The realisation struck him with painful force.
She would not let him help her.
***
The storm arrived shortly after four o’clock.
It came with little warning—one moment the skies were merely overcast, heavy and threatening; the next, they opened, and rain fell in sheets, driven nearly horizontal by winds that rattled the windows and made the old house groan.
Nathaniel was in his study when the first crack of thunder split the air—so loud and sudden that he nearly overturned his inkwell. He steadied it by instinct, his attention already drawn to the window, where lightning flickered across the darkened sky.
It would be a bad one. He felt it in his bones—the sort of storm that raged for hours, leaving broken branches and flooded lanes in its wake.
His first thought, absurdly, was of Miss Collard.
Was she still in the library with the children? Were they frightened? Was she managing to keep them calm while enduring whatever pain she had been concealing all day?
He ought to go to them. Ought to make certain they were all right.
Before he could move, however, lightning tore across the sky again, followed almost at once by a crash of thunder so violent it seemed to shake the very foundations of the house.
And then he heard the scream.
High. Terrified. Unmistakably childish.
Rosie.
Nathaniel was out of his study and running before the echo had faded. He took the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding, his mind leaping ahead to every possible disaster. Had something broken? Had someone been hurt?
He reached the nursery wing to find chaos.
The door to Rosie’s room stood open, lamplight spilling into the corridor. Inside, Rosie was huddled on her bed, her small body shaking with sobs, her arms wrapped around Marianne so tightly the doll seemed in danger of losing what remained of her stuffing.
And seated on the edge of the bed was Miss Collard.
She was holding Rosie close, murmuring words of comfort that Nathaniel could scarcely hear above the storm and the child’s cries. But even from the doorway, he could see that something was wrong. Miss Collard’s face was grey—not merely pale, but grey, the colour of ashes—and her movements were careful, deliberate, as though governed by pain she refused to acknowledge.
“Miss Collard,” he said, stepping into the room. “What has happened?”
She looked up, and for a moment, he saw everything she was trying to conceal: the exhaustion, the pain, the sheer effort required to remain upright and composed.
“The thunder,” she said, her voice strained but steady. “It frightened Rosie. She was asleep when the storm began, and she woke to the noise, and—”
Another crash of thunder drowned out her words. Rosie screamed again, burying her face against Miss Collard’s shoulder, clutching desperately at the fabric of her dress.
“Rosie.” Nathaniel crossed to the bed and crouched so he was level with his niece. “Rosie, sweetheart, it is all right. It is only a storm. It cannot hurt you.”
“It can!” Rosie sobbed. “It can hurt! The storm hurt Mama and Papa! They went out in the storm, and they never came back!”
The words struck him like a physical blow.
Of course. Of course Rosie was afraid of storms.
Edward and Eleanor had died on a night of wind and rain—poor visibility, slick roads, the carriage skidding into a ravine. Rosie had been only three years old, but she had been awake when the news arrived. She had seen the servants’ stricken faces, heard the sobbing, and somehow—terribly—linked the storm outside with the loss that had shattered her world.
And Nathaniel had not known.
Two years he had been her guardian, and he had not known that she was terrified of storms. Had not thought to ask, to pay attention, to be present enough in her life to notice the signs.
