The words landed in his chest and stayed there. He looked at the painting rather than at her, because looking at her while she praised him was not something his composure could manage.
“Tell me about Cassiopeia,” he said.
She blinked. “Now?”
“Now.”
“Cassiopeia has five stars,” Elinor said, tilting the slate so the children in the front row could see. “They form a W, like this. Can everyone see?”
Toby squinted. “It looks more like an M.”
“It does, sometimes. It depends on the season. The whole shape rotates through the year, tipping one way and then the other.” She set the slate down and turned to face them. “Cassiopeia was a queen in Ethiopian mythology. She was so proud of her beauty that she boasted she was lovelier than the sea nymphs, and they were furious. As punishment, she was placed in the sky and forced to circle the pole for eternity.”
“That seems mean,” Billy said. “Just for being vain?”
“The ancient Greeks were not known for proportionate consequences.” Elinor smiled. “But here is the useful part. If you find Cassiopeia’s W, you can follow it to Polaris, the North Star.My father taught me that when I was Charlotte’s age. He said if I could find Cassiopeia, I could always find my way home.”
“Polaris,” Lucien repeated. “That is what I named my horse.”
Elinor’s face softened. “You named your horse after the North Star?”
“I did. He is steady, reliable, and always takes me where I need to go. It seemed fitting.”
She smiled, and it was not the careful smile she wore for the ton, nor the bright, practiced one she gave her stepfamily. It was the smile she wore at Lyra House, when the children said something that surprised her, when she forgot to be guarded.
Lucien felt the mask fall away. Not because he chose to remove it, but because she made it impossible to wear.
In her presence, the charming rake, the man who worked a room like a performance, went quiet, and what remained was someone he barely recognized: a man who named his horse after a star and took notes on constellations and sat on the floor with orphaned children because a woman with spectacles had made him want to be better than the person his uncle’s cruelty had shaped.
He did not know what to do with that.
“The renovations are complete.”
Lucien stood in the main hallway of Lyra House and heard the words come out of his mouth as though someone else were saying them.
The building had been transformed. Fresh plaster on the walls, sturdy floorboards beneath his boots, new glass in every window. The bedrooms upstairs were warm and clean, each child with their own bed, their own blankets, their own small shelf for whatever belongings they chose to keep.
It was everything he had promised. It should have felt like a triumph.
“That is wonderful,” Elinor said beside him. She ran her hand along the new wainscoting, and he watched her fingers trace the wood the way she traced the constellations on her slates. “The children will be so comfortable here.”
“They will.” He paused. “I have begun interviewing governesses and tutors. Proper staff. Women with credentials and references, who can provide the formal education these children deserve.”
The silence that followed was not empty. It was full of everything neither of them could say.
“That is the right decision,” Elinor said. Her voice held, but he heard the fracture beneath it. “They need more than what I can give them in stolen hours.”
“Elinor.”
“It is true.” She squared her shoulders. “I am not a proper tutor. I am a marquess’s daughter who sneaks out at night. They deserve someone who can be here in the daylight, openly, without risk.”
He wanted to tell her she was wrong. That what she gave these children, the love, the wonder, the way she made stars feel like friends, could not be replicated by any governess with a certificate. But the words tangled in his throat, because the truth was more complicated than that. She was right. The children needed stability, and stability could not be built on secrecy.
“The Season ends in three weeks,” he said instead.
The words sat between them. Three weeks until their arrangement expired. Three weeks until the engagement would be publicly dissolved, and Elinor would return to being Lady Elinor Caverleigh, the wallflower, the marquess’s eccentric daughter. Three weeks until he would have no reason to see her, to sit in this schoolroom, to watch her face light up when a child grasped something new.
Three weeks until he lost the only person who had ever made him want to be found.