Chapter Five
The scream woke Eliza from a dead sleep.
She was out of bed before she was fully conscious, her bare feet hitting the cold floor, her hand reaching for the wrapper she had draped over the chair and missing it entirely.
Henry was crying; she could hear him through the connecting door; those awful, gasping sobs that meant nightmare rather than injury, and nothing else mattered.
She burst into the nursery to find him sitting bolt upright in bed, his small face contorted with terror, his eyes wide and unseeing. The fire had burned down to embers, casting the room in shadows that probably weren't helping his state of mind.
"Henry." She crossed to him in three quick strides and gathered him into her arms. "Henry, sweetheart, I'm here. You're safe. It was just a dream."
He clung to her with desperate strength, his fingers digging into her shoulders, his face pressed against her neck. His whole body was shaking, and she could feel his heart hammering against her chest like a trapped bird.
"They were gone," he gasped between sobs. "Everyone was gone. I was looking and looking, but I couldn't find anyone. The house was empty and dark, and I called and called, but no one came…"
"Shh. I'm here. I came." She rocked him gently, one hand stroking his hair, the other pressed against his back. "I'll always come when you call, sweetheart. Always."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
She shifted them both until she was sitting on the bed with her back against the headboard, and Henry curled in her lap like a much younger child. His sobs were easing now, subsiding into hiccups and sniffles, but he showed no inclination to release his grip on her nightgown.
Eliza became belatedly aware of her state of undress.
She was wearing only her thin cotton nightgown—perfectly modest by any reasonable standard, but not the sort of thing a governess should be caught wearing in front of anyone but herself.
Her hair, which she had braided loosely for sleep, had come half undone while she was rushing to Henry's side.
Well. There was nothing to be done about it now. Henry needed her, and propriety could wait until morning.
"Shall I tell you a story?" she murmured into his hair. "Or sing you a song?"
"Sing." His voice was muffled against her shoulder. "The one about the stars."
It was the lullaby her mother had sung to her: simple words, a simple melody, but it seemed to soothe him in a way that nothing else could.
She began to sing, her voice soft and slightly off-key in the quiet room:
"Hush now, my darling, the stars are all sleeping. The moon is standing guard while the night watch is keeping. Dream of the morning, of sunlight and flowers. Safe in my arms through the dark, quiet hours..."
Henry's trembling gradually stilled. His grip on her nightgown loosened. His breathing deepened, evening out into the rhythm of approaching sleep.
Eliza continued singing, more softly now, her lips brushing his hair as she rocked him. The fire crackled, the wind murmured against the windows and the nursery, which had felt so frightening moments ago, settled back into peace.
"You're safe, my darling," she whispered between verses. "I've got you. Nothing can hurt you while I'm here."
She didn't hear the door open.
She didn't know anyone was watching until the floorboard creaked.
***
Alistair had been working late in his study when the scream echoed through the house.
He had told himself, as he had done every night for the past month, that he was simply catching up on correspondence.
The scream, though, shattered that careful fiction.
He was on his feet before he consciously registered the sound, moving through the darkened house with a speed that surprised him. Henry. That was Henry's voice, raised in terror. His brother needed him.
His brother needed him, and he had no idea what to do about it.
He took the stairs two at a time, his heart pounding. He had heard Henry's nightmares before, but he had never gone to the boy. He had never known what to say, what to do, how to comfort a child whose fears he couldn't understand because he had locked away his own so long ago.
He had always assumed someone else would handle it. A nursemaid, a governess, someone trained in the management of children's emotions.
But now he was moving toward the nursery without thinking, drawn by something deeper than duty, and he didn't know what he would find or what he would do when he got there.
He reached the nursery door and stopped.
It was half open. And through that crack, he could see…
Heavens.
Eliza was sitting on Henry's bed, her back against the headboard, the boy curled in her lap.
Her hair, that impossible, magnificent hair, was unbound, falling over her shoulders.
