Noel finished the food, washed the pan because it felt wrong to leave it, and went back upstairs.
He was asleep within three minutes of lying down.
.
.
Meanwhile...
At the Ashford house, the night passed without sleeping.
Evelina stood in front of her mirror.
She had been standing there since they got back from the palace — still in her ball gown for the first hour, then in her nightdress, then in her robe when the cold came through the window she had forgotten to close. The gas lamp had burned through its fuel and gone out sometime around three in the morning and now the room was lit by the grey-blue of early dawn pressing through the curtains.
She was brushing her hair.
The same section.
Over and over and over.
The same section on the left side, the brush moving through it in the same slow stroke, her eyes fixed on her reflection without really seeing it.
What she was seeing instead — what kept replacing the mirror — was Joel's face.
