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Sophie’s eyes shot open. For the first time, she wasn’t afraid to look directly back into his. To bear the full, roughly hewn, nasty truth of herself to that gaze of soft black. “Do you know where I was? What I was doing, while my brother was drawing his last breath in some ocean a world away, fighting for me and you and king and country?”

His lips parted. His eyes were teeming with pity she wasn’t worthy of. Don’t, he seemed to say.

She pushed off the desk and out of his touch, walking the perimeter of the room. She swiped at her eyes and sniffed, folding her arms tightly across her chest. “Word took days to reach us. When I looked back at my own calendar, do you know what I was doing?”

She spun to look at him and her stomach cinched tighter, pushing the feeling of nausea higher. If she told him, he would despise her. Curse her and be disgusted by her. The punishment she deserved. She unfolded her arms and put them close against her sides.

“I was at the seamstress’s shop.” A half gasp, half laugh burst from her. “Trying on dresses in preparation for the Almighty Season, dreaming up what fun and mischief I would make. I didn’t feel anything, do you understand?” Her voice was sharp and loud, a perfect twin to her breaths.

Mr. Balfour was crossing the room toward her, the sight of him weakening her knees.

“Don’t you understand?” she repeated, louder. “He was dying and I didn’t know it. I should have known. I don’t even—I don’t even remember the color—”

His arms closed around her, and the instant his warm chest met her cheek, she cried. Oh, she cried—ceaseless, convulsive, delirious sobs that wracked her body soul-deep. She went weightless.

“It should’ve been me. It should’ve been me, should’ve been me, should’ve …” The refrain bled out with her tears, her body possessed of its own will.

How?

How could a person be this heavy, and yet this achingly empty?

He was lifting her against himself, sitting down somewhere. Running his warm fingertips over her hair, and pressing his lips lightly to her forehead. All around her was darkness and heat, the air tangy-sweet with his scent. His arms around her back seemed to be the only thing holding her together, keeping her tattered heart contained to her body and still beating.

Sophie’s left leg tingled with pins and needles, aching for blood flow, but her body was no longer trembling. It had returned to equilibrium, fastened itself back into something she could control. She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed and sighed. Everything was dark and fuzzy, inexplicably warm and comfortable. She just wanted to keep resting.

The hard surface beneath her cheek rose and fell, doling out a deep rhythm against her ear. Terribly, wonderfully alive.

Awareness rushed in on a sharp inhalation, and her eyes snapped open. She was in Mr. Balfour’s lap, curling against him and clinging to him for dear life like some starving animal.

She found herself in increments—her right hand needled around his lapel in a death grip, her left pressed itself to his stubble-grained cheek. Her bottom was heavy in his lap, and her toes curled in her slippers—which were unceremoniously pushing into his knee. And her head? Her head was pounding.

She was worse than a starving animal, she was an unborn babe, a helpless fetus, a parasite drawing sustenance from a source.

She scrambled to her feet in a series of rough, tangled movements. The pins and needles in her leg turned to shrieking pain as blood crept back in. She was almost grateful for the distraction. She hit her knuckles into the numb skin, directing all her attention to the task as she heard him stir awake.

“Are—?” He spoke the word quickly, in a sleep-drenched voice that coiled around her heart. And then he left the question unfinished.

She shook out her leg. It wasn’t fully recovered, but tolerable. She straightened and set her shoulders before looking at him. “My apologies.”

He stared at her, his lips shifting against one another before stilling. “Nothing to apologize for.”

She smiled. What must her hair look like? Her eyes; her dress? She made a half turn away from him and lifted her hand, taking an errant strand between two fingers and tucking it back into her coiffure.

He gently cleared his throat behind her, and something metal clacked. “It’s only been a couple of hours. Chenoweth won’t have returned yet.”

“Yes.” She scratched at another strand of hair, and another. The whole curst thing would need redoing. “I daresay it would be strange for me to return this early, anyhow. I would thank you to take me back whenever the Bancrofts’ dinner was to have ended, so as not to raise alarm.”

Who was she kidding? She could choose not to return at all, and it might take days for any real alarm to be raised. She wanted to ask what time it was, how many hours had fallen between the cracks of her consciousness and how obtuse she had acted, but that meant taking accountability for all of it. Her head was pulsing, a tattoo that promised to bring her fully back to conscious shame.

“You seem to be feeling better.” His words were spaced oddly, probably chosen with consideration, afraid of reawakening the beast that had coiled itself onto his chest.

To prove to him that creature wouldn’t be returning, she faced him with a smile. “Yes, I am, thank you.”

“What about a trip to the kitchens?”

The thought of food lay somewhere between nauseating and desperately important. “Very well.”

He rose from the chair, and Sophie was oddly surprised to find it looked like any plain old thing: green silk damask with four legs and two arms and space enough for one person.