Chapter 119 CHAPTER 119
Quiet Rooms, Passing Faces
“Are you sure they’ll sleep?” Julian asked as he crouched by the bed, one hand smoothing the duvet over Jamal’s small chest.
The drive back to the mansion was exhausting.
Dorcas smiled without looking up from where she tucked Pretty in, her usual movements steady and patient. “They’ve always been good at bedtime when they’re tired. Your driving did them in, Mr. Julian.” She reached for Kamal’s hand and laid it over the blanket like a benediction.
Kamal’s lashes fluttered. Jamal’s breathing had already shifted from hiccuped to even. Pretty’s small fists relaxed. Beauty, last to be tucked, clutched a faded stuffed elephant and blinked at Julian with sleepy trust before settling.
Julian felt something in his throat tighten, a soft, private ache he rarely allowed himself to name. Four small faces, his friends’ faces lined up in the soft glow of the nursery lamp, and for a moment the world outside the mansion’s tall hedges and iron gates slipped away to nothing but this room and these breathing, small people.
“Thank you, Dorcas,” Julian said when he finally rose. He brushed a hand over his close cropped hair, the gesture half formal, half tired. “Will you call me if—”
“If there’s anything,” she finished. Her eyes crinkled in the way that meant she had seen too much life not to be gentle. “Go. Lady Bianca needs visiting, and you shouldn’t wait.”
He nodded and stepped back into the corridor, closing the nursery door softly. The hallway smelled faintly of lemon polish and the faint trace of someone’s cologne. The house felt too quiet now, the laugh of children replaced by echoes.
The drive to the hospital was slow and moody. He wished there was something he could do to help Ares overcome all these. Julian kept his hands on the wheel with the small, careful detachment of someone who was both anxious and determined. The city slid past in a blur of lights and wet asphalt, the rain from earlier had dried into a shine that made the streets look coded with reflected neon. He thought of Ares again, of the menacing, furious lines on his face when he’d left for New York; he thought of the way Ares must have had carried Lady Bianca to the car, the raw panic in his voice when he’d called the house earlier and he felt the pull of duty tighten like a leash.
At the hospital entrance, Julian took the elevator two at a time, his shoes making soft thuds on the carpeted corridor as he crossed to Ward B. He paused at the nurses’ station, gave his name, and was waved through by a young nurse.
Room 412 was quiet in the way hospital rooms become quiet, machines ticking in measured patience, a faint smell of antiseptic, the soft rustle of linen as someone moved. Tessa sat in a chair beside the bed, a worn cardigan pulled tight around her shoulders, hands busy smoothing the blanket over Lady Bianca’s knees. Bianca’s face was thinner in the hospital light, eyes rimmed red, hair pulled back in a careless knot. She looked fragile in a way Julian had never seen before.
“Tessa.” His voice broke the hush. She looked up immediately, eyes bright with that tired alertness she wore when someone she cared about came into a room.
“Julian,” she said, rising. The small smile she offered him was full of fatigue and gratitude both. “You’re here…”
“I couldn’t stay away,” Julian replied, stepping in close enough to lower his voice. “How is she?”
Tessa’s fingers paused, then continued smoothing the blanket. “She’s stable. The doctors say the shock is large, emotional shock more than physical. They’ve put her on fluids and slow sedatives. She’s resting, but it’s going to be a long recovery.”
Julian looked down at Bianca, at the slow, even rise and fall of her chest. The woman who’d once moved through boutique launch nights and fashion shows like a queen now looked like someone who’d been plucked out of her life and placed on this bed to learn another kind of quiet. It made Julian feel small and angry at once.
“I saw Chloe linger in the corridor earlier,” Tessa said suddenly, catching the look that crossed Julian’s face. “She left before I could say anything. I thought she’d gone, but she’s been… around.”
Julian’s jaw tightened. Chloe’s name had a taste of acid in it now, planned and patient and cold. “Where is she?”
Tessa pointed with her chin toward the far side of the reception, where a narrow service corridor disappeared. “She was sitting on one of the steps, smoking. I didn’t go near her.”
Julian turned slowly, his eyes following Tessa’s gesture. He scanned the far end but saw only the pale hospital lights and the silhouette of a cleaner pushing a cart. If Chloe had been there, she’d melted into the shadows like she always did.
He stepped closer to the bed and laid a firm hand over Lady Bianca’s knuckles. The skin was papery but warm. Bianca’s eyelids fluttered, and she mumbled something indistinct. Julian leaned in. “Mom,” he said softly. “It’s Julian. I brought the children back to the house. They’re fine. Dorcas has tucked them in.”
Bianca’s eyes opened, a slow, aware blink. “The kids,” she whispered, the word a fragile bloom. “They’re safe?”
Tessa looked away frowning. Who exactly did this woman think she was fooling with this caring act? She stopped loving the kids long ago.
“Very safe,” Julian reassured her. He felt the need to ground things with truth. “Dorcas is with them. They slept. Don’t worry.”
Bianca’s mouth worked into a shape like a smile. “Good. Good.” Her fingers tightened, then eased. She lapsed back against the pillow, breathing shallowly.
Tessa watched Julian with a look that was both grateful and sad. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “For everything. Ares would be fucked without you.”
Julian nodded. “He needs you to keep him steady until he comes back. He’ll handle his father, he always does. But right now he needs you at his mother’s side.”
Tessa’s eyes dampened. “I won’t let him down.”
Julian lowered his voice. “You know it’s you right, not Chloe?”
Tessa nodded, smiling.
They spoke in the slow, low cadence of people who’d spent a long time learning when not to raise their voices. Outside the room door the corridor hummed with the small life of the hospital, the distant footsteps, the snatches of
other rooms, the automatic doors opening like patient mouths.