“I am honored beyond measure.”
“Do not be. The bar was not high.”
He did not touch Lily. He did not lean close. He did not lower his voice or let his gaze linger or do any of the things that had made the previous weeks an exquisite, unbearable torment. He was polite, charming, attentive to her family, and scrupulously, devastatingly correct.
It was worse than distance. Distance she could have endured. This careful, mannered proximity felt like standing beside a fire that had been doused and trying to warm your hands on the smoke.
“More wine, Lady Lily?” Hugo lifted the bottle.
“Please.”
He poured. Their fingers did not touch the glass. She was certain he had engineered this.
“The meal is excellent,” he said to the table at large.
“You mentioned that,” Sophia observed from the other end.
“Did I? It bears repeating.”
Sophia’s gaze moved from Hugo to Lily and back again. Her expression did not change, but her eyes sharpened.
Lily concentrated on her potatoes.
After dinner, the party moved to the drawing room. Edward settled on the floor with Oliver and Leo for a final round of dragon combat before bedtime.
Hugo stood near the mantel with a glass of brandy and watched the boys with an expression Lily could not quite read.
Not longing. Not sadness. Something closer to recognition, as though he were watching a version of childhood he had not experienced and was cataloging every detail.
Oliver charged toward Hugo with the wooden sword and slashed at his knees.
“Defend yourself, Uncle Hugo!”
Hugo set down his brandy and caught Oliver mid-lunge, lifting him off the ground and flipping him upside down in a single, fluid movement. Oliver shrieked with laughter, his face red, his legs kicking in the air.
“The dragon has captured the knight!” Hugo announced. “What shall we do with him?”
“Put me down!”
“Surrender first.”
“Never!”
“Then the dragon keeps you.” Hugo tucked Oliver under one arm like a sack of flour and retrieved his brandy with the other hand. He took a calm sip while Oliver squirmed and howled with delight.
Leo toddled over and wrapped his arms around Hugo’s leg.
“My turn,” Leo said.
“You want to be captured too?”
Leo nodded with the solemn enthusiasm of a child who wanted whatever his brother had, regardless of whether it involved being held upside down.
Hugo set Oliver on the sofa, crouched down, and scooped Leo onto his shoulders. Leo gripped Hugo’s hair with both fists and giggled, and Hugo walked around the drawing room with a toddler on his shoulders and biscuit crumbs still on his waistcoat and not a shred of self-consciousness about it.
Lily watched from the settee. Her throat tightened.
Sophia appeared beside her and handed her a cup of tea.
