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“Uncle Graham?” Mary Ann peered anxiously over her coverlet, voice small. “Are you happy now that you’re married?”

He drew a measured breath, feeling raw and terribly conspicuous. Happy. A word that belonged to songs and stories. Still, there was earnest hope in his niece’s gaze and Abigail’s soft attention felt like a question pulsing in the hush.

“Yes,” he managed after a faltering pause, the truth unexpected on his lips—unexpected, yet not untrue.

“Good,” Mary Ann said as she curled into a ball apparently satisfied.

The noise of the day still buzzed in his ears—the clinking of glasses, the scrape of chairs, the constant hum of conversation he couldn’t escape. Each moment had required a response, a smile, a nod. Like a slow bleed, draining him drip by drip.

But this moment was important.He pried himself out of the door frame and moved to the foot of their beds, straightening the edge of Heather’s coverlet so it was even on both sides. Her incessant movement pulled it immediately back out of place. He resisted the urge to fix again.

Abigail looked up, catching his action. She smiled in encouragement.

She shouldn’t have to shepherd me through something so simple.

“You looked frightened during the kissing part,” Heather said, twirling the ribbons of her flower crown around her fingers.

“I did not look frightened,” Graham replied, his words coming out too sharply. The accusation stung absurdly, and he had the ludicrous urge to defend himself to a seven-year-old as if she were a member of Parliament.

“Yes, you did,” Heather insisted, unperturbed. “Let’s have another wedding tomorrow and you can try again,” she offered magnanimously.

“One wedding is entirely sufficient,” he replied, tension snapping in his tone.

Abigail looked up sharply. He caught himself, colored faintly, and retreated a step, adjusting a wayward lamp wick as though it mattered.

The side door clicked open and Ms. Norwood swept in from her adjoining chamber. “Time for sleep,” she declared.

“But we’re not tired,” Mary Ann mumbled, words slurring together.

“Of course not,” Ms. Norwood agreed solemnly, taking the flower crown from Heather and setting it on the bedside table. “That’s why you were practically falling asleep in your soup earlier.”

“It was pudding,” Mary Ann corrected, sleepily slurring her words.

“Even worse. Waste of perfectly good syllabub,” Graham said and they all stopped to look at him.

The girls giggled.“Uncle Graham, you didn’t even try yours,” Heather said.

“Miss Norwood is right,” Abigail interjected, coming to his aid. “Rest now.”

Mary Ann caught Abigail’s hand before she could move away. “You’ll come for breakfast? Even now you live here?”

The question, weighted with the fear Graham recognized too well—that people left, that happiness was temporary, that safety could vanish without warning—hung there.

“Every morning,” Abigail promised. “Being married simply means I live here now. Nothing else changes.”

Everything changes.He kept the words locked behind his teeth with an effort.

Ms. Norwood extinguished all but one lamp, leaving the room bathed in gentle darkness. “Sleep well, ladies. And no midnight expeditions to find Uncle Graham if you imagine strange noises. Married people sometimes discuss important matters late into the evening and should not be disturbed.”

Heat crawled up Graham’s neck. The woman possessed an alarming talent for innuendo disguised as propriety.

“We won’t bother you,” Mary Ann promised solemnly. “Even if there’s thunder.”

“Even if Mary Ann has a nightmare,” Heather added.

Graham tugged at his cravat and nodded. He crossed to the beds, movements stiff, and patted each of the girls awkwardly on their heads. “Good night, girls.” His voice came out rougher than he intended, strained by the day’s accumulated tension.

“Rest well,” Abigail murmured as they slipped into the hall.