Chapter 22
Mere hours later, the spell was broken. Amelia was seated outside, where Henry was trudging forward clumsily, chasing the ball—slower than usual, but with the same fervour. Relief coursed through Amelia as she looked at her son.
It had been one of the longest nights of her life, and she couldn’t help but be grateful for not having to go through it on her own.
Tobias. He was there for her.
As a brother-in-law, of course. He was there for Henry. Nothing else.
But her body betrayed the lie. Every muscle remembered the weight of Tobias’s arm around her shoulders. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath her ear.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, willing the memories away.
The fever had broken. Henry was well. And whatever strange intimacy had existed in those dark hours—when fear had stripped away every careful pretence—belonged firmly in the past.
It had to.
“Mama! The ball gone!”
The ball had rolled into the bushes, and Henry toddled toward her with that particular combination of determination and precarious balance unique to young children.
His dark curls caught the sunlight, and colour bloomed in his cheeks—real colour, not the frightening flush of fever.
Relief flooded through her anew, as fresh as it had been at dawn.
He’s all right. My son is all right.
She bent to retrieve the ball, grateful for the excuse to hide her face. “Shall we see if you can catch it this time, my darling?”
“I catch it! I’m very good at catching!”
The confidence in his pronouncement made her laugh—properly laugh, from somewhere deep in her chest. When had she last done that? Laughed without measuring the sound first, without calculating whether it was appropriate or properly subdued?
She rolled the ball gently across the grass. Henry gave chase with a war cry that would have done a general proud, his small legs pumping with impressive speed. He reached the ball, attempted to scoop it up mid-stride, and promptly tumbled over it in a tangle of limbs.
Amelia’s heart seized—that instinctive maternal terror—but Henry simply lay there for a moment before dissolving into giggles.
“I almost catched it, Mama! Did you see?”
“I did see. You were magnificent.” She crossed to him, offering her hands. “Though perhaps we might work on the actual catching part?”
He grasped her fingers and pulled himself upright with the resilience of childhood. No tears. No complaints about grass-stained knees or dignity thoroughly abandoned. Just pure, uncomplicated joy in being alive and playing on a beautiful morning.
When did I forget how to do that? How to simply... be?
The answer arrived with uncomfortable clarity: the day she’d married Edward and learned that joy was something to be carefully rationed, properly controlled, never displayed with unseemly enthusiasm.
“Lady Amelia.”
A servant’s voice from the terrace. She turned to find Peters hovering with that particular expression servants wore when delivering news they suspected might not be welcome.
“Lord Ashbourne has called, my lady. I’ve shown him to the morning room.”
Her stomach plummeted. Lord Ashbourne. She had all but forgotten his intended courtship of her—having sent him away by word of servants when he’d called upon her when Henry had gotten sick. She supposed she had to see him now. Had to look forward. Toward her future.
The respectable, appropriate future Tobias kept insisting she needed.
“Tell him...” She glanced at Henry, who’d already rediscovered the ball and was attempting to balance it on his head. “Tell him I shall join him shortly. I need to make myself presentable.”
“Very good, my lady.”
Peters withdrew, and Amelia remained frozen on the lawn. She should go. Should tidy her hair, smooth her morning dress, and present herself to the man who represented everything sensible and proper.
But her feet refused to move. Her hands trembled as she smoothed her skirts—not from nervousness about Lord Ashbourne, but from something else entirely. Something that felt uncomfortably like reluctance.
This is what you wanted. Security for Henry. A proper marriage to erase the scandal of living with your brother-in-law. This is...
“I wouldn’t if I were you.”
The amused voice made her spin around.
Tobias stood at the garden’s edge, and the sight of him drove every coherent thought from her mind.
He’d discarded his coat somewhere. His waistcoat hung open, revealing the fine linen of his shirt beneath.
His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, exposing forearms that had no earthly right to be so distracting.
Sunlight caught in his chestnut hair, turning it shades of burnished copper, and his usual careful composure had softened into something more relaxed.
More real.
More dangerous.
“Wouldn’t what?” she managed, grateful her voice emerged relatively steady.
“Attempt to balance anything on his head.” He gestured to Henry with a smile.
