Mrs. Fairfax blinked her eyes, then threw her head back and burst into laughter. It was the first time in a long while that she had laughed so heartily. These past few days, her joint pain had left her feeling so out of sorts that she hadn’t even been in the mood to smile.

“Mother, stop laughing! This is serious! A dreadful love triangle has formed between the two families.”

“Yes, dreadful. Absolutely dreadful. But Olivia, I beg you, please stop reading those melodramatic novels. Especially the French ones. All you ever read are books like Thérèse Raquin or Dangerous Liaisons, and now your brain keeps conjuring up immoral fantasies.”

“If you don’t want to believe me, fine. But I’m certain. Henry has fallen for Aunt Laura.”

“Just because he stared at Laura? Olivia, I sometimes stare at Laura too. She’s a very beautiful woman, isn’t she? Slender, clear-eyed, and soft. Does that mean I’ve fallen into forbidden love with her? If that were the case, wouldn’t I have poisoned Ian before he could make Laura his wife, adopted her as my daughter, and bathed with her every day?”

“Don’t disrupt my deductions with disgusting jokes!”

Olivia huffed in frustration.

“Get serious, Mother. Even if there’s only a one-in-ten chance, this is a big deal. And I think the odds are higher than that. Aunt Laura is beautiful and kind. Elegant and thoughtful. She has every charm a man could want. When a woman like that suddenly appears in the middle of someone’s life, do you think Henry could stay level-headed? Even if they’re technically nephew and aunt by marriage, they didn’t grow up together. Do you think his heart would truly see her as family?”

Olivia began tugging at the hair she had painstakingly styled that morning.

“Oh, if Henry loses control, the most horrific thing in the world will happen!”

“What, Ian shooting your brother?”

“No, Henry kidnapping Aunt Laura and running off to Paris!”

Mrs. Fairfax gasped in shock.

“Good heavens, I know you’re not particularly fond of Henry, but how could you imagine him as such a scoundrel?”

“Love can make even the most refined person reckless! Look at Uncle Ian. Before he married Aunt Laura, didn’t he throw a fit, saying he’d kill himself if she didn’t accept his proposal? He lived in a dusty attic just to catch a glimpse of her and ended up with tuberculosis. You said yourself that Henry’s temperament is exactly like Ian Dalton’s, just without the nerves.”

“Look here, Miss Holmes. That’s a compelling deduction, but you’ve missed something. Henry isn’t that kind of rogue. He may look like a twenty-four-year-old man, but his heart is that of an eleven-year-old girl who wants to live in a flower garden forever. When he was a child, he cried for a week straight because a stray cat ate his pet stag beetle right in front of him. Even now, he can’t go near your father’s taxidermy workshop. He’s squeamish and full of compassion. Truly just like Ian.”

Olivia, caught up in her excitement, began hearing only what she wanted to hear.

“Yes, Henry is exactly like Uncle Ian. I’ll say it again, when Uncle Ian was courting—”

“Yes, he was half-mad. No, let’s call it what it was—completely mad. Your uncle was out of his mind back then. But he never harmed a hair on Laura’s head. Henry would be the same, don’t you think? Kidnap Laura to Paris? Henry? Ha, it’s more likely you’d kidnap your aunt.”

“Why would I kidnap Aunt Laura?”

“You’ve always said it, haven’t you? That you want to live with her, share a room, a bed, have her all to yourself. If I were a man, I’d have proposed to her.”

“That’s…!”

“Child, I’m truly thankful to the heavens that you’re not a boy. If you were Oliver Fairfax, you’d have pushed your uncle off a cliff and carried Laura off to be your wife. Hmm… maybe your suspicions about Henry are just you projecting your own fixation onto him? By accusing him of what you would do if you were in his place, you’re trying to separate yourself from your own improper desires.”

“You’re calling me a Sherlock Holmes wannabe, but you’re the one imitating Freud!”

“Freud, you say?”

“Freud or Froyd, whatever!”

“You should get people’s names right. How offended that esteemed doctor would be if he heard you call him that.”

“Anyway, don’t dismiss my deductions. There’s something going on in Henry’s heart. If this blows up, it’ll be too late. If Henry steals Aunt Laura, I’ll never forgive him!”

Mrs. Fairfax threw her head back and cried out to the heavens.

