"And it wasn't a goose. It was a duck."
"A duck?" Her lips curved up in a dazzling smile.
"A very ill-tempered duck. Andrew insisted on naming it Wellington."
A sound escaped her. A small, startled snort that she immediately tried to cover with her hand. Her eyes went wide, as though the sound had surprised her as much as it had surprised him.
Sebastian couldn’t look away as his chest cracked in two.
He’d told himself he could do this for her, but only if he kept some distance. He should end this. Put a stop to whatever this was going on between them.
But she was grinning up at him with those blue eyes, and the afternoon sun was catching the loose strands of hair at her temple, and he…
He couldn't bring himself to do it.
"Andrew was terrible with animals," he heard himself say. "He once tried to befriend a swan on the river and it chased him halfway to the village."
Her laughter was bright and genuine. Two passing gentlemen turned to look.
"He never told me about the swan," she said.
"He wouldn't have. He was far too vain."
She laughed softly. "He was, rather, wasn’t he?"
He looked over to see that her smile had faded. She still looked pleased, but there was a sadness to it now. "He always told such amusing stories in his letters. He made it all sound like such an adventure." A pause. "I think he did that for my benefit. So I wouldn't feel left out, being at home."
Sebastian said nothing. His throat had closed. Andrew had done exactly that. He'd talked about Estella often at school. He’d laugh about her letters and her never-ending questions. “She's going to be cleverer than all of us, Seb.”
"He used to bribe me with lemon ices." He saw the surprise in her eyes, and heard it in her voice. It was how he felt when he recovered a lovely memory he’d forgotten about. It happened when he and his mother spoke about his father. It was an odd thing, uncovering a happy memory. Like finding a hidden treasure.
"Lemon ices?"
She smiled. "They were my favorite. So whenever he needed my help to get him out of trouble, or just to get me to stop following him around all the time, he’d take me into town for a lemon ice."
Her smile grew as she relived the happy memory.
He wasn’t sure how long he gazed at her, drinking in her wistful smile without her even noticing.
But then a cold drop hit his cheek and ruined the moment. Then another drop. And another. He looked up. The sky, which had been merely overcast when they'd set out, had turned dark.
"We should—" he started. But the sky didn't wait for him to finish. The rain came down all at once like a bucket being emptied on their heads.
Estella gasped. Her hand tightened on his arm. Around them, the fashionable promenaders scattered. Servants scurried to their employers with umbrellas.
Sebastian did not have an umbrella. He had, however, spent two years anticipating every conceivable threat to Estella Hale's wellbeing, and rain was well within his parameters.
His coat was off and over her head before she could draw breath to protest.
"Sebastian, no, you'll?—"
He took her elbow and steered her off the path toward a large oak whose spreading canopy offered some shelter from the worst of it. The rain hammered the leaves above them and dripped through in scattered streams, but it was better than the open path.
Estella stood beneath the tree with his coat draped over her head, blinking up at him. Several strands of hair were clinging to her damp cheeks, and her lips were parted in surprise.
He was so struck by her beauty in that moment, he hardly realized how drenched he was getting.
But Estella did. "You’re soaking wet!" She pushed the coat toward him. Or she tried to. "Take it back."
