The corridor dimmed as Alice stepped away from the drawing room, shadows gathering between flickering wall sconces. She moved with thedeparting guests, nodding goodnights and offering mechanical courtesies that required no thought. The baroness climbed the main staircase, cheerfully bemoaning her joints, while the twins linked arms, whispering as they vanished around a corner.
Ancestral portraits loomed from their gilded frames, generations of Oakfords captured in oil, their expressions shifting from stern disapproval to the blank affability of subjects eager for the sitting to end. Alice felt their painted eyes tracking her progress, convincing herself it was only the wavering light that made them seem to follow her.
She almost reached the turn toward the east wing when a hand gently closed around her elbow.
"A moment, if you please."
Clara's voice barely broke the silence, her fingers pressing with the insistence of someone unwilling to be dismissed. Alice allowed herself to be drawn into the shadows beneath a portrait of a long-dead countess.
"Clara." Alice kept her voice light. "If this is about the brandy I poured into Mr. Davenant's coffee, I assure you it was purely medicinal."
"Alice." Clara’s expression, usually warm and animated, had turned serious, the candlelight accentuating the concern in her eyes. "I need you to listen to me."
Something in her tone made Alice's practiced levity falter. Her spine straightened, breath caught, and that familiar prickle of unease surged, one she had spent years learning to disguise.
"I'm listening."
Clara glanced down the corridor and Alice followed her gaze. The passage lay empty. Even the footmen had retreated to the shadows.
"Be careful with him," Clara said quietly, her hand still gripping Alice's arm. "Lord Crewe, I mean. Samuel."
The use of his first name startled Alice more than the warning itself. She had never thought of Crewe as someone who had once been a child. Someone called something softer by those who knew him well.
"Careful in what sense?" Alice’s voice cracked, and she hated the brittleness in it. "I was merely redirecting a parlor game. It's hardly a declaration of intent."
"I know what I saw." Clara's grip tightened slightly. "And I know you, Alice. Better than most. You were not merely redirecting."
The corridor suddenly constricted, air thick with beeswax and the faint must of old tapestries. Alice wanted to pull away, to retreat behind the armor of wit and carelessness that had served her well for solong. But Clara's steady gaze held her fast, that unwavering look that always saw too much.
"He is a good man," Clara continued, her voice softening. "Truly. But he carries too much regret. It weighs on him. I’ve seen it over these past years. Whatever happened to him, whoever hurt him, he has not moved past it. And I do not think he knows how."
Alice's fingers found her bracelet, the thin gold chain with its single pearl that her mother had given her before her first Season. She turned the pearl between her thumb and forefinger, a gesture she had not made in years.
"You assume I have any intention of?—"
"I assume nothing." Clara finally released her arm but did not step back. "I am only asking you to be careful. With him and with yourself. He is not the sort one can engage in harmless flirtation.”
The words lingered in the air, settling like dust after a carriage had passed. Alice wanted to make a bright remark to dismiss the warning with the ease she applied to everything uncomfortable. But the pearl continued to turn beneath her fingers, and her tongue felt thick and clumsy in her mouth.
"He watches you," Clara added quietly. "When he thinks no one is looking. And you watch him the same way."
"I watch everyone." The protest sounded weak even to her own ears.
"Not like that." Clara's lips curved into a smile that did not reach her eyes. "Goodnight, Alice. Sleep well."
She was gone before Alice could reply, slipping back toward the drawing room where the servants were extinguishing candles, leaving Alice alone with the countess's disapproving gaze.
Alice stood for a moment, collecting herself. The pearl had grown warm against her fingertips. She released it, and adjusted her posture into something resembling composure.
Then she walked toward her chamber.
The corridor was dim and quiet, her footsteps muffled by the soft carpet. Clara's words echoed in her mind about regret, about watching, about wounds that did not heal because their bearers would not let them. She recalled her own answer during the game, words that had slipped out before she could stop them.
Refusing to forgive both others and oneself.
Had she been speaking to him? Or to herself?
At the far end of the passage, where the corridor opened onto the gallery overlooking the great hall, she paused and turned.
