“To let me hold you all night? It’s a fantastic idea. The best I’ve ever had.”
Her heart swelled in her chest as she walked to him and sat, sliding her feet under the coverlet. She scooted over and he joined her. He rolled to his side facing her and Felicity did the same. He reached back to snuff the candle, and darkness cocooned them.
“This weather reminds me of home,” he said. His voice had a light burr, like he was letting a bit of his true self slip out now that they were alone in darkness, the whole world sleeping.
“It does?”
His arm came around her, tucking her to his chest. His chin rested on her head.
“Misty and cold, damp seeping into everything. But inside is always warm and cozy. Thick wool blankets on the beds, whisky tea to warm the belly.”
Felicity closed her eyes and tried to put them back in the imaginary house she’d built in her mind of Lark Hall.
“Tell me what your house looks like on the outside.”
“It’s all stone and moss. There are only two floors. When my great-grandfather built it, there were only two bedrooms, a kitchen and parlor. Then it was built out by each generation, adding to the back and the side. Those two bedrooms became four, then six, then eight. The ground floor now has the parlor, the kitchen, the study, and a proper dining room.”
“Your house sounds incredibly large.”
“Compared to what we’re in now? No.”
“Compared to the small cottage I lived in my entire life.”
“Oh, I suppose that makes sense.”
“What is your room like?”
“My room is always messy. As a boy I got in the habit of collecting bones and trying to put skeletons back together. Sometimes I made new animals.”
“That’s rather morbid.”
He chuckled. “Mostly bird bones, rabbits. Colin said he’d throw them away when I left. I didn’t have time to look when I went back.”
“What are your siblings like?”
He took a deep breath and sighed. “You need to go to sleep.”
“You don’t want to tell me?”
“It hurts to talk about them. I let them down.”
Felicity wrapped an arm around him. “You’re doing the best you can. They know that.”
“I should have been there for them. I should have never left Colin in charge of anything. I knew he hated the responsibility, but he’d been running the household for years already. He seemed to accept his role, and he did it reasonably well. But I was wrong. I only learned after his death that his frequent trips to London were not to establish new business for the farm, but to gamble and drink away the profits.”
“You are there for them now. You’re still doing whatever you can for them. That means everything, Tristan.”
He cleared his throat. “Go to sleep.”
“I just want to picture it,” she said sleepily.
“Picture what?”
“You, them, your home, I want to be there.”
“You will be,” he said. But it sounded far off, and her body was heavy and warm. Sleep tugged at her, and she let it take her.
Chapter Eighteen
