The sitting room of the townhouse with the blue door was louder than any battlefield Edward had ever known, and considerably more dangerous.
Eleanor had paint on her face. James had paint on his hands. Both of them had paint on the dog, which was a recent addition that Valeria had found at the orphanage six months ago and which answered to the name Beetle, because Horace had named it, and Horace’s naming conventions were law in the Langton household.
“Stay still,” Caroline said from behind the easel. “For the love of God, all of you, stay still.”
“I am still,” Edward said.
He was not still. Eleanor was on his lap, trying to put a flower crown on his head with the fierce determination of a two-year-old who had inherited her mother’s stubbornness and her father’s refusal to quit.
James was on the floor, building a tower out of blocks that kept falling over. Valeria sat beside Edward with her hand on her belly, which was round and full with their third child, and she was laughing.
“You are the opposite of still,” Caroline protested, her brush poised in the air.
Her own children, a boy and a girl, were in the garden with Richard, who had been exiled from the sitting room after he offered a critique of Caroline’s brushwork and was informed, in terms that left no room for debate, that his opinion was neither requested nor welcome.
“How is Bridget?” Valeria asked, adjusting the flower crown so it sat on Edward’s head at a less catastrophic angle.
“Busy. Matthew has been promoted again. The children are enormous. She wrote to say she’ll visit next month with Helena.” Caroline squinted at the canvas. “Also, she said to tell you that your nephew has started reading at three, and she blames you entirely for giving him books.”
“Reading is a gift.”
“Reading at three in the morning by candlelight is a fire hazard. He keeps a candle under his blanket. Bridget is going gray.”
Edward shifted. The flower crown fell from his head. Eleanor made a sound of outrage that was impressively loud for someone who weighed less than a sack of flour and hit him on the shoulder with a small, paint-covered fist.
“She has yer temperament,” Edward told Valeria.
“She has your volume,” Valeria returned.
“What of George?” Edward asked, his voice steady.
The name no longer carried the weight it once had. Three years of distance and a Queen’s justice had filed the edges smooth. He could say it now without flinching.
That was progress. That was what three years of love and laughter and a house with a blue door could do.
Caroline adjusted her grip on the brush. “The last I heard, he is still in custody. Comfortable, by all accounts, but not free. The Queen believes he can be reformed. Whether she is right remains to be seen.”
“And Peter?”
“Peter is wonderful.” Caroline’s face softened. “He’s been visiting the orphanage for two years now. The children adore him. Horace follows him everywhere. Ruth has taught him to read aloud with all the voices, and he does a very convincing dragon that makes William screech with delight.”
Edward looked at Valeria. She looked at him. They shared the quiet knowledge that some stories ended with punishment and some with redemption, and the best ones ended with both.
George, confined but cared for, was paying for his choices in a gilded cage that was nothing compared to the cage he had tried to build for others. Peter, who had thrown a note in a ballroom and taken a punch for his trouble, was now reading stories to children and learning, slowly, that there were ways to serve that did not require violence.
“Stay still!” Caroline snapped.
James’s tower fell. Beetle barked. Eleanor put the flower crown back on Edward’s head, crooked and triumphant, and looked at him with green eyes so like his own that Valeria’s breath caught every time.
Caroline sighed and put down her brush. “You are all impossible. I am going to take the twins out to play with their cousins. Perhaps when I return, you will have learned the meaning of the wordstill.”
She scooped Eleanor up with one arm and held her hand out to James, who abandoned his tower without a backward glance. Beetle followed, tail wagging, paint on his ear.
The room fell quiet in the sudden, ringing way that rooms fell quiet when small children left them. The silence was enormous. It was the opposite of the silence Valeria had lived in for three years.
That silence had been empty. This one was full. Full of the echo of laughter and the memory of small hands and the knowledge that the noise would return, always return, because this house was alive with the sounds of a loving family.
Valeria and Edward sat in silence. His arm was wrapped around her. Her head rested on his shoulder. The flower crown was still on his head. He did not remove it.
