Page 32

He’d already spent hours in solitude, brushing down Achilles and Beowulf, swallowing the urge to talk to them as if they might understand.

Restlessness gnawed at him, urging his feet down a path he had barred to others. Silence begot silence, he supposed. The quiet drew him in like penance.

The west wing had been closed for years, untended but not in ruin. Tidy, perhaps. But lifeless . His father had died, and then his mother. After that, there had been no need to keep it open. It was a mausoleum of memory.

Then, he heard it. A voice.

Small. Panicked. Sharp with rising fear.

He flinched and shook his head hard.

A hallucination?

No. It came again.

He rounded the corner quickly, and found a young housemaid wringing her hands beside a girl in a pale lilac frock. Trouble in shades of purple.

“Your Grace!” the maid gasped. “I’m sorry. I told her she shouldn’t be here, but she wouldn’t listen. She said she wanted to explore. I—well, I know I shouldn’t be here either.”

Dominic’s gaze snapped to the girl. “What the devil is she doing here?” His voice was low, dangerous, and he clenched his jaw before it could rise to a bellow. “What are you doing here, Lady Victoria? Where is your sister?”

No need to specify which sister. He meant Marianne. Everyone would know.

“Just looking around, Your Grace,” Victoria replied evenly, entirely unbothered.

“You were trespassing. This wing is closed for a reason.”

She folded her arms and met his glare without flinching. “So there is a reason. What is it, then?”

“There are holes in the floor,” he lied, “where nosy, little girls might fall and crack their skulls.”

Victoria bent slightly and pressed her foot to the hardwood. It didn’t so much as creak. She looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. “Looks fine to me.”

Dominic narrowed his eyes at her. He wanted to shout, to make this impertinent child feel the full force of his temper, but she was too young, and she wasn’t frightened. Not in the slightest.

And that, strangely, amused him.

She was fearless.

Very much like Marianne.

And he wondered, not for the first time, what shadows might follow the Grisham sisters.

What had carved their calm from chaos?

Suddenly, Victoria turned away from him and pointed at the wall. “Is that you?” she asked. Then added belatedly, “Your Grace?”

He followed her finger—and froze.

The portrait.

He’d forgotten it. Deliberately, perhaps. It was his ten-year-old self, looking stiff in a navy waistcoat, standing between his parents. His mother’s hand rested on his shoulder. He remembered how light it felt, how ghostly. She had haunted his life more than she had shaped it.

His father’s hand was on his back—not in comfort, but pressure. A push toward becoming the man he demanded his son be.

Dominic’s fists clenched at his sides. Some things were better buried.

“You look angry,” Victoria observed.

He almost told her that it wasn’t her fault, that she was only the spark and not the fire. But before he could speak, footsteps pounded behind them.

“Victoria!”

Marianne. She sounded breathless. Terrified.

She reached them moments later, her eyes wide, her lips pale. The governess and Wilhelmina followed close behind, their faces just as stricken.

“Thank God,” Marianne breathed, her voice thick with unshed tears.

Dominic turned to the governess, his tone sharp. “Miss Aldridge, care to explain how you lost your charge and allowed her to wander into a restricted part of the house?”

“I am s-so sorry, Y-Your Grace,” Clara stammered. “We were playing hide and seek. It was the young lady’s idea.”

The dear girl, no doubt .

Dominic snorted inwardly.

“She’s not hurt,” Marianne interjected gently. “That’s what matters.” She knelt to take Victoria’s hand. “Come along, darling. Daphne is waiting in the drawing room—completely unaware of the panic you caused.”

“She was only curious, Your Grace,” Wilhelmina added, her eyes flashing with protectiveness.

“Curiosity is a dangerous fault. One that often comes with a price no one can pay twice,” Dominic muttered.

Marianne flinched. He regretted it instantly.

His eyes drifted back to the portrait—his own ghostly eyes looking back at him across the years.

“We won’t come this way again,” Marianne promised.

He wished she hadn’t said that.

Their eyes met, hers holding a strange blend of fury and sorrow.

Had he done that to her? Or had she come into this house just as broken as he was?

She nodded once, then turned around and led the others away.

Dominic remained in the corridor. Alone.

And still, the boy in the portrait stared back—less paint than memory, less memory than scar.

When total darkness settled over Oakmere Hall, Marianne had already tucked her sisters into bed. She lingered by each bedside, pressing gentle kisses to their foreheads.

“You don’t have to do that for me anymore, Marianne,” Wilhelmina protested with a soft chuckle.

“You’ll always be my little sister, Mina,” Marianne said quietly, drinking in Wilhelmina’s familiar features in the dim light. They shared the same coloring and build, but while Marianne’s eyes were hazel, Wilhelmina’s were a clear, bright blue.

“I know,” Wilhelmina replied softly, a shadow of sadness flickering in her gaze.

Both sisters understood how tightly they clung to one another—tighter than most siblings would—because of the weight their father forced upon them.

“Good night. I’m going to my room now,” Marianne said, rising from Wilhelmina’s bed.

Wilhelmina raised an eyebrow, a mischievous smile teasing her lips.

“Yes, I’ll be resting now,” Marianne answered firmly.

Almost immediately, she knew the lie she’d told. Instead of heading to her room, she slipped quietly down the hall to the drawing room.

She didn’t mind the dimness; it suited her need for solitude and reflection better than any lamp or book.

Pouring herself a glass of brandy, she stood by the hearth, letting the warmth seep into her chilled fingers.

Her mind churned relentlessly. The west wing haunted her thoughts—the portrait, the boy in the navy waistcoat. He looked so small, so young, so achingly sad.

And the way Dominic had stared at it…

She had thought herself the only broken one in this marriage. But were his fractures deeper than hers?

A grand house. A title. The fact that he was a man in a world that favored his sex seemed to mean little to someone who bore the scars of a lonely childhood.

Was he loved?

At least she had the ghost of her mother’s love, and the faint memory of her father before he changed. Her younger siblings could say no such thing.

What if Dominic was like them?

Was he in his room now—or worse, wandering alone in the cold silence of the west wing?