Page 59 of Duke of Sapphire

“We were going to try the elm next,” Ian offered helpfully.

Henry looked at the elm. It was, objectively, an excellent climbing tree. Wide-branched, low to the ground, the first branch at approximately the height of a small, determined child.

“Absolutely not,” Henry said.

“Henry—”

“The bark is wet from this morning’s rain and that first branch is higher than it looks. Ian would be on the ground inside of two minutes.”

Ian considered this. “I wouldnae fall.”

“I was told you fell off the stable gate at Drummond Hall twice in one afternoon last summer.”

“That was different.”

“How was it different?”

Ian thought about it. “I was in a hurry,” he said, with great dignity.

Charlotte pressed her lips together. She really was trying.

Henry’s gaze moved to her face. She could see him noticing that she was trying. He did not appear appeased.

“This is your doing,” he said.

“It brought a smile to Ian’s face.”

“I see,” Henry murmured. “Do you not think that climbing my⁠—"

There was a rustle in the privet hedge to the left. Something moved in it, fast and low, and then went still.

Ian’s entire body oriented toward it like a pointer.

“A rabbit,” Charlotte said quietly.

The hedge rustled again.

“A rabbit!” Ian launched himself at the privet with a shout of pure joy that scattered three sparrows from the nearby yew and caused the rabbit in question—brown, fat, and possessed of excellent instincts—to bolt from the far end of the hedge at considerable speed.

Ian bolted after it.

The rabbit dodged left along the garden wall. Ian dodged left. The rabbit cut back across the lawn. Ian cut back. The rabbit made a desperate break for the rose bed. Ian, apparently unconcerned by thorns, followed.

Charlotte watched.

Henry watched.

Ian tripped over a loose stone at the edge of the path, caught himself with both hands, was back on his feet in two seconds, and was still running, his shout now reduced to something more concentrated, the pure focused silence of a boy who had committed.

The rabbit found the gap under the kitchen garden gate and was gone in a flash of brown. Ian arrived at the gate four seconds later, tried it, found it latched, pressed his face against the bars, and watched the rabbit disappear into the vegetable beds beyond.

Charlotte heard it. She turned.

Henry was smiling.

Not the contained, controlled expression he deployed at dinner, or the polite version he used with solicitors. The real one. Unguarded. His shoulders had dropped and one corner of his mouth was up, and his eyes had gone warm, and he was watching Ian with something in his face that was entirely open.

And then he realized she was looking at him.