Page 28 of The Lion Duke's Proposal
"And the stream was strictly necessary?"
"The ball was in the stream."
"The ball," Anthony said, "was retrievable by any number of other means that did not involve you removing your coat in front of forty guests and climbing into the water."
"I won, didn't I?"
Anthony made a sound that conveyed both acknowledgment and deep personal suffering. They walked in silence for a moment, and Benjamin veered suddenly off the path toward a low stone wall, apparently having spotted something of interest on the other side of it.
"Ben." Anthony's voice was automatic and firm. "Stay where I can see you."
The boy stopped, turned, and fixed Anthony with the particular expression of a four-year-old who had not yet accepted that the wordnoapplied to him specifically.
Leander crouched down to his level. "What did you find?"
Benjamin pointed over the wall with great solemnity. "A frog."
"A frog." Leander looked over the wall. There was, indeed, a frog sitting on the damp stone beside a small garden basin with the unbothered stillness of something that had nowhere to be. "That is an excellent frog."
"I want it."
"You cannot have it," Anthony said from above them.
"Why?" Benjamin asked Leander directly, having clearly identified the more sympathetic party.
"Because frogs," Leander said, "belong in gardens. If you take it inside, it will be unhappy. And an unhappy frog is no good to anyone."
Benjamin considered this with the gravity it apparently deserved. Then he nodded once, apparently satisfied, and turned back to the path.
Leander straightened.
Anthony was watching him with an expression he recognized and did not particularly welcome. "What?" Leander said.
"Nothing," Anthony said. "Only that you are very good at that."
"At what?"
"At making people feel that their concerns have been taken seriously." He paused. "Miss Norish agreed to your arrangement, didn't she? Despite having every reason not to trust you."
Leander said nothing.
"I'm simply observing," Anthony continued, "that the skills are related."
They resumed walking. The house was visible now through the trees, the warm stone of it catching the last of the afternoon light. Somewhere inside, Miss Norish was presumably preparing for dinner, and the thought arrived before he could stop it — the image of her, loosening her hair perhaps, or standing at the window of her room with that particular stillness she had when she was thinking through something she hadn't decided yet.
He put it away firmly.
"She would have conditions," he said. "Rules she wants to set."
"Of course she would." Anthony sounded almost fond. "And will you keep them?"
Leander thought about the rules. About the look on her face when she said,"When this is over, we part on good terms.”The careful, practical way she had constructed the terms of her own protection was because she had learned, presumably throughextensive experience, that no one else was going to construct them for her.
"Yes," he said. And meant it in a way that surprised him slightly.
Anthony nodded and said nothing further, which was somehow worse than if he had spoken.
Benjamin reappeared between them, sliding his small hand into Leander's without preamble or announcement, as he sometimes did. Leander looked down at the top of his head and felt the familiar complicated warmth of it — the responsibility of it, the weight of Anthony's quiet trust in handing him this child's affection as though it were something Leander had earned.
