“Yes?”
“Where is his mother?”
“In the kitchens. She is one of the kitchen maids. Her name is Mrs. Halliwell. Her sister—” He stopped and tried again. “Her sister has been taken ill this week. The boy has been staying at Langton with her. She leaves him here in the evenings while she works. He has been told not to climb, I gather.”
“You knew he was here?”
“I did.”
“You let him be here.”
“Yes.”
“Cassian?”
“Yes, Alice.”
“That was very kind.”
“It was not kind. It was—Mrs. Halliwell has been at Langton for fifteen years. Her sister is dying, and she has had to bring her own boy to the house because there was no one to leave him with?—”
“Cassian.”
“Yes?”
“It was kind.”
He could not answer.
He could not answer because Alice was looking at him over the boy’s small fair head with her arm around the child, and the look on her face was the look she had worn in her father’s orangery on the morning he had told her, with the brutal courtesy of his decided mind, that he wanted no heirs.
Back then, she had not looked at him the way she was looking at him now. He did not know what to do with that look.
Suddenly, a small clatter sounded at the door to the library.
It was a woman of perhaps thirty-five, with a bright flushed face and fair hair, and she was wearing a kitchen maid’s apron. Someone had evidently run to the kitchens to tell her that her son had fallen.Mrs. Halliwell.
She stopped in the doorway when she saw her son in Alice’s arms. “My Lady, Your Grace?—”
“Mrs. Halliwell. He has fallen. His ankle is bruised but not broken.”
“My Lady, I am so sorry. He was not to?—”
“He was not to climb. I know. He has told me.”
“Yes, My Lady?—”
“Mrs. Halliwell, he is a brave boy. He has not cried since I picked him up. He has had a very long evening, and so have you, I think. Go and put him to bed. I am sure His Grace would not mind if you took the rest of the night to sit with him.”
“Yes,” Cassian said quietly. “Yes, of course.”
“Your Grace?—”
“Mrs. Halliwell, take your son to bed.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Alice gently put the boy into his mother’s arms. She kissed the top of his fair head one more time before she let him go. As soon as he was in his mother’s arms, he began crying again in the small, soft way children cry when they have been frightened and are now safe.