Chapter Eighteen
“When is the boy’s birthday?”
The question left Dominic’s mouth with all the casual authority of a duke inquiring after estate rents, and landed upon Mrs Potter’s kitchen table with the grace of a brick through a window.
The housekeeper looked up from her inventory of December provisions and regarded him with an expression he had come to recognise with unease: the careful, measured blankness of a woman selecting her words with precision.
“Master Thomas’s birthday, Your Grace?”
“Yes. I find I am… uncertain of the date.”
Uncertain. A magnificently inadequate word. He was not uncertain. He was ignorant—wholly, catastrophically ignorant of the most basic fact about the child who had lived beneath his roof these seven months. The child whose father had died in his arms. The child whose care he had sworn to assume.
He did not know when William’s son had been born.
He did not know whether the boy preferred chocolate or lemon.
He did not know—and this particular omission had struck him like a musket ball at three o’clock that morning, dragging him from a rare, untroubled sleep—whether Thomas had ever enjoyed a proper birthday at all.
Mrs Potter closed her ledger.
“The seventeenth of December, Your Grace.”
Eleven days.
Dominic felt something sink sharply within him. He had been so occupied—by the estate, by Thomas’s lessons, by the war that still lived within him, and most recently by the wholly distracting presence of Lorraine Weston—that the date had approached unseen.
Fitting. He had always been poor at recognising an ambush.
“Has anyone made arrangements?” he asked, though Mrs Potter’s expression already supplied the answer.
“Miss Weston mentioned it to me last week, Your Grace. She has been making quiet preparations.”
Of course she had.
Lorraine—who had been at Rovewood scarcely two months—had remembered what Dominic, who bore the charge of the boy’s care, had not even thought to ask.
The shame was sharp, clean, and deserved.
“What sort of preparations?”
“A modest celebration. A special meal. Decorations for the nursery. A cake, if Cook can contrive it.” Mrs Potter paused. “She did not wish to presume upon Your Grace’s involvement, but I believe she hoped—”
“She hoped I would not spoil it by resembling a block of ice.”
The faintest movement touched Mrs Potter’s mouth. “Those were not her precise words, Your Grace.”
“No. Hers would have been more gracious—and rather more pointed.” He exhaled. “I wish to be involved. Tell me what is required.”
“A gift, Your Grace. Something with meaning. Something that tells him he is seen.”
Something with meaning.
Dominic thought of the wooden horse—Captain—carried everywhere now, clutched like a small, steadfast promise. That had been a beginning.
This required more.
Something that said not merely I see you, but you belong here.
“Thank you, Mrs Potter,” he said, and left before she could observe the tightening of his throat.
***
He found Lorraine in the library after luncheon, curled in her chair—his chair, by rights, though long since claimed by quiet occupation—studying a sheet of paper covered in her neat, ink-stained hand.
She looked up as he entered, and the smile that crossed her face—swift, private, warming her eyes from within—struck him squarely in the chest.
“Your Grace.” Her tone was perfectly correct. Her eyes were not.
They moved over him with a familiarity that had nothing to do with rank.
“Miss Weston.” He closed the door—careful, measured—and crossed toward the fire. Distance was prudent. Distance was necessary. Any nearer and he might forget entirely that it was the middle of the day.
“I understand you have been planning something for Thomas’s birthday.”
“I have.” She set aside her list. “I intended to speak with you this evening.”
This evening.
The words carried a weight wholly disproportionate to their surface meaning.
He steadied himself. “I should like to assist. Mrs Potter informs me a gift is required.” A pause. “I did not know his birthday, Lorraine. Seven months—and I did not know.”
She rose and crossed to him, stopping just within reach—close enough that he caught the faint, familiar scent of her.
“You know now,” she said softly. “That is what matters.”
“It is not enough.”
“It never feels like enough. But it gathers, Dominic. Every moment you show up, every small thing you learn.” She lifted her gaze to his, and what he saw there steadied him more than anything else could have done. “What were you considering?”
He told her.
Lorraine’s eyes widened. Then softened, brightening with emotion she quickly mastered.
“That is perfect.”
“You think he will understand?”
