He recalled, when he was a boy and the whole family had gathered in the drawing room, seeing an expression on his father’s face that James always thought of as the Quiet Look. Will’s blue gaze would travel over his wife—tracing every line of her as if he were memorizing her all over again—and then his children, and a look of happiness that was sharp and gentle at the same time would come over his face. James knew now, though, what his father had been thinking when he got the Quiet Look. It was the same thought he had in the study at night, watching the light of the fire pass through Cordelia’s
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