She didn't cry. She was almost proud of that. But somewhere down the corridor, behind a door left a few inches open, a small voice was crying instead, and Victoria found she couldn't quite walk past it.
The crying came from Thomas's room. Victoria almost turned away, almost remembered Mrs. Pruitt's warning look, Edward's cold shoulder, the Dowager's voice still ringing in her ears, but the sound was small and frightened in a way that didn't care about any of that. She pushed the door open gently.
"Thomas."
He was curled at the foot of his bed, not in it, knees to his chest, cheeks flushed an unhealthy red. When he saw her, he flinched, then seemed to remember he was too tired to be afraid.
"My head hurts," he whispered. "And I'm cold, but I'm hot, too. Oh, that doesn't make sense."
Victoria crossed the room and pressed her hand to his forehead before she'd even decided to.
"Burning. How long have you felt like this?"
"Since this morning. I didn't tell anyone." His eyes were glassy, too bright. "Nobody comes when I call anymore."
Something in her chest cracked clean through.
"I'm here now."
She rang for Mrs. Pruitt, who took one look at Thomas and went pale beneath her starch.
"I'll send for the physician, Your Grace, but he's two hours out at this time of night. The roads—"
"Then we don't wait for him." Victoria was already moving. "I need cool water, vinegar if you have it, and clean linen. Now, please."
Mrs. Pruitt hesitated half a second, old loyalty warring with old suspicion, then went.
Vincent arrived as Victoria was ringing out the first cloth. He stood in the doorway, jaw tight, the particular stillness of a man who had stood in this exact spot before and lost.
"Is he—"
"Fever. High, but his pulse is steady. I've seen this before, Vincent. My old governess took ill the same way every winter. It breaks if we keep him cool and keep fluids in him." She didn't look up from Thomas. "I need you to trust me for the next several hours."
He didn't answer, but he didn't leave, either. He sat in the corner chair and watched, hands clenched between his knees while Victoria worked.
The night went long and ugly. Thomas's fever climbed before it broke. He shivered, then burned, then mumbled half words that weren't sentences. Victoria didn't stop. Cool cloth to his forehead, water to his lips, her voice low and steady even when her hands weren't.
"You're not going anywhere," she told him more than once, the same words she'd once needed someone to say to her. "I'm not leaving this room."
Near three in the morning, Thomas's breathing finally evened. The flush in his cheeks dimmed to something almost normal. Victoria sat back on her heels, exhausted, and found Vincent watching her with an expression she couldn't name. Something between disbelief and a grief he hadn't expected to feel that night.
"He's past the worst of it," she said.
"You don't know that."
"I do. I've sat through enough fevers to know the difference."
He said nothing else. But he didn't go to bed, either. He stayed in that chair until dawn, and so did she, and neither of them spoke of why.
Thomas woke at first light, weak but clear-eyed, and looked up to find Victoria still there. Hair loose, dress creased, eyes red with no sleep.
"You stayed," he said, wondering, as if it were a fact he needed to test out loud.
"I said I would."
He reached for her hand, small fingers closing around hers with a grip stronger than his size suggested.
"Mama."
The word landed in the room like something breaking open. Victoria's breath caught. Across the room, Vincent went very still.
"You don't have to call me that," Victoria managed.
"I know." Thomas didn't let go of her hand. "I want to."
It didn't spread to the others. If anything, it made things worse. Edward heard about it from a maid before breakfast and said nothing, but his silence at the table had a new edge to it, something closer to betrayal than indifference.
"He's sick," Edward said finally, not looking up from his plate. "He doesn't remember enough to know better."
"Edward," Vincent started.
"I'm not arguing, Father. I'm explaining." He pushed back his chair. "The rest of us remember exactly how this goes."
Charlotte and Beatrice exchanged a glance and said nothing at all, which was its own kind of answer. Henry didn't even come down to breakfast.
But upstairs, in a small room with a damp cloth still folded on the nightstand, one small boy had decided, against every signal the house was sending him, that Victoria was staying. And Victoria, sitting at that breakfast table, surrounded by four children who would not look at her, found she finally had something to hold on to. One thread. One small, fierce hand that hadn't let go. It would have to be enough for now to build on.
Thomas's recovery should have softened the house. Instead, it seemed to harden everyone else. Edward took to disappearing for hours, or returning smelling of brandy, though he was only sixteen. When Victoria tried to speak to him about it, he cut her off before she'd finished the sentence.
"You don't get to parent me," he said. "You weren't here for the parts that mattered. You don't get the easy parts now."
"Edward, I only want—"
"I know what you want. Thomas's whole heart. Easy. Because he's six and doesn't remember enough to protect himself." His eyes were hard, older than they should have been. "I remember everything. I remember my mother and the one after her. I'm not handing you anything."