Page 54 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
Frederick reached up and touched the cloth.
“Leave it,” Theodore said.
Frederick left it, with the expression of someone registering a complaint nonverbally.
“Good.” Theodore leaned back. He looked at the ceiling for a moment and then looked back at the boy. “I should tell you that I have very little experience with this particular situation. Children, as a category, have not featured prominently in my life until recently. I am working largely from first principles.”
Frederick stared at him.
“First principles...” Theodore said. “That means that I am reasoning from what I know to be generally true rather than from specific experience. It is a method employed extensively in mathematics and natural philosophy and apparently also in the management of sick six-year-olds.”
Frederick blinked.
“You do not know what mathematics is yet,” Theodore said and nodded. “That is fine. You have time.” He glanced at the cloth, which had already been removed and was now sitting on the pillow beside Frederick's head. He retrieved it and replaced it. “Mathematics is the study of numbers and their relationships. It is extremely useful, and most people find it deeply unpleasant, which I have always thought says more about how it is taught than about the subject itself.”
Frederick looked at the cloth on his forehead.
“Leave it,” Theodore said again.
He helped the boy take a sip of water. As Frederick settled back against the pillows, a silence settled between them. Theodore realized the silence of the room was far too heavy for a sick child. He needed to distract him, but his repertoire of stories was limited to estate management and social politics.
He was, he acknowledged privately, significantly better equipped for charming women at dinner parties than entertaining a six-year-old with a fever. The two skill sets had very little overlap. Women at dinner parties responded well to wit, to the well-timed observation. He was excellent at all of that.
Frederick, on the other hand, was six and did not know what a dinner party was, and was looking at him from a pile of pillows, waiting for something.
“The estate...” he said. “...runs on a combination of agricultural income, tenant rents, and a moderately successful investment in a shipping concern that I established years ago, and which caused me considerable difficulty in its early years, primarily because I chose the wrong partner. A man named Hartwell, who had excellent references and absolutely no understanding of tide schedules.”
Frederick looked up at the hand holding the cloth on his forehead.
“Tide schedules,” Theodore continued. “Are the times at which the sea goes in and out. This matters a great deal when you are trying to move cargo from one place to another because if you get it wrong, your ship sits in the harbor for six hours while yourcargo spoils and Hartwell writes you a letter explaining that it was nobody's fault when it was very clearly his fault.”
The corner of Frederick's mouth moved.
Theodore noticed, but he kept his expression entirely neutral.
“The matter was eventually resolved,” he continued. “When I replaced Hartwell with a man named Sims, who had no references whatsoever but an encyclopedic knowledge of tide schedules and an extremely practical attitude toward the movement of goods. Sims is still with me. Hartwell is not.” He adjusted the cloth slightly. “The lesson, should you require one, is that practical competence is worth considerably more than impressive paperwork. I intend for you to know this before you are ten.”
Frederick was looking at him now with the focused, fever-bright attention of a child who did not understand the words but had decided the speaker was worth listening to.
“The south field has been underperforming for three seasons running,” Theodore continued. “Mr. Briggs, who is the head gardener and has opinions about everything, believes it is a drainage issue. The estate manager believes it is a soil issue. I believe it is a Briggs and the estate manager issue. Also, that the two of them need to be put in a room together and told they cannot leave until they have agreed on something.” He paused. “That is also a method. It works on shipping merchants. I have moderate confidence it will work on gardeners.”
Frederick made a sound. It was small. Barely anything. But it was not crying, was not distressed, and it was shaped... if Theodore was not mistaken, like the very beginning of a laugh.
He looked at the boy.
Frederick looked back at him with the slightly glazed, slightly entertained expression.
Theodore sighed. “The north field is doing considerably better.”
Frederick made the sound again, a genuine, albeit weak, giggle that shook his small shoulders.
Theodore paused, his hand hovering over the basin of water. “I was under the impression that crop rotation was the most efficient sedative known to man. I was quite literally trying to bore you into a slumber, Frederick. Why on earth are you laughing?”
Frederick considered this for a moment. “Mr. Briggs and the other man,” he said. “In a room?”
“Yes,” Theodore said.
“Together?” Frederick said.
