Both Jinadh and Stephen looked as startled as Lillian felt. Stephen recovered from Cyril’s interjection first, and started to get up.

“Stephen DePaul,” said Lillian, “sit down this instant.” Surprise made her strident.

“But he said—”

“Your mother,” said Jinadh, “told you to sit.”

“Thank you,” said Lillian, glad for unexpected aid from that quarter. Too often, Jinadh made her the disciplinarian. “Steenie, I thought you were excited for this dinner.”

Stephen’s glare intensified, and she realized she had revealed a secret he had been hoping would go unacknowledged. Cyril was not supposed to know his visit had been looked forward to.

“I thought,” said Cyril, “you were going to be lenient tonight.”

“What?” said Stephen. “What’s that supposed to mean? Can I go?”

Something in Cyril’s face had changed. Earlier, he had seemed … not quite vacant, or empty, but like a wine bottle in which all the sediment had settled to the bottom and would not be stirred. The substance of his personality had remained compact and hidden. Now he was, if not exactly smiling, at least looking upon his nephew with expression in his eyes. The candle flames made it wavering and uncertain, but there was something there. What that expression meant, she couldn’t say.

Hadn’t she said Stephen reminded her of Cyril, at that age? Maybe he saw something there to drag him back from whatever fort he’d barricaded his heart within. She had told Jinadh they would get along like a match and a wick, and at least this fitful smoldering was better than what had come before.

“All right,” she said. “But mind you clean your teeth well. And do the reading you’ve been set.”

He was out the dining room door before she finished her sentence, so that she brought her volume up at the end to chase him.

There was a small noise from Cyril—an exhalation, brief and amused—so that below her annoyance, she felt warmth rise in her chest.

“You see what I mean,” she said, to Cyril. “About how he can be?”

Cyril shrugged. “He’s young.”

“I wonder.” Forced banality strung Jinadh’s words taut: drawing room charm, sorely taxed.

“What, dear?” asked Lillian, sensing a pitfall.

“Only if Mr. DePaul, in all his many endeavors, has any experience in the rearing of children?”

The small living thing that had been stirring behind Cyril’s eyes withdrew so swiftly she might have imagined it was ever there. “I haven’t had that pleasure.”

Jinadh pressed his lips into a smiling imitation of indulgence. “Well then, perhaps you should leave it to us. Or at least ask for some advice, before presuming.”

Cyril aimed the same expression back at him, honed to an even sharper point. He offered no rejoinder; instead, without looking at Lillian, he dropped into deep sarcasm and said, “May I be excused?”