Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Mama used to sing when she made bread.”
Emily looked away from the daisy she had been threading through Frederick's hair, which he had been tolerating.
They were in the south garden, the one that had quickly become Emily's favorite, with the low stone wall along the far end and the wide stretch of grass that caught the afternoon light and held it there.
Frederick was sitting between her knees on the blanket they had spread out after lunch, his back to her, his small shoulders relaxed.
Emily's hands stilled in his hair.
“She did,” she said. “She always sang when she was doing something with her hands. Bread, or sewing, or washing up. She could not seem to help it.”
“Was she good?” Frederick asked.
“You don’t remember?” Emily considered this honestly. “No,” she said. “She was terrible. Completely and absolutely terrible. But she sang very loudly and very happily and did not seem to notice or care that she was terrible, which I always thought was the right approach.”
Frederick made a sound that was almost a laugh. “Papa used to put his hands over his ears.”
“Ah, you remember that?” Emily smiled.
“He did it like this.” Frederick pulled his own hands up to cover his ears and scrunched his face with the exaggerated suffering of someone enduring something unbearable, and Emily laughed properly at that, at the smallness of him doing an impression of a grown man, at the fact that he had this.
.. this memory that was his and nobody could take it.
“That sounds exactly right,” she said.
Frederick lowered his hands and looked at the garden again. And they sat in that comfortable silence, at the picnic that Theodore had asked to be arranged for them.
“Was your papa nice?” Emily asked carefully.
Frederick lowered his head and then shrugged his shoulders. “He smelled like wood all the time,” he said. “Because of the wood he worked with. And his hands were big.” He looked down at his own hands. “Much bigger than mine. He said one day my hands would be big too.”
Emily felt a pang in her chest.
“Was he kind to you?” she said.
“Yes. He used to carry me on his back,” Frederick said. “When we went to the market. Because my legs got tired.” He paused. “He said I was heavy, but I do not think I was really that heavy. I think he was just saying it.”
“I think you are probably right,” Emily said.
“He used to read to me,” Frederick continued. “Not very well. He said the words wrong sometimes, and Mama would correct him, and he would say them wrong again on purpose to make her cross. She was not really cross. She was always laughing.”
Emily pressed her lips together and stopped playing in Frederick’s hair.
“They really liked each other,” he added quietly. “I think they like each other more than they liked me, and they liked me a lot.”
Emily looked at him. At the scar on his cheek and the daisies in his hair. She fought back the urge to cry. It was a good thing. Frederick remembered his parents in the most perfect way. She hoped that the memory of them would stay with him, much longer than the memory of their death would.
“They were good together,” Emily said. “I’m sure they loved you very much.”
“Yes,” Frederick said. He looked at the garden. “I think so.”
“From the time your mama was very small, she used to take flowers from your grandmother's garden and hide them on her body. Your grandmother would find petals everywhere, in the washing, in the books, once in the soup.” She paused. “Your grandmother was not pleased about the soup.”
Frederick giggled. He turned his head slightly. “Do you miss her?”
“Every day,” Emily said. “Every single day.”
Frederick was quiet again. Then he let out a sigh and fiddled with his fingers. “Do you think she knew she was going to leave?”
Emily set down the daisy she was holding.
She looked at the back of his small head and thought about truth, and about what a six-year-old boy needed to hear.
“I think,” she said carefully. “That she did not want to. I think leaving you was the hardest thing she ever did.” She wrapped her arms around him from behind, crossing them over his small chest, and felt him lean back into her immediately.
“I think that wherever she is now, she is watching you in this garden with daisies in your hair and she is laughing.”
Frederick reached up and put both his small hands over her arms.
“Is she watching now?” he said.
“Right now,” Emily said. “Absolutely.”
They sat like that for a while longer, the afternoon warm around them, neither of them in any hurry to move.
Frederick had gone comfortable and loose against her, and Emily was looking at the garden, thinking about Anne, thinking about how strange and good it was to be sitting here, in this garden, in this life she had not planned, when a voice came from the direction of the gate.
“I see the picnic has started without me.”
Emily looked up.
