He was protecting her.

An eight-year-old was standing guard over his own mother in the dark, and doing it with a discipline that grown, armed men often lack.

She had spent her career around courage of various kinds.

She had never in her life seen any to match the quiet, ferocious, wholly unselfish courage of her son bent weeping and silent over her hospital bed.

Chapter 9 — Rosamund

The next day, Sam came in holding the hand of Rosamund Delacourt, Adaira’s godmother — a retired probate judge from Oak Park, sharp and elegant and entirely unmovable, the one person in Adaira’s life Chandler had never once managed to charm or intimidate.