“Yes,” she replied, a faint warmth rising in her cheeks that she made no effort to hide quickly enough.
Gabriel returned his attention to the passing road, though the image of her flushed expression remained unhelpfully fixed in his mind. He told himself firmly that it was irrelevant, a matter of cloth and presentation, nothing more. And yet he found himself noticing it again whenever he looked up, which he did with increasing irritation.
“This is the mill pond where a boy fell in at the picnic, and the Vicar jumped in to save him,” Valerie said.
To his surprise, Valerie spoke more during the journey than she had in weeks, pointing out things along the roadside to Amelia.
“I am sure that was a sight to see.” Amelia smiled.
David, meanwhile, behaved with a discipline Gabriel had not seen from him since before his father’s death, sitting upright and listening attentively. There was no shouting, no fidgeting, no defiance, only quiet engagement. Gabriel observed it all carefully, his thoughts turning over the same conclusion with increasing certainty.
Amelia is responsible for this. Not discipline, not instruction, but something far less controllable. Her care and nurturing nature.
At one point, Amelia began speaking about her childhood, her tone light as she described growing up with sisters who, according to her, had each possessed entirely different versions of chaos.
David laughed at that, leaning forward as though the idea was fascinating.
“You had another home?” he asked suddenly, tilting his head. “That is odd. You must stay here forever now.”
Amelia blinked at him, clearly caught off guard by the simplicity of the statement from a six-year-old child.
Gabriel, however, felt a sharp awareness settle in his chest at the words. She began to answer carefully, hesitating as though weighing truth against practicality.
“Well, actually, I am only…” she started, her voice slightly softer than before.
Gabriel interrupted, shifting his posture just enough to cut across her sentence.
“We are almost at the village,” he said calmly, as though the timing alone justified the interruption. “You will see the market first.”
Amelia glanced at him, suspicion flickering briefly across her face, but she did not press the matter further. The carriage continued forward, wheels turning steadily as the village came into view ahead.
Gabriel told himself that changing the subject had been necessary, not instinctive, not avoidant. Yet even as he considered this, he was aware that something about the idea of her leaving the estate had unsettled him more than he cared to admit. And that, he decided firmly, was a problem for another time.
By the time the carriage wheels crunched to a halt at the edge of the village, Amelia already felt as though the day had been carefully set on a knife edge.
David pressed eagerly against the windows, pointing at everything with unrestrained delight while Valerie tried, with mixed success, to appear as though she was above such enthusiasm.
Gabriel’s voice cut through the chatter the moment the door was opened, calm but final as he stepped down first and glanced back at them.
“You are not rescuing any more animals,” he said, as if this were a rule that had been broken too many times already.
Amelia replied lightly, “We have only rescued one animal, Your Grace. Technically.” His look suggested he did not appreciate her interpretation of numbers.
He did not let them wander alone at first, which Amelia had half expected, but she was still surprised when he added that several servants would accompany them through the village.
Then, as if it were an afterthought, Gabriel stepped closer to her and lowered his voice. “And I will be watching,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on hers, “even if you do not see me.”
The words sent an odd shiver down Amelia’s spine that she refused to acknowledge as anything other than irritation at his overbearing nature.
“That sounds unnecessarily dramatic,” she replied, though her voice came out softer than intended.
Gabriel only straightened, entirely unreadable again, as if he had not just unsettled her without even trying.
The village itself quickly swallowed them in noise, color, and the scent of warm bread from a nearby bakery.
Amelia found herself walking slightly ahead of David and Valerie. People greeted the children with easy familiarity, andAmelia soon realized they were recognized everywhere they went.
A shopkeeper smiled at David and asked, “Still carrying on with that dog of yours, young master?”
