A child's grief should never go ignored. At least, that was Mary's prerogative. Soothing and singing three young children to easy slumber was not something she was unfamiliar with, rather she found it a sense of duty to hold to her chest closely. They deserved to be comforted. They deserved to be heard. They'd lost a mother, after all.

When she eased open the bedroom door to the children's shared room to leave, she found Edward standing in the darkened hallway, with only the moonlight illuminating through the window of the other end of the long corridor to illuminate the space. The wooden floorboards creak softly beneath her feet as she moves forward, the faint scent of pipe tobacco lingering in the air.

There was much to be said of the eldest of the Banks brood. His posture was rigid, his shoulders tense as if carrying invisible burdens. The moonlight catches the轮廓 of his face, revealing a man caught between grief and responsibility.

Yet, there was not much, either. Words seemed to fail them both in these quiet encounters.

Mary did not know where it started. Or, perhaps, how it'd bloomed between she and Edward. It, so to speak, was some tentative kind of romance, a spark she did not quite know how to explore. His return from the States was uncanny, at best. Uneasy footing where she had to be precarious as to how to thaw him out, lest he presume Mary was a woman his father was coping with the losses with as opposed to a nanny caring for young children.

She did not know how she'd made such a misstep. Falling in love with someone who was, practically, her employer—

Yet, yet, yet, her hand instinctively shot out when she registered his presence.