From this angle, Cyril couldn’t see the newcomer entering from the office. But he could imagine. Reality matched up shortly.

Daoud was already in pyjamas, a quilted dressing gown belted at his waist. Aristide looked … not exactly pleased to see him, but didn’t throw him out. They had a short, terse conversation. At the end of it, Aristide shrugged and dropped his hands from his shirtfront so that Daoud could take over. Stud by stud, Aristide came unwrapped. Daoud had to stand on tiptoe to kiss him, and when he pulled away he made a face.

The flask. Daoud, who had glared at the butler for refilling Ari’s glass again and again, would taste it on him.

Aristide, looking angry now, was the one who did the kissing next.

In their frigid blind, Cyril felt a strange frisson through the air. Stephen’s interest in the scene across the courtyard had shifted to something less than analytical, but from his posture, he had half his attention on Cyril now: wariness, tension, embarrassment.

Of course. At that age, how would he have felt to be observed and aroused? To watch what was happening through that window with a parent or his sister at his back, watching it happen, too?

He hardly wanted to watch it now, but couldn’t make himself look away.

“You should leave,” he said to Stephen. Why had he even taken them on this little mission, when he knew how it would end?

“What? Why?” A note of relief belied Stephen’s protest.

There were several answers to this question, all condescending or disingenuous. Because I said so. Because we ought to give them privacy. The kind of answers either of his parents might give. But Cyril said, “You’re not stupid or ignorant. You’ve seen enough to know what happens next.”

Stephen slipped off the window seat. His knees were covered in dust. He brushed at them ineffectually before looking up at Cyril. “You’re not leaving, though.”

He didn’t have a good response to that, and so said nothing. Stephen, from the shrewd look in his damson eyes, read more in that than Cyril would have liked.

He did not enjoy what he saw. It wasn’t voyeurism; it was only more information. It didn’t seem, from his vantage point, that the two of them enjoyed it much, either. And that was information, also.

CHAPTER

THIRTEEN

The days before Solstice dragged for everyone else in the house. Or at least, Lillian got that impression when she could haul herself out of her office and away from the telephone. The work of the government—even a temporary one—did not stop for a little thing like the rebirth of the sun.

Anyway, holing up with work gave her an excuse to avoid the various interpersonal tensions ratcheting tighter and tighter in the halls of Damesfort.

On the day preceding the longest night, however, she could no longer use work as an avoidance tactic: everyone else had gone home, rung off, closed up. If tasks were unfinished, they would have to wait until the new year began tomorrow.