Sunday did not creep in; it broke like a blade.
James had slept only in fragments, the sort of shallow, restless half-dreams that left his body heavy and his nerves raw. When he dragged himself from the sofa at dawn, Penelope was still there, curled under the blanket, her face softened in sleep, one hand tucked close to her mouth as though even in dreams she was guarding something fragile.
He wanted to let her sleep, to give her even one more hour without weight. But he couldn’t. The date itself pressed down too loudly—Sunday. Charles’s promise. Eleanor’s warning. The air in the house seemed to shiver with it.
He moved to the window. Mist again, thick, rolling low across the fields. The estate sat wrapped in silence, but he didn’t believe it for a second. Somewhere out there, someone wa
