when she had turned toward the boy, and the four pins keeping the left side of her hair in place.
And the fact that he had been standing close enough for these details to become entirely unavoidable.
He was thirty-two years old; he ought not to be thinking such thoughts about his friend’s sister. So, he set the thoughts aside and opened the letter.
The Linwood soiree operated on champagne and overlapping conversations, and Dominic had not intended to stay long. He had arrived past nine and intended to be gone by eleven. He had been in the house since morning, and the walls had been doing what walls in Silverford House occasionally did on difficult days, which was to make him aware of every room in them.
He found himself standing near the far side of the room with a glass he was not drinking from, watching Lady Annabelle Stanton be charming at a man he recognized from thirty feet.
Lord Fenwick. Thirties, well-dressed, with a genial manner that sat well at a distance. At closer range, he was rather less appealing. He had never been inside an establishment he had also not heard about it from a more reputable source, and Fenwick had achieved the impressive distinction of being refused entry to two of them. In the same month.
Lady Annabelle stood with Miss Helena Thrupton and Miss Thrupton’s mother, and the Dowager Lady Rosenhall, at a comfortable distance from Fenwick. She had her head tilted at a polite angle and was saying something that made Fenwick laugh. Her eyes stayed on his face throughout. Her hands were still at her sides.
Before he knew it, Dominic had crossed the room.
“Fenwick.” He extended his hand with every appearance of pleasure. “I thought you’d gone to Bath for the season.”
Fenwick blinked. “Your Grace! I—no. I haven’t.”
“Must have been mistaken. How is the venture in the north? I heard it didn’t go as planned.” He paused. “But perhaps I’m thinking of someone else.”
Fenwick’s genial manner developed a slight unsteadiness. “I really must—Lady Annabelle, it was a pleasure.” He took his leave at a speed that managed not to be openly undignified.
Annabelle watched him go. Then she turned to Dominic with a smile that did not reach her eyes.
“Your Grace.”