She wore a simple white nightgown, high-necked and long-sleeved, perfectly modest by any standard, and yet the sight of her in it made Alistair's mouth go dry.
She was beautiful.
Not the polished, careful beauty of the society ladies he had spent years avoiding, but something rawer than that. Softer. A beauty that came from within, from tenderness and warmth and the complete absence of artifice.
She was singing. Her voice was slightly off-key, wavering on the high notes, but it didn't matter. It was the most beautiful sound Alistair had ever heard.
"Dream of the morning, of sunlight and flowers. Safe in my arms through the dark, quiet hours..."
Henry's face was pressed against her shoulder, his small body relaxed in sleep or something close to it. Her hand stroked his hair with absent tenderness, and her lips brushed his forehead between verses.
"You're safe, my darling. I've got you."
My darling.
She said it so naturally. So easily. As if love were simple, uncomplicated, something that could be given freely without fear of loss or pain.
As if love were not the most dangerous force in the universe.
Alistair stood frozen in the doorway, unable to move, and unable to look away.
This is what he needed. This is what I should have given him.
The thought was agonizing. For years, he had told himself that discipline and distance were for Henry's own good.
But watching Eliza hold his brother, watching her love him with such open, fearless tenderness, made him see the lie for what it was.
He had not been protecting Henry. He had been protecting himself.
He had been so afraid of loving his brother that he had chosen to love not at all. And in doing so, he had left a child to grow up alone in a house full of people, starving for the affection that Alistair had been too frightened to give.
The floorboard creaked beneath his foot.
Eliza's head snapped up, and their eyes met across the room.
Her green eyes were wide, startled, and then, as recognition dawned, something else flickered through them. Something that looked almost like awareness; almost like the same dangerous electricity that was crackling through Alistair's veins.
"Your Grace." Her voice was barely a whisper. She couldn't move with Henry asleep in her arms, but he saw her fingers tighten on the boy's back.
He knew he should leave. He should apologize for the intrusion, retreat to his study, and never speak of this again. He should not be standing here, staring at his governess in her nightgown.
He could not make himself leave.
"Is he well?" His voice came out rougher than he intended, but he cleared his throat. "I heard the scream."
"A nightmare. He's sleeping now." She glanced down at Henry, her expression softening with that tenderness that made Alistair ache. "He dreams that everyone has left him. That he's alone in the house and no one comes when he calls."
The words hit him like a blow.
He dreams that everyone has left him.
Of course, he did, because everyone had left him. His parents were dead before he could know them. Four governesses, come and gone and a brother who lived in the same house but might as well have been a stranger.
Alistair thought of all the nights Henry must have woken screaming in this room, and no one had come. Possibly the staff had come to do their duty, but that was not family. Not the brother who should have been there. Not the only person left in the world who shared his blood.
"I..." Alistair's throat tightened. "I didn't know he had nightmares."
"Every child has nightmares, Your Grace. It's how they process their fears." Her voice was gentle, without accusation, but he heard the unspoken words anyway: You would know this if you ever came to him at night. If you ever held him. If you had ever tried.
"Does he... Does this happen often?"
"Less often now than when I arrived. The first week, nearly every night.
Now perhaps once or twice a week." She shifted slightly, adjusting Henry's weight in her arms. The movement caused her nightgown to pull against her shoulder, outlining the curve of her collarbone, and Alistair jerked his gaze away.
Stop looking at her. Stop wondering what it would feel like to…
"What do you do?" The question came out before he could stop it. "When he wakes. How do you... How do you make it better?"
Eliza looked at him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Henry stirred in her arms, murmuring something unintelligible, and she soothed him with a gentle hand on his back before answering.
"I hold him, and I tell him he's safe. I sing to him until he falls back to sleep.
" She paused, her green eyes meeting his gray ones with an intensity that made him feel exposed.
"It's not complicated, Your Grace. Children need very simple things.
To be held, to be told they're loved, and to know that someone will come when they call. "
Simple things. The simplest things in the world.
And Alistair had never given Henry any of them.