The morning after the storm was gray and windless.
The kind of stillness that didn't promise peace — only pause.
Serena Maxwell sat on the small settee by the window of the Nest, her robe drawn tight around her, eyes tracing the drizzle that gathered and slipped down the glass.
The house still smelled faintly of rain and smoke. Charlton's coat hung on the stand by the door, his gloves abandoned on the table beside a cold cup of tea.
He hadn't come back.
For hours she'd turned over every word, every silence between them — the look in his eyes when he asked who had been there, and her inability to say what he already knew.
Now, in the thin gray light, her shame had cooled into exhaustion.
Enough, she told herself. You've done enough damage for one lifetime.
But her mind refused to obey.
It kept replaying last night — Christopher's shadow in the doorway, his voice low and measured, the way his words slipped through her defenses like knives disguised as concern.