“I tried it once as a boy. Ended with a concussion and my mother banning me from the library for a month.” His grin was unrepentant.
“Though in my defence, I’d chosen a rather large volume of Plutarch.
Henry’s showing admirable restraint with just a ball. ”
Henry, hearing his name, looked up from his architectural pursuits. His face transformed—joy blazing across it with such intensity Amelia felt her chest constrict.
“Papa!”
He abandoned the ball immediately and launched himself toward Tobias with a squeal that probably disturbed every bird in Kent. Tobias dropped to one knee, opening his arms, and caught the boy with practised ease.
Then he lifted Henry high—so high Amelia’s heart stuttered—and tossed him gently into the air.
Henry’s shriek of delight echoed across the lawn, pure and unrestrained. Tobias caught him on the descent, tossed him again, and the sound of their combined laughter did something peculiar to Amelia’s lungs.
She had not had a childhood as free as this, though it was something she’d always wished for—though to her, it was as distant as the stars. She never thought it possible.
Even after her marriage, she never thought it would be something her child would have.
“Again!” Henry demanded, his small hands fisting in Tobias’s shirt. “More high, Papa!”
“Greedy creature.” But Tobias obliged, and the giggles that followed made Amelia’s vision blur traitorously.
She pressed her fingers to her lips, watching them. Watching this man who had no obligation whatsoever treat her son not as a duty or a burden, but as something infinitely precious.
Edward had held him once or twice—always uncomfortably, distant. Tobias held him as though nothing else mattered. As though making a child laugh was the most important occupation in the world.
“You’re quite good with him,” she said when Tobias finally set Henry down—though the boy immediately began climbing his legs like a determined monkey. “Natural, even.”
Henry chose that moment to demonstrate his continued fascination with gentleman’s attire by attempting to pull Tobias’s waistcoat off entirely. Tobias caught his questing hands gently, redirecting them toward the wooden ball instead.
“Perhaps we should focus on simpler pursuits, lad. Like mastering the art of catching before we advance to gambling.”
“Catch!” Henry announced, apparently approving this plan.
The morning dissolved into something timeless then.
The three of them on the sun-warmed lawn, taking turns rolling the ball whilst Henry gave chase with increasing enthusiasm and decreasing success.
Tobias invented increasingly ridiculous commentary for each attempt, making Henry dissolve into giggles.
Amelia found herself drawn into their orbit despite every intention to maintain an appropriate distance.
When Henry crashed into her skirts for the third time, nearly toppling them both, Tobias was there—his hands steadying her waist, his chest solid against her back for one heart-stopping moment.
“Careful,” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear. “The boy has a gift for chaos.”
She should step away. Should put a proper distance between them. Should remember that servants might be watching, that this easy intimacy was precisely what propriety forbade. Should go inside and meet with Lord Ashbourne.
Instead, she found herself leaning back fractionally—just for a heartbeat—into his warmth.
Then Henry demanded their attention with another war cry, and the moment passed.
But something had shifted. Some invisible line they’d been carefully maintaining had blurred, and neither seemed inclined to redraw it.
Tobias invented a game that involved Henry running between them, collecting the ball from one and delivering it to the other like some small, giggling courier.
It was entirely pointless and utterly delightful.
Amelia found herself crouching to receive Henry’s enthusiastic deliveries, laughing as he tripped over his own feet, completely forgetting to worry about grass stains or dignified behaviour.
At one point, when Tobias had somehow ended up sprawled on the lawn with Henry using his chest as a climbing apparatus, she heard herself say, “You’re going to spoil him terribly.”
“Excellent.” Tobias attempted to sit up, which only made Henry giggle harder and redouble his climbing efforts. “Every child deserves to be thoroughly spoiled by someone.”
“Edward would never have—” She stopped herself, but not quickly enough.
Tobias’s expression softened. “I know.”
Those two words held more understanding than any lengthy speech. He knew what her marriage had been. Knew what Edward’s rigid propriety had cost both her and Henry. Knew, and didn’t judge her for the relief she sometimes felt that her son would never know his father’s coldness.
She stared with a smile as Tobias threw Henry up into the air before catching him. Her son giggled with absolute glee.