Nathan stood at the end of the hallway near the stairs.
He turned.
Both of them froze.
“What are you doing awake?” he asked.
Clara folded her arms.
“I could ask you.”
“I live here.”
“So do I for at least four days.”
Something almost resembling amusement touched his face.
Then disappeared.
He looked tired.
More tired than usual.
“Ben woke.”
“Nightmare?”
“Yes.”
“Is he all right?”
Nathan nodded.
“He asked whether the train had already come.”
Clara’s chest tightened.
“The train?”
“The one taking you east.”
She looked away.
Nathan continued quietly.
“I told him it hadn’t.”
“That was true.”
“He asked whether I would tell him before you left.”
Clara looked at Nathan again.
“What did you say?”
“That it wasn’t my decision.”
Silence filled the hallway.
Clara had been raised around men who believed decisions naturally belonged to them.
Her father had not been cruel.
But he had decided when she worked, where her wages went, which younger sibling needed boots first, when the household could afford meat, and eventually which marriage arrangement would relieve the family of one more expense.
Nathan’s refusal to claim authority over her still unsettled Clara because some part of her kept expecting the kindness to reveal itself as strategy.
It had not.
Not yet.
“You could ask me to stay,” she said.
Nathan’s expression changed.
“I could.”
“But you won’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
He leaned one shoulder against the wall.
“Because you’d wonder whether you were staying because five children looked frightened.”
Clara said nothing.
Nathan continued.
“And eventually you would resent us.”
“You seem certain.”
“I've seen resentment.”
“In whom?”
He looked toward the stairs.
“My mother.”
Clara had not expected that.
Nathan rarely spoke about his own childhood.
He continued reluctantly.
“She married my father because her family needed money.”
“Did she love him?”
“Eventually.”
“Was that enough?”
Nathan gave a humorless smile.
“Sometimes.”
He looked at Clara.
“But whenever life became hard, she remembered she hadn’t chosen the beginning.”
The words landed softly.
Painfully.
Nathan straightened.
“I won’t ask someone else to live that way.”
Clara’s throat tightened.
She almost told him then.
Everything.
Instead she asked:
“Do you trust Silas Vale?”
Nathan’s eyes sharpened immediately.
“No.”
“That fast?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He smiles too quickly when other people are desperate.”
That sounded exactly like something Mara might have said.
Clara studied him.
“Then why take a loan connected to him?”