The Reverend Sister
The afternoon had the lazy dignity of a house that owned its own time. In the billiards room, sunlight spilled across the green baize in a long, warm bar. Ares Langford stood with his cue in hand, leaning into a shot as if the angle were a private joke between him and geometry.
Julian was on the opposite side of the table, umbrella of cigar smoke looping up toward the ceiling like an abstract halo. The children had been put to bed an hour earlier, their quiet breaths a comfort behind the closed nursery door; the house hummed with all the small noise of grand living — the soft tread of a maid passing on polished floors, the distant plume of the koi pond’s fountain.
“Left side, slow,” Julian said, watching Ares line up. “You always go for brute force instead of finess
