Page 64 of Duke of Moonstone
“I would not.”
“You would. Imagine wearing the same coat to bed.”
Emily considered this with genuine seriousness. “Perhaps not to bed. But everywhere else.”
Alexander found himself standing closer than he intended. Frances was crouched at the water’s edge with Emily, their heads bent together, and he was behind them with his hands clasped behind his back. The sun was warm on his shoulders, and the three of them were sharing a very small piece of the world.
“You are hovering,” Frances said without turning around.
“I am supervising.”
“From directly behind us. Like a sentry.”
“Sentries serve a valuable function.”
She glanced up at him. The light caught her eyes and turned them into something he was not prepared for—vivid, bright, edged with amusement that was aimed squarely at him. “You could sit down, you know. The grass will not damage your dignity.”
“My dignity is perfectly secure.”
“Standing there like a lamppost suggests otherwise.”
Emily tugged at Frances’s sleeve. “Look! That duck has babies!”
They both turned to the water. A line of ducklings trailed behind the mother mallard, small and determined, paddling with the frantic effort of creatures who had not yet mastered the art of moving in a straight line.
“Six,” Emily counted. “No, seven. That one was hiding.”
“Seven ducklings,” Frances said. “What a family.”
Emily lowered herself further. Frances remained beside her. Alexander stood over both of them, feeling something in his chest that he could not quite name.
It was not pride. It was not the measured approval of a man observing that his household was functioning as intended. It was warmer than any of those things. Less controllable. It sat behind his ribs and pressed outward, and he could not have said when it had arrived or how long it had been building or what, exactly, he was supposed to do with it.
Emily pointed at the smallest duckling, which had fallen behind and was paddling furiously to catch up. “That one is me.”
Frances put her arm around the child’s shoulders. “That one is the bravest of all of them.”
The afternoon wore on. They walked the length of the Serpentine and back. Emily asked whether fish could hear, whether cloudshad names, whether the Queen had ever come to this park, and whether sparrows and ducks were friends. Frances answered every question, and Alexander answered more than he had planned to.
At some point, the conversation shifted, and he found himself explaining how locks worked on canals, and Emily was fascinated.
They turned back toward the carriage. The light had gone golden, the shadows long across the grass.
Emily walked between them. Her bonnet was crooked. Her shoes were scuffed with mud. Her cheeks were pink from the wind and the walking and the sheer exertion of asking more questions in one afternoon than Alexander typically fielded in a week.
She reached up and took Frances’s hand.
Then she reached up and took Alexander’s.
The gesture felt completely natural. She did not stop or seek permission, nor did she question if it was suitable or proper. She just reached out, held on, and moved between them, clutching a small hand in each, as if this had been a familiar, long-standing routine.
Alexander looked down at her fingers wrapped around his—small, warm, and trusting in a way he had done nothing to deserve and everything to risk undermining.
He glanced over at Frances, who was already looking back at him. Their eyes locked over Emily’s crooked bonnet, and they said nothing. The park’s activity—carriages, walkers, distant laughter from the water—faded into the background, hardly touching the quiet connection between their gazes.
Her eyes were very wide, and her lips were slightly parted. The look on her face was not the wariness he was used to nor the sharpness he had earned but something open and unguarded that washed over him like a flat hand pressed against his chest.
Emily’s hand tightened in his. A small squeeze, absent and unconscious, the grip of a child who was holding on because holding on felt right.
