Chapter Four #3
It rolled in from the moors without warning, transforming the afternoon from gray to black in a matter of minutes. Lightning split the sky, thunder shook the windows, and rain lashed against the glass with such fury that Eliza half-expected it to shatter.
Henry, who had been happily constructing an elaborate fortress, went pale and rigid at the first crack of thunder.
"It's alright," Eliza said immediately, moving to sit beside him on the floor. "Just a storm. It can't hurt us in here."
But another roll of thunder, this one so loud it seemed to vibrate the floor, sent Henry scrambling into her lap, his small body trembling, his face pressed against her shoulder.
"Make it stop," he whispered. "Please make it stop."
"I can't stop storms, sweetheart. But I can hold you through them." She wrapped her arms around him, rocking gently. "I've got you. You're safe."
"I don't like them. They're too loud, and they feel angry."
"Storms aren't angry. They're just noisy. Like Sovereign when he wants attention—all bluster and drama."
There was a watery laugh against her collarbone. "Sovereign doesn't have lightning."
"Thank heavens. Can you imagine? A horse that could throw thunderbolts? The grooms would all resign immediately."
The image seemed to help. Henry's trembling eased slightly, though he remained firmly in her lap, his fingers clutching the fabric of her dress.
"Would you like a story?" Eliza asked. "About a boy who learned to be friends with the thunder?"
"Is it true?"
"All the best stories are true in the ways that matter."
So, she told him a tale she invented as she went, about a boy who was afraid of storms until he discovered that thunder was actually the sound of giants playing in the clouds, and lightning was just them seeking attention.
The boy in the story had climbed a mountain to meet the giants, and they had taught him to play their game too, and now whenever there was a storm, the boy knew it was just his friends playing games in the sky.
By the time she finished, Henry's trembling had stopped entirely. He lay warm and relaxed against her, his breathing steady, his fear forgotten.
"I wish storms were really giants playing," he said sleepily.
"Who says they're not? The world is full of things we can't explain. Perhaps the giants are real, and they're just very good at hiding."
"Like His Grace."
Eliza blinked. "What do you mean?"
"He hides, too. Not in clouds, but inside himself." Henry yawned hugely. "Sometimes I think there's a whole person inside him that we never get to see. Like a giant no one believes in."
Out of the mouths of children, Eliza thought. Out of the mouths of exhausted, storm-frightened children who saw far more than anyone gave them credit for.
"Perhaps," she said softly. "Perhaps there is."
"You should find him." Henry's voice was fading, sleep pulling him under. "The person inside. You're good at finding things because you found me."
"I did find you, didn't I?"
"Mmm." His eyes closed. "I'm glad you knocked on my walls."
Eliza held him while he slept, listening to the storm rage outside and thinking about walls and giants and the man who sat alone in this vast house, hiding from the world and from himself.
The thunder gradually faded, rolling away across the moors like the giants finishing their game and heading home. The rain softened from fury to gentle patter against the windows, and Henry slept on, his small body warm and trusting in her arms.
She had not intended to become so attached.
In all her previous positions, she had cared for her charges.
But she had always maintained a professional distance, knowing that governess positions were temporary, that children grew up and moved on, that attachment only made the inevitable parting more painful.
With Henry, that distance had evaporated almost immediately.
Perhaps it was because he needed her so desperately.
Perhaps it was because his loneliness echoed her own, the way his house of grief reminded her of the vicarage after her mother's death.
Perhaps it was simply that he was easy to love; this serious, thoughtful boy with his Greek hero names, his careful politeness and his desperate hunger for someone to see him as more than a title.
Or perhaps, a quiet voice whispered in her mind, it was because loving Henry made her feel closer to his brother.
She pushed that thought away because it was inappropriate and dangerous. The kind of foolish fancy that got governesses dismissed and hearts broken.
But it kept coming back, surfacing in quiet moments like this one: the thought that in caring for Henry, she was somehow caring for Alistair too. Healing the wounds the Duke could not heal himself. Building bridges he was too afraid to cross.
You should find him.
She thought about what it would mean to try.
She thought about walls, and doors, and knocking.
You're good at finding things.
Maybe she was.
Maybe it was time to start looking.
The storm had passed completely now, leaving behind the clean, rain-washed scent of the moors and a sky that was beginning to clear in the west. Eliza carried Henry to his bed, tucking him in with the tenderness of a mother he would never remember, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
"Sleep well, my darling," she murmured. "Dream of giants and heroes who aren't afraid of anything."
She stood at the window for a long time afterwards, watching the clouds part to reveal a scatter of stars.
She wondered if the Duke ever looked up at the same stars and felt as lonely as she did.
She wondered if he ever thought about her the way she was beginning to think about him; with a bewildered, growing awareness that something had shifted between them, some invisible barrier had cracked, and neither of them knew quite what to do about it.
She wondered.
And somewhere in the depths of the house, behind his desk, his ledgers and his walls of ice and iron, Alistair Ravenshaw wondered too.