Page 61 of A Murder in Bloomsbury

For one fractional instant Dawson permitted himself the suggestion of a smile. Then he was Dawson again. “I judged a tactical withdrawal preferable to a public engagement, my lord. Mr. Felling has been compensated for his inconvenience.”

“Quite right. Has Will eaten?”

“He has been offered food. He declined.”

“Then I shall go up.”

I found him sitting on the floor of his bedchamber with his back against the wall beneath the window, his knees drawn up and his arms wrapped around them. He had not removed his coat. He looked up when I entered--quickly, with the readiness of a boy expecting attack—then deliberately fixed his gaze somewhere to my left.

I closed the door behind me, crossed the room, and lowered myself into the chair opposite him. The chair was, I noted, poorly positioned for conversation with a person seated on the floor.

“Will.”

“Aye.”

“Dawson informs me you and Mr. Felling failed to come to terms.”

“Mr. Felling can keep his measures. I’ll not be measured.”

“So I understand. May I ask why?”

He did not answer.

I waited.

Eventually, he said, “His hands.”

“Pardon?”

“He were going to put his hands on me. Tape and all that. I’ll not have it.”

It was not an answer I had anticipated, though in truth I should have done. The boy had spent ten years in a house where touch possessed meanings he understood all too well. London had not yet taught him the brisk impersonality polite society took for granted.

“That is fair,” I said.

He looked at me then. The deliberate avoidance of my gaze had broken at last. “It is fair?”

“It is. I should not care to be measured by a stranger myself. I failed to consider you might feel the same. I ought to have done. I apologize.”

He stared at me as though I had spoken in a foreign language. “You’re saying sorry.”

“Yes.”

“For Mr. Felling?”

“For failing to consider the matter from your point of view before sending you to him. The decision was mine. The discomfort was yours. I owe you the apology.”

He considered this in silence. His mouth shifted once, much as it had three days earlier when I informed him he was my brother’s son, and I was sorry he had not claimed him.

He was, I had begun to understand, a boy to whom adults rarely admitted fault plainly.

“What else,” I asked, “did not meet with your approval?”

“You’re talking like a book again.”

“Forgive me. What else did you not like?”

He shifted one shoulder against the wall. “The clothes.”