“Stay Papa,” he murmured, his eyelids already drooping. “Stay.”
“I could carry him up,” Tobias offered quietly. “If you do not object?”
It would be prudent, Amelia knew, to object. To tell him thank you, but no—to carry her own son upstairs and not see more of her brother-in-law in this manner.
“Yes,” she heard herself say. “Thank you.”
They walked back to the house in companionable silence, Henry’s breathing already settling into the rhythm of sleep. Amelia watched silently as he lay her son down before he turned to her.
“Some… tea perhaps?” He sounded almost like an uncertain little boy, and she could not help but smile.
“Of course, my lord.”
They descended to the drawing room in silence. Amelia could not help but glance at him. A speck of dust sat upon his cheek, no doubt from playing in the garden, and his clothes were wrinkled.
In all her years of being married to Edward, she had never seen him looking anything but pristine, and she looked down at once. She had to stop comparing them. It would not do.
They sat down silently, and she rang the bell for tea, more to do something than out of a need for it. When the tea arrived, he prepared her cup without asking—somehow knowing she preferred it without sugar, with just a splash of milk.
“How did you know?” she asked before she could stop herself.
“Know what?”
“How I take my tea. I never told you.”
He tilted his head a bit and grinned at her, looking quite boyish as he did so. “I have been paying attention. You take it the same way every morning at breakfast, though you likely do not realize I notice such things.”
He had been watching her. The realization made her heart skip a beat. She inwardly shook her head at herself, attempting to calm herself with deep breaths. Her brother-in-law had no business affecting her heart in any manner.
“You are good with him,” she said after several moments of sipping in silence. “With Henry. He has taken to you remarkably.”
“He is easy to love.” Tobias set down his cup. “He is… a lot like you.”
Once again, the effect on her heart was dangerous, and she looked desperately for something, anything to say.
“Henry called you Papa,” she said at last, steering toward safer waters. “And you did not correct him.”
“Should I have?” Tobias leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “He is one year old, Amelia. He will not remember Edward. I… believe it is unnecessarily cruel to insist he call me uncle, maintaining a distance that serves no purpose save propriety. He is to be my heir. Is it not better to allow him the comfort of believing he has a father who loves him?”
She avoided his gaze by looking intently at the cup of tea, trembling in her hand. “Edward would have insisted on the proper designation.”
“I am not Edward.” He spoke quietly, though with a strange determination. “I will never be Edward, and I believe you know this. Your son deserves warmth, Amelia. He deserves laughter and play and someone who sees him as more than an obligation. If he wishes to call me Papa, I shall answer to it gladly.”
Tears pricked her eyes, though she blinked them back furiously. “I say again,” she said, thinking back to the other time she had done this. “You are a kind man, Tobias Grant.”
He flashed her a smile that seemed almost sad before taking a sip of his tea. She looked at him anxiously, waiting for him to answer her, say something—anything.
He never did.
CHAPTER 9
“Do you truly believe widening the lane would improve drainage sufficiently?”
Amelia glanced at Tobias as they walked along the eastern boundary. The afternoon sun was growing unbearably hot, and she pressed a handkerchief to her forehead. Tobias nodded.
“I believe it would help considerably. The Carters mentioned their cellar floods each spring. If we widen the lane here and grade it properly, the water would drain toward the brook rather than pooling near the foundations.”
Tobias nodded, his gaze scanning the terrain. “You have clearly given this considerable thought.”