“Oh, Lord, here is a girl entangled in forbidden love. Please purify her soul and guide her to spend her precious maiden years on something worthwhile instead of wasting them on foolish fantasies!”

Offended by her mother’s dismissive and mocking attitude, Olivia stormed out of the room.

Left alone, Mrs. Fairfax laughed for a while longer.

“Henry and Laura? Ridiculous. That boy’s heart belongs to someone else.”

As her laughter subsided, she spread a velvet cloth on the table. Thinking of Henry, she shuffled the cards and arranged them in an intricate pattern. Soon, the structure of Henry’s heart was laid bare before her.

Her eldest son was far from happy. A dark shadow clouded his mind, leaving him in a precarious and melancholic state. When she delved deeper into the reason, a woman emerged—a queen seated on a golden throne.

This regal lady in a splendid dress had entered Henry’s life about a year ago.

“Given the timing, it must have happened in Paris. He can’t forget a woman he met there. Why else would he be so wounded?”

Mrs. Fairfax was certain this queen had stolen Henry’s heart.

Henry had kept his past tightly guarded, sharing it only with Ian. The experience still bled, too shameful to reveal.

Since Mrs. Fairfax had no way of knowing what her son had endured in Paris, it was only natural for her to assume the queen in the cards was Henry’s lover.

“What kind of woman could she be? The cards suggest she passed some illness to him, but Henry swears he never caught anything physical. Could it be a sickness of the heart? Is he secretly taking opium because he can’t forget her?”

Mrs. Fairfax shook her head.

“If he can’t let her go, he should either bring her back from Paris or move there and settle down. His uncle risked death to win his love. I take back saying Henry’s like Ian. Hmph.”

She shuffled the cards again, intending to check the future for Dalton the Second, as she periodically did. She held no great expectations; the results were always vague. Fate, like a stage not yet set, kept its secrets hidden from curious fortune-tellers.

But today, fate’s curtain parted just a finger’s width before her eyes.

Scanning the cards, Mrs. Fairfax gasped, then covered her mouth, her eyes darting.

“Well, Ian’s going to be over the moon soon.”

“Madam, Master Henry from Dunville Park has arrived.”

In Laura’s study, engrossed in her translation, Laura looked up at the maid.

“Henry?”

She rose and checked her reflection in the wall mirror. Her hair was neatly pinned up, not a strand out of place. She wore a green checkered dress with voluminous puffs at the sleeves, draped with a white lace shawl.

Satisfied with her usual tidy appearance, she nodded.

“Show him in.”

Henry soon entered the study.

Laura greeted him with a warm smile.

“Welcome, Henry.”

“I hope I’m not interrupting?”

“Not at all. I was just about to take a break.”

Laura led Henry to the sofa by the fireplace. He sat on a small single sofa, while she took the longer three-seater. She instructed the maid to bring tea and refreshments.

“So, how are your lessons with George going?”

Henry, hands clasped and resting between his knees, nodded. His expression was more relaxed than it had been in front of his mother at Dunville Park.

“You’re welcome to visit Whitefield anytime. It could be as much of a playground for George as Dunville Park. Besides, if not now, George might not dare come to Whitefield.”

“Because of your uncle?”

Laura smiled softly.

“Exactly.”

“George is awfully scared of him, isn’t he?”

“Can’t be helped. Your uncle is a terrifying figure to George.”

“Didn’t George and Daniel set fire to an abandoned cabin in the woods a few years back?”

“Yes. In the dry autumn, no less. The fire consumed the cabin and burned nearly three hundred yards of forest. They say if it hadn’t miraculously rained that day, the damage could have reached thirty thousand yards. The blaze was beyond what anyone could extinguish.”

“I was at school then, so I didn’t know the details. It makes sense why Uncle became so strict all of a sudden.”

“Still, I sometimes think he goes too far. George trembles and watches his every move whenever he’s around.”

Laura sighed, her tone tinged with sympathy.

“If only someone had been there to guide them, they wouldn’t have done something so dangerous. You know both George and Daniel are good, clever boys at heart, don’t you?”

Henry smiled and nodded.

As he sat across from Laura, talking with her, Henry’s heart felt warmer than ever. It was as if, after a long war, he had arrived at the safest fortress in the world and nestled into goose-feather bedding.