“Do you want me to go or stay?” Thad asked in an undertone.
Arnaud’s sigh spoke of exhaustion. “You had better stay. It being his first night back at home, we both know how this is likely to go.”
All too well.
“But, Papa!” From his spot across the lawn, Jack stomped a foot and scrunched up his face. “It is still daytime.”
“It is still light out,” Arnaud said, the epitome of patience. Thus far. “But the clock says it is bedtime. You know it stays light later in the summer, but we still must go to bed.”
Jack’s lower lip made its appearance, and he folded his arms across his chest. “No. I want to go back to Uncle Thad’s.”
“No, you don’t.” Thad put on a grin. “I would have put you to bed half an hour ago.”
With a huff, the boy stomped toward the door.
Arnaud made a show of loosening his shoulders, as if in preparation for a brawl. “If I require reinforcements, I will shout.”
“Alain.” When his friend paused a step away, Thad sighed and passed a hand over his hair. “Have I made it worse by being always here these last two years?”
For a long moment, Arnaud simply held his gaze, his own a surprisingly calm sea of sienna. Then he gave him a small smile. “It matters not whether it has made it better or worse, Thad. You are my brother in all the ways that matter. You were the steady presence in his life when I could not be here. You are our family. And so you will be here, always. I would never wish it otherwise.”
Thad nodded and let him stride after his son. But his gaze remained for a long time where Arnaud had stood. And he wondered. Wondered if it would have been better for this little family had he gone to sea once Arnaud came home, gone away and stayed away until Jack forgot that Thad’s house had once been home. That for those six bleak months, Thad had been the only parent he had.
No, Gwyneth was not the only broken one. Perhaps her memory had not yet fought its way back from the fracture that sudden trauma and months of sleep deprivation had caused. But it had only been a few months.
Thad had had four years to deal with his best friend’s presumed death and all its consequences, and sometimes he still looked at his life and saw only the fragments that had been left by that news. Shards that would never quite fit perfectly together again, even now that Arnaud was home.
And he would just have to wait and see what kind of mosaic the Lord would make from the pieces.
Twenty
How about now?”
Gwyneth took a step back and tilted her head, surveying the placement of the frame on both its horizontal and vertical planes. And not—most assuredly not—the long, well-muscled arm that held it there. “A pinch to the right and it will be perfect.”
“A pinch?” Thad sent her a patronizing grin over his shoulder. “Since when is ‘pinch’ a unit of measure anywhere but in the kitchen? I am my father’s son, Gwyn. I need precision. An inch more? Half of one?”
“I don’t know.” She raised her hand and pressed her fingers together. “This much.”
Thad rolled his eyes. “And you pinch your fingers, as if this is salt going into a bowl. Very well.” He made a show of raising his pressed fingers and moving the frame that amount.
A smile tickled her mouth, but she held her lips together against it. “No, no, not your pinch. Your fingers are too large. My pinch.”
The glower he aimed her way was so exaggerated she had to put a hand to her mouth to hold back the laughter. Without taking his eyes from her, he scooted the frame back to the left a wee bit. “Better, my Lady of Exactitude?”
“Much.” She batted her lashes and heaped sugar into her smile. “That will do quite nicely, my Lord of Facetiousness.”
“That would be Mr. Facetiousness, thank you. No pesky titles in my fair land.” He had turned back to the wall again, but she heard his smile. With a few quick motions, he picked up the pencil from the mantel and made several faint marks on the wall.
Gwyneth nestled a little deeper into the eastern-style couch directly across from the dormant fireplace. The ottoman, she had learned, was directly from the empire after which it derived its name, brought back on the same nearly catastrophic voyage as the rugs Thad so adored. “Are you certain you do not need my assistance?”
“You ask as you stretch out like a cat ready to nap in the sun.”
“One can hardly help but do so on such a comfortable chaise.” She stretched a bit more for show. “Still, I would get up if it meant seeing my masterpiece properly hung.”
“No need for such a sacrifice, my lady. I daresay I can manage to get it square.” Laughter colored his voice, and he sent her a warm look over his shoulder. One that made her infinitely aware of the fact that her stretch had brought her skirts up an inch too far and put her figure on rather prominent display.