He was also fairly certain he didn't need to. Understanding wasn't the point.
A smile crossed his face — slow, private, not meant for anyone. The particular smile of someone sitting with something they didn't have a name for yet but recognized as significant.
He had served in three noble households before this one. Had been valued, fed, clothed, assigned rotations. Had done his work correctly and been acknowledged for it correctly and felt, at the end of every day, more or less the same as he'd felt at the beginning.
He had not felt like this.
This specific quality — the settled thing, the strange peace, the sense of fitting into a space that had been the exact shape of him all along without him knowing — he had not felt this before. Not once. Not in thirty-two years of living or twelve years of service.
He looked at her sleeping face.