“He will understand everything.” She half-raised her hand, then checked the movement, letting it fall instead. The restraint struck him harder than any touch. “He will treasure it.”
He held her gaze a moment too long.
“Tonight,” he said quietly. “Tell me everything tonight.”
“The party arrangements?” she asked, with the faintest suggestion of mischief.
“All of them,” he replied, his voice lowering despite himself. “Every detail.”
Her breath caught—barely, but he heard it.
For one dangerous instant, the space between them threatened to collapse entirely.
Then footsteps sounded in the corridor—Graves, precise as ever in his timing—and they stepped apart at once, composure restored as though it had never wavered.
“I shall have the full report ready, Your Grace.” Her voice was admirably steady, though the pulse at her throat betrayed her. “This evening.”
He inclined his head—a bow of almost exaggerated formality, given the circumstances—and withdrew with measured steps and clenched hands.
***
The seventeenth of December dawned cold and bright.
Dominic had been awake since five—not from unrest, but from anticipation.
The unfamiliar sensation sat uneasily beneath his ribs, impossible to ignore.
It had been years since he had felt anything like it—this clear, forward-looking eagerness, unshadowed by dread or memory.
It took him several moments, lying in the dim grey of early morning with Lorraine’s scent still lingering on his pillow, to recognise it.
He was eager. For a child’s birthday.
The realisation was followed by grief so sharp it stole his breath.
William should be here. William should be planning his son’s seventh birthday in whatever modest, happy home he and Anne might have made together.
William is dead. And so is his wife. And their son is turning seven in a house that was never meant to be his, under the care of a man who was never meant to stand in his place.
But I am here. And the only service I can render the dead is to live for the living.
He dressed with more care than usual—the dark blue coat Lorraine had once, in a quiet midnight confidence, admitted she admired—and went to the nursery before Thomas had stirred.
The room had been transformed.
Lorraine’s “quiet plans” had been executed with a thoroughness that might have impressed a general. Paper garlands looped from beam to beam in chains of blue and gold. A banner had been fashioned and hung with care, its letters painstakingly painted to read Happy Birthday, Thomas.
Upon the table stood a cake—small, valiant, iced in white and crowned with seven slightly uneven candles—the triumph of Cook’s ingenuity under constrained circumstances.
The gifts were arranged beside it.
Watercolours from Lorraine—proper ones. A knitted scarf from Jenny, endearingly uneven. A book of bird illustrations procured by Mrs Potter. A finely crafted wooden box from Graves, intended for Master Thomas’s treasures.
And in Dominic’s pocket, wrapped in cloth, lay the compass.
William’s compass; brass, tarnished with time.
William had carried it through every campaign. Dominic remembered him turning it in his hands by firelight, smiling faintly. My grandfather’s. Supposed to always point you home.
It had been in William’s pocket when he died.
Dominic had taken it then—without thought, without permission—and carried it back across an ocean, only to hide it away in darkness.
It was time to let it find its way to the person who needed it most.
Footsteps approached. Lorraine’s voice:
“—eyes closed, Thomas. No peeking.”
“But why?”
“Because I have said so, which is argument enough. Mind the step.”
They appeared in the doorway—Lorraine guiding him, Thomas with his eyes squeezed shut, every line of him vibrating with anticipation.
Dominic’s chest tightened.
They look like mother and son.
The thought came without resistance.
“Open your eyes, Thomas.”
He did.
He stared—at the garlands, the banner, the cake, the gathered faces—and then at Dominic.
“Is this… for me?” he whispered.
“Happy birthday, Thomas,” Dominic said, his voice roughened despite himself. “You are seven today. That seemed reason enough.”
Something in the boy’s face transformed—no cautious smile, no guarded brightness, but something radiant and unrestrained. He seemed to glow.
“No one’s ever—” He faltered. “Last year Grandpapa was—and then Grandmama—”
He could not finish.
Everyone understood. Grandparents too burdened by illness and grief to mark the day. A child too shaken to expect it.
“Well,” Lorraine said gently, kneeling beside him, “this year you have us. And we are not going anywhere.”
We.
She looked at Dominic as she said it—not a question, but a challenge.
