"Can I name him somethin'?"
"He has a name."
"I ken. Can I give him a second name?" He looked at her with intense gravity, his little jaw set.
She looked up at him.
He watched her without blinking, chin level, mouth set. Across his legs, Fox had not moved. One of Fox's ears twitched. Neither of them looked particularly concerned.
"What did ye have in mind?" she said. Her own smile finally broke through.
James considered this with great gravity. "Robert," he said.
She blinked. "Robert." Her eyebrows shot up in surprise.
"It's a dignified name."
She looked at Fox. Fox looked at her. The animal's expression seemed almost to mock the human name.
"He willnae answer to it," she said.
"He doesnae answer to Fox either," James pointed out, showing her the logic of a six-year-old who paid attention.
She opened her mouth. She was about to respond when she heard it.
A floorboard in the corridor.
She knew it before the doorway darkened. The weight of it, the pace. The particular way those footsteps stopped just short of the threshold rather than crossing it, because he always checked before he entered, always made sure before he brought himself fully into a room that contained the boy. She felt the air in the room shift, a sudden electric tension.
Anthony stood in the doorway.
He had his hand on the door frame and his eyes on James. On his face was an expression that had arrived before his defenses had, the kind of expression that happened when something caught you between one breath and the next, and you had no time to put the walls up first. His mouth was slightly parted, his eyes wide with a raw, naked wonder.
James, with Fox across his legs and his blanket rumpled and his color better than it had been in six years, looked up.
"Uncle Anthony. Fox sat on me."
Anthony did not speak. He seemed to be struggling with a knot in his throat, his hand tightening on the wood of the door frame until his knuckles turned white.
"He grabbed him," Catriona said, setting down the pestle. "Fox allowed it."
She watched him look at the boy. At Fox. At the boy again. At the brightness still in James's face. The loose, unguarded quality of a child who had just been properly happy and hadn't put it away yet. She saw a muscle jump in Anthony's cheek as he fought for control.
His hand tightened once on the door frame.
"The beast has poor judgment," he said.
His voice came out level. Nearly. There was a slight, gravelly tremor beneath the words.
James giggled. The sound of it, smaller this time, private, almost conspiratorial, landed in the room and sat there. Catriona watched Anthony's jaw move. He was gritting his teeth, his expression a battlefield between his usual mask and the joy before him.
"He likes ye too," she said to Fox.
Lightly. Giving Anthony somewhere to look that wasn't directly at her. She could feel the heat of his gaze even as she avoided it.
"Fox doesnae like everyone," Anthony said.
He crossed the room to the chair, pulled it out, and sat.
