“He doesn’t care.” Louise looked pointedly at Dominic, her eyebrows forming tight little ves.
“You missed dinner,” he said. “Tonight you shall have bread and water in your room. Tomorrow there will be extra lessons to make up for what you missed today. If you run off and miss dinner again, you will be confined to your room for a week. Is that understood?”
Louise shot to her feet. “You can’t do this. I can do whatever I want.” The high, shaky quality of her voice betrayed the challenge in her eyes.
Henrietta longed to go to her then, to wrap her in her arms and assure her. But this was a matter for her uncle, and suddenly she knew that her presence could only exacerbate this battle of wills.
“My lord, perhaps I should go?” she offered quietly, hopefully, and to her great relief, he dipped his head in agreement.
She brushed out of the room, her shoulders tight and straight. A most terrible consternation crippled her from within. On her way to her room, Jacks stopped her to give her a letter.
Mail from her uncle.
She gripped the rail on the way to her room, for the first time in several weeks her lungs protesting the exertion. Perhaps Uncle William’s words would take her mind from her worries. From Louise and Dominic.
But the letter did not help.
Her uncle asked after her health. He shared news of a Mr. William Charles Wells, who had read his scientific paper on natural changes in humanity over the course of time.
He did not invite her to join him.
She prayed while readying for sleep, but her stomach drooped and even the hot tea she sent for, sprinkled with her own special blend of ginger, did not ease the knots within.
The feeling of disquiet continued. The small room she’d been given, rectangular and comfortable, was beside Louise’s. A nanny’s room, but suitable for a governess.
Practical and generous.
Why wasn’t she happier?
Her mind replayed the day. What could she have done differently? Said? In the future, she did not wish to inspire the raw feelings she felt now. She liked thinking. She did not care to indulge in emotions.
The cool sheets hugged her body. Her pillow, feather-soft, framed her face as she stared at moonlight sluicing through her curtains to illuminate her quilted figure. The quietness did nothing to ease the hollow, freezing ache that pulsated beneath her ribs.
For perhaps the first time since she was fifteen, since the night she watched her father disappear into that thick, black billowing cloud of smoke that had been their home, she felt utterly alone.
Chapter Eleven
“Dom. Dom.” Someone shook him, prying him from his dreams. He moaned, shrugging off the offensive hand and curling back into his blankets.
“Dom, wake up.”
The blankets that cocooned him were ripped off. He bolted up. Louise leaned over him, moonlight highlighting the fear in her wide eyes. She grabbed at his shirt, tugging him to the edge of the bed.
“What is it?” He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs, to make sense of his niece in his room. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Henrietta.” No tears on her face, but they clogged her voice, thickening the consonants. “She’s screaming in her sleep, and I can’t wake her up.”
Dominic scrambled out of bed, his mind hardly able to process her words. They made no sense. That was not like Henrietta.
Louise handed him his night robe. He tied it quickly and rushed out of the room, grabbing a sconce to light their path. Louise had come to his room in the dark, a sure sign of her panic.
When they neared his niece’s room, she beckoned him in. Henrietta’s door was only a few feet down, but rather than risking it locked and thus taking more time to reach her, he padded after his niece to their connecting door. No screams came from the room, just a soft sound, like that of a mewling kitten.
Louise put her finger to her mouth. The light from his lamp flickered across her strained features. They crept into Henrietta’s room.
It took a moment to orient himself. He’d never been in this room before. Had not realized how small and ugly it was. Why, he could practically touch each wall if he stretched out both arms. His gaze shifted to the small form huddled on the narrow bed that could hardly be called a bed. It looked more like a cot.
Louise was already near Henrietta. “She’s crying.” And her voice sounded so forlorn that his chest compressed into a tight little space. He moved forward, gently pressing Louise to the side.
He bent over Henrietta. There were indeed silent tears streaking her cheeks. A steady stream. The rest of her—the proud and small nose, the rosebud lips—was relaxed in sleep. Whatever nightmare she’d suffered had passed and it seemed silly to wake her now. Just as he drew back though, she moaned, and then her lids squeezed into pained exclamations and her mouth opened on a silent scream.
Wordlessly he handed the lantern to Louise. He slid his hands over Miss Gordon’s shoulders, turning her toward him.
“Henrietta,” he whispered fiercely. “Wake up. Wake up, Henrietta.”
Her head thrashed, and for the first time, he wondered if this is what others might feel if they saw him have a seizure. To witness someone else’s duress, to be helpless against it, was torturous.
He continued the gentle shaking. “Henrietta. It’s Dominic. Wake up.”
Her body stiffened, for one terrible moment growing horribly still, as though she’d stopped breathing. And then she melted against him, a long shuddering breath escaping as she slowly awakened. Her eyes fluttered. Opened to reveal an empty despair.
“You had a nightmare,” he said, his voice as scratchy as sandpaper. “Are you awake?”
She blinked. Nodded.
As though suddenly realizing the impropriety of their closeness, of her bare arms touching the thin cloth of his night robe, the heat of his body seeping into hers, she pulled away and drew the blankets to her chin.
“I was so