“She is right,” he said. “We are not going anywhere.”
***
The gifts were opened with solemn ceremony.
Thomas delighted in each—marvelling, thanking, holding each item as though committing it to memory. Then Lorraine glanced toward Dominic.
“I believe His Grace has something as well.”
The room stilled.
Dominic drew out the wrapped bundle and held it for a moment—feeling its weight, its history.
Then he knelt and unwrapped it.
The compass gleamed faintly in the candlelight.
“This belonged to your father,” he said quietly. “He carried it through the war. His grandfather gave it to him. It was meant to always point him home.” He swallowed. “He would wish you to have it.”
Thomas touched it reverently, opening the lid, watching the needle settle.
“He really carried this?”
“Every day. He once told me that so long as he had it, he could always find his way back to you.” Dominic’s voice faltered.
“I should have given it to you sooner. There are many things I should have done sooner. But I am giving it to you now. And I want you to know—your father loved you. He spoke of you constantly. He made me promise to look after you.” He met the boy’s gaze.
“I have not done so as well as I ought. But I will do better.”
Thomas looked at him.
Then threw himself forward; small arms locked about Dominic’s neck.
The old instinct surged: withdraw, retreat, protect yourself—
Dominic gathered him close and held fast.
The boy was crying. Great, heaving sobs that shook his small frame. He clung to Dominic with the fierce strength of a child who had waited seven long months for this moment.
“I miss my papa,” Thomas sobbed.
“I know.” Dominic’s arms tightened; his hand came up, steady and sure, to cradle the back of the boy’s head. “I miss him too. Every day.”
“But you’re here. You’re not leaving.”
“I am here. I am not leaving. I promise.”
Thomas drew back, his face flushed and tear-streaked, the compass clutched tightly in his hand.
“Thank you,” he said, with a solemnity far beyond his years. “For keeping it safe. For keeping me safe.”
Dominic bent and pressed his lips to the crown of his head—a gesture so instinctive he scarcely registered it.
“Always,” he said, his voice roughened. “I will always keep you safe.”
Over Thomas’s fair head, his gaze found Lorraine.
She stood by the window, one hand pressed lightly to her mouth, tears slipping unchecked down her cheeks. She made no effort to hide them. She simply watched—watched the man she had drawn back from silence kneel upon the nursery floor and hold a child who bore his friend’s eyes.
Their gazes met.
And in that look, Dominic saw everything. Not merely the quiet, constant thread of desire that ran between them, but something deeper—something steadier.
This is a family, her eyes said. However fragile. However uncertain. It is real.
Do not let it slip away.
Thomas, his storm passing, glanced about at the room of damp-eyed adults and frowned.
“Why is everyone sad? It’s my birthday.”
The laughter that followed was the warmest sound Rovewood Hall had known in years.
The rest of the day passed in a golden haze.
There was too much cake. Thomas consulted his compass with near-ceremonial frequency. In the afternoon, they walked to the folly in search of kestrels—Thomas perched high upon Dominic’s shoulders, Lorraine beside them, her cheeks flushed with cold and something brighter.
The future waited.
But not today.
Today belonged to Thomas.
***
That evening, after the boy had been settled—compass upon the nightstand, Captain tucked beneath his arm—Dominic found Lorraine in the corridor beyond the nursery.
She leaned against the wall, her arms folded about herself.
“He asked me,” she said quietly, “before he fell asleep, whether we might do this every year.”
The words struck with quiet force. Every year. The easy assumption of permanence from a child who had only just begun to hope.
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him we would try.”
Dominic crossed the space between them and kissed her—tender and fierce in equal measure, gratitude and longing entwined. She yielded at once, her hands catching at his lapels, a soft sound escaping her that he caught and held.
“It was not wrong,” he murmured against her lips. “What you told him. It was the truest thing spoken in this house.”
“The Hardings. When they come—”
“I know. But not tonight.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Come. Stay with me.”
She rose onto her toes and pressed a kiss to the scar at his brow—intimate, assured, reaching past every defence he had ever raised.
Somewhere above, a child slept with a compass that always pointed home.
And Dominic, at last, was beginning to understand what that meant.