She was asleep, one fist locked in the front of Annabelle’s dress, cheek pressed against her shoulder. Annabelle stood at the window with her back partly turned, her hand moving in slow circles at Charlotte’s back, the motion even and continuous and requiring nothing from her. Her chin rested on top of Charlotte’s head.
Dominic stood in the doorway, watching her. He saw the way Annabelle’s hand stilled for one breath before resuming again…almost reverently…wistfully, even. She was turned very slightly toward the window, the afternoon light a thin grey wash across her profile, and then she pressed her lips to Charlotte’s hair without making a sound. Dominic’s eyes widened at the gesture, and he immediately looked away.
“What are you doing?” he wanted to shout, but the words couldn’t find their way past his windpipe. If he made any noise now, he would only insert himself into a situation he most definitely didnotwant to confront. Not now…and not ever.
But he couldn’t look away from her and, when his gaze strayed back, he found that her hand resumed its circles on the child’s back. Charlotte’s eyes were fully closed.
Teeth clenching, he finally moved away from his spot and said, “We…should start heading back, Annabelle.”
When she looked up at him, he wished he could not understand the…longing in her eyes. He wished the vision of her holding the sleeping child did not make him imagine, for just a brief moment, what it would feel like to see her holding their?—
No. He turned away before he could finish the thought. And he made sure not to look back at her until he knew she had dropped the child. Instead, he turned his attention to his nephew.
James had Charlotte’s wooden horse in his hands at the door.
He had been holding it since the drawing room, when Charlotte had pressed it into his grip with the absolute certainty of a child distributing her holdings. He’d tried twice to return it, but she had declined both offers vehemently.
“She means for you to have it,” Annabelle said now, her voice coming from behind him as she passed.
Dominic did not know where to look, but luckily, she was not looking at him at all. She squatted down in front of James now and, though he could not see her face, Dominic could hear the gentleness in her voice when she said, “It would seem she has taken a great liking to you, James.”
And, even though James did not seem as though he understood her words, he seemed to accept the seriousness of the transaction past, wrapping both hands around it.
He was still holding it when Lucien bent to Charlotte, who was now back in Elinor’s arms and no longer asleep, and kissed her forehead and let her grab his ear with both hands. He straightened.
He looked at James. “You’re welcome whenever you like. Elinor means that.”
James considered this. “Thank you,” he said. He turned toward the pavement. Then stopped, and looked back. “Newton is a good cat. Even when he steals.”
“I’ll tell him,” Lucien said, and James, appearing satisfied, started down the steps.
Lucien and Dominic stood in the threshold. The street was darkening, the first lamps being lit across the way, the sounds of early evening carrying from the square.
Dominic watched his face, but only from the habit of it, and from the fact that Lucien had looked at him twice today without the shuttered quality he had brought to every exchange since the morning he had put his fist through Dominic’s cheekbone in his own study. He looked at Dominic now the way a man looks at someone he has not finished deciding about.
“Thursday is her day,” Lucien said. “I want you to know that’s not conditional.”
“I understand.”
“Good,” Lucien said and stepped back.
James fell asleep in the carriage before they cleared the square, head dropping sideways against the door, the wooden horse still held loosely in both hands.
Dominic sat across from him and watched the city go past through the window, the lamps, the coats, the late-afternoonmotion of a London street, and when their own house came into view, he found he was not looking at it.
He looked at it.
The carriage stopped. James’s eyes opened. He looked at his hands, registered the horse, and looked at the window.
“Are we home?” he said.
“Yes.”
James turned the horse over, examining the underside with some attention. “Charlotte will want it back.”
“She gave it to you.”
“She is one year old.” He looked up. “She doesn’t understand what giving is yet.”
