Page 52 of Caught by the Forbidden Duke
“A man is blowing a trumpet the size of a sardine tin.”
“He is committed to his art.”
She straightened her gloves and walked toward the gate.
James was already there. He stood without moving, both arms at his sides, taking the scene in: the crowd at the entrance, the juggler to his left, the stalls visible through the gate, and all the noise coming from all of it at once. The expression on his face had no agitation in it yet, only the focused blankness of a boy receiving more information than he had planned for.
Annabelle crossed to him without hurrying.
She stood close enough that her skirt brushed his boot and looked where he was looking. “That man to the right has a cage of mechanical birds,” she said, bending slightly and pointing. “The blue one lifts its wings when he winds the key. Do you see it?”
James looked at the bluebird going through its small, jerky arc. “It moves wrong,” he said. “Birds don’t hold their wings that way.”
“I think he made it from memory.”
“Then his memory is wrong.”
“Possibly.” She straightened. “But it still moves.”
James watched the bird complete its rotation. His shoulders came down by a degree. “Can we go in?” he said, already walking through the gate.
Dominic was two steps behind them, but Annabelle did not look at him, even though her skin prickled with the acute awareness of him.
Dominic watched Annabelle point at the mechanical bird, and watched James’s shoulders drop.
Miss Hartley had been with the boy for four months, and she was patient and reliable, and she had learned the specific distances and tones that kept James from shutting down entirely.
But…she did not do what Annabelle did. None of them did.
She looked at what James was looking at and described it, and that was apparently sufficient, and Dominic had watched this happen enough times that it had stopped seeming remarkable and simply seemed like a fact about her.
He turned his attention toward the east stalls. Helena appeared at his left. Dominic didn’t quite know what to do about her attention, but he knew he was going to have to entertain itregardless, especially knowing that she was Lady Annabelle’s closest confidante.
“Your Grace.” She fell into step beside him and immediately matched his pace. “You look extremely formidable for a fairground.”
“This is my standard expression.”
“I know. I said as much.” She watched the stalls ahead for a moment. Then: “She got through the whole lesson before she said a word about it. That is how she is. She will let you take the entire thing apart before she shows you it mattered.”
Dominic said nothing.
“She has also decided,” Helena added, in the same even tone, “that she no longer requires your assistance finding a husband. She intends to manage that herself from here.”
Dominic looked toward Annabelle, who was ahead of them with James at a tin monkey stall, her head bent toward the boy’s height. She said something; James’s chin dropped in the small, closed way that meant he was pleased and did not intend to show it. The two of them entirely occupied with each other, entirely self-contained.
“She said that,” Dominic said.
“This morning. To me.” Helena’s voice carried no weight in either direction. “I am not asking you to explain yourself. I only thought you should know both things.”
He kept his eyes on the stalls ahead and did not look toward Annabelle again for the better part of ten minutes. When he did, she was laughing at something James had said, low and easy, entirely unbothered, and Dominic found this considerably more irritating than he had any reasonable grounds to find it.
Helena seemed oblivious to the grim thoughts crossing his mind, because she gestured toward her mother, who had been studying the ring-toss board at the first game stall for the better part of five minutes.
“Shall we see whether Lady Rosenhall attempts it? She has been eyeing that post since we came through the gate.”
As they watched, Lady Rosenhall picked up one of the wooden rings, held it a moment, and dropped it clean over the nearest post. She handed the rest back to the gamekeeper without comment and moved on.
“You see,” Helena said. “She always recovers.”
