Page 74 of Duke of Sapphire

“What does astute mean?”

“Clever. Perceptive.” She smoothed his hair. “It means you are paying attention.”

Ian considered this as though it were a satisfactory conclusion. He had stopped pressing his thumbnail into the wooden flank of the horse. Charlotte could feel the slight release of tension in his shoulder under her hand.

She was about to suggest he go up and let the nurserymaid see to his clothes when she heard Henry’s boot on the floor of the hall. Quick. Direct. The particular rhythm of a man who had gone somewhere with a purpose and completed it.

He appeared in the doorway.

“I have a horse for you,” he said.

Ian’s head came up.

Henry looked at the boy with an entirely level expression. “In the mews. She has been here two days, in fact, but I was waiting to see whether—” He stopped, and his brows softened while the corners of his mouth curved. “She is yours for as long as you are in London.”

Ian stared at him.

Then he was off Charlotte’s arm and across the room in four running steps. “Where?” He grabbed the doorframe as he flew through it. “Where in the mews? Which door? Henry⁠—”

“The groom will show you.” Henry turned sideways so Ian could pass. “Ian. Walk in the mews, not run. The horses⁠—”

But Ian was already in the hall, his voice coming back faintly as he went: “Which groom? The tall one?”

“Ian!” Charlotte called. “You should change out of your nightclothes first!”

Her words likely flew past the boy’s ears. Nothing could challenge his excitement at this moment.

Henry stood at the door and looked at the empty hall. Then he looked at Charlotte, and she grinned.

“Sit back,” Henry said. “You are leaning forward over her neck and she can feel it. She will think you want to go faster.”

“What if I do want to go faster?” Ian said.

“You do not want to go faster. You have been on her for four minutes.”

“I rode Tam for an hour on my first day.”

Charlotte stood at the edge of the mews yard with her arms folded and watched her husband walking patient circles around a gray mare. Henry had not removed his coat. He had not rolled up his sleeves or adopted any posture of informality. He was simply beside Ian with one hand hovering near the mare's bridle when needed, and back a step when not, entirely absorbed in the work of teaching a six-year-old boy not to pitch himself headfirst over a horse’s ears.

This was a man who had told her, with complete sincerity, somewhere north of Carlisle, that he had no talent with children.

She watched him steady the horse with one quiet word and adjust Ian’s grip on the reins without taking them, and she decided that Henry Kingswell had a very strange relationship with the truth about himself.

“Keep your heels down,” Henry said.

“They are down.”

“They are not down. They are entirely level, which is not the same thing.”

Ian pushed his heels down with visible effort. “Now?”

“Better.” Henry stepped back. “Now turn her. Left. Use your left leg, not just the rein.”

Ian’s tongue appeared at the corner of his mouth, which Charlotte had come to recognize as his expression of maximum concentration. The horse turned, and Ian grinned triumphantly.

“I did it.”

“You did,” Henry agreed. “Do it again.”