Page 118 of Duke of Sapphire

“Yes,” Nathan said, after a beat. “It was.”

Ian considered this. “Mine would’ve been shorter,” he said. “I would’ve just said ‘good, ye’re back’.”

Nathan laughed, loud and warm. The table followed. Charlotte laughed too. The sound came out easier than she expected, and she was grateful for it. She let it carry her through the rest of the pudding, the leave-taking, and the moment when Nathan shook Henry’s hand in the hall and said something quiet that made Henry look at the floor.

She did not hear what it was.

She was already in the corridor, walking toward the stairs, turning the toast over one more time.

Even when you didn’t know you were lost.

* * *

The house was quiet.

Charlotte lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling, She thought about the toast, which was still sitting somewhere in her chest like a small stone she could not cough up or swallow.

Even when you didn’t know you were lost.

She had been turning it over for two hours. She was no closer to understanding it than she had been at the table. She understood Henry’s accounts. She understood his silences. She had learned, slowly and at some cost to her dignity, to read the things he did not say. But this had been a thing he did say, plainly, in front of everyone, and she still did not know what he meant by it.

She pushed back the covers and got up.

She did not go toward the library. She did not go downstairs. She went up.

The nursery corridor was dark, only a thin wash of moonlight coming through the window at the far end. She moved quietly, her hand trailing the wall. She was not sure she had decided to come here. She had simply found herself walking in this direction, the way she always did when she could not sleep, drawn by the room at the end of the hall like a habit she had not noticed herself forming.

She turned the corner.

Henry was there.

He was standing outside Ian’s door. Still dressed. His coat was on, but barely—jacket open, no cravat, his hands loose at his sides. He was looking at nothing in particular. He turned when he heard her step.

They looked at each other.

Neither spoke.

The moonlight was thin and grey, and in it, the sharp, composed lines of his face had gone softer. He looked tired. He looked like a man who had also been lying in the dark not sleeping, which she found, in a quiet and entirely unhelpful way, rather a comfort.

She came to stand beside him. Not close. Just near. Two people in a hallway, both of them pretending they had not come here for the same reason.

“He talked in his sleep,” Henry said.

His voice was incredibly low. She leaned slightly toward it.

“About the stream,” he continued. “And the fish we never caught.”

Charlotte looked at the door. She could picture it perfectly: Ian tucked under his blanket, the wooden horse somewhere near his pillow, his face doing the small, complicated work of a sleeping child.

Henry’s breath came out softly. Not quite a laugh. But almost. “He was arguing with someone about it,” he said. “Quite firmly. Apparently, the fish were enormous and were simply choosing not to cooperate.”

Charlotte pressed her lips together. “That sounds right.”

A small silence.

“He’ll forget,” Henry said. “When he returns to Scotland. He’ll forget the stream. The fish. The birthday hunt.” He paused. “Children forget.”

“Will he?”