Theodore was coming through the garden gate, his coat already off, his sleeves rolled up, and a basket in one hand.
Frederick twisted around in Emily's lap. “You are late,” he said.
Emily’s eyes widened, shocked by Frederick’s remark. Only a few weeks ago, the boy had been unable to look Theodore in the eye.
“I am aware,” Theodore said gravely. “I was waylaid by Mr. Briggs, who had a great deal to say about the cutting garden and no intention of saying it briefly.” He set the basket down on the blanket and looked at Frederick. “You have daisies in your hair.”
“Emily put them there,” Frederick said.
“I see.” Theodore looked at Emily. “Why’d you put daisies in his hair, Emily?”
“Because I wanted to,” she answered, biting back a smile.
Theodore shook his head slowly and let out a dramatic sigh.
Then he looked at the basket, then at Frederick.
“Well, Frederick? Since you have been locked in that nursery for an eternity, I thought perhaps we should see if you still remember how to run. There is a game I used to play that involves a very large amount of running. Are you up for it?”
Frederick was on his feet before the sentence was finished.
Emily laughed. “He has been asking to go outside for three days,” she said. “I would not stand between him and running if I were you.”
“Noted,” Theodore said and smiled at her... a smile that caused her breath to hitch. “Do you know how to play chase?” he said to Frederick.
Frederick stared at him. “Everyone knows how to play chase.”
“Good,” Theodore said. “Then you will know that the rules are very simple. You run. I chase, and when I catch you —”
Frederick was already running.
Theodore looked at Emily. She looked back at him. He set off after the boy with the ease of a man who was not actually trying very hard yet, and Frederick shrieked as he sprinted, excited to be chased.
As the afternoon wore on, Emily sat back and watched, mesmerized.
She had expected Theodore to be stiff, or perhaps overly cautious, but he was surprisingly agile with the boy.
There was no weight of grief or formality between them, no dark shadows of the past. Frederick actually looked happy, and in that moment, Emily thought to herself that she had made the best decision for him.
That she found the perfect person for him.
Frederick was laughing openly. The full laugh, the unguarded one, the one Emily had not heard since he arrived, came out freely and without reservation, carried across the garden on the warm afternoon air.
She heard Frederick shout something. She heard Theodore respond.
“You'll never catch me!” Frederick shouted again, darting around a muddy patch.
She turned, drawn by the sound of his voice.
Theodore turned on a dime, his boots slipping for a fraction of a second. “Is that a challenge? Because I must warn you, I am —”
Before he could finish, Frederick lunged forward, catching Theodore right at the back of the knees. With a startled grunt and a very un-ducal flail of his arms, Theodore went down.
He landed squarely in a patch of thick, dark mud. Emily gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. She waited for the explosion, for the cold fury of a man whose expensive buckskin breeches had just been ruined.
Instead, Theodore sat up, wiped a streak of mud from his cheek, and looked at Frederick with a predatory, playful glint in his eye.
“Oh, so it’s war, then?”
Before Frederick could retreat, Theodore’s hand shot out.
He grabbed the boy by the waist, and Frederick went into the mud with a shriek that startled the birds from the trees at the far end of the garden.
Within seconds, the Duke and the boy were embroiled in a chaotic, messy tussle.
They were wrestling and laughing, both of them quickly becoming indistinguishable from the earth beneath them.
Emily watched them, her heart doing a strange, fluttering somersault. He looked so good with children. It made her wonder whether he would want some of his own one day.
She shook the thought as quickly as it came. It was dangerous to daydream about a man who only spoke of a cordial marriage.
Theodore, however, was no longer looking at the mud. He was looking at her, and her eyes widened when she realized this. A wicked, boyish grin spread across his face as he wiped a smear of mud across his forehead like war paint.
“Frederick,” Theodore said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial whisper. “Do you see the Duchess? She looks far too clean. It is quite insulting to both of us, don't you think?”
Frederick gasped, his eyes widening. “She’s very clean, Your Grace! It’s not fair.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Theodore declared, springing to his feet. “Should we get her?”
Emily’s eyes went wide. “No! Your Grace, don't you dare! This is French silk!”