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.
Then he caught the boy around the waist and rolled—carefully, but with enough surprise that Henry’s delighted shrieks probably reached London. They ended in a tangle of limbs and laughter, Tobias holding Henry against his chest whilst the boy caught his breath between giggles.
Amelia watched them, her throat impossibly tight. This was what Henry deserved. Laughter and play and someone who looked at him with such uncomplicated affection.
This was whatshedeserved, some traitorous part of her whispered. Though that thought led nowhere she could afford to follow.
Henry quickly seemed to get tired of the adults, and he moved away from them—eagerly inspecting flowers, tugging at leaves here and there, and giggling at a fly that buzzed around his head.
Tobias moved towards her then.
“He is overjoyed so easily,” she said—if only to fill the silence. She could feel him nod.
“You make it possible, my lady,” he said at last.
They stood close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from him despite the space between them. Closeenough that when he shifted his weight, his sleeve brushed her arm in a whisper of contact that shouldn’t have sent sparks racing across her skin.
Henry stumbled over a protruding root—momentum carrying him forward in a graceless tumble that ended with him sitting on his bottom, looking more surprised than hurt. The butterfly fluttered away, utterly indifferent to his failure.
Amelia moved instinctively, but Tobias was faster. He crossed to Henry in three strides and crouched beside the boy, this large hand gentle on the boy’s small back.
“You all right there, lad?”
Henry’s lower lip trembled. Not from pain—she could see that—but from the crushing disappointment of a child who’d just learned some things remained forever out of reach, no matter how desperately you chased them.
“It got away,” he said, his voice wobbling. “I almost had it, Papa, but it got away.”
“I know.” Tobias lifted him carefully, settling the boy against his chest. “But you gave it an excellent chase. I’d wager that butterfly will be telling stories about the fierce giant who nearly caught it.”
Henry sniffled, but the corners of his mouth twitched upward. “Really?”
“Absolutely. Butterflies are terrible gossips.” Tobias’s expression was perfectly solemn. “By tomorrow, every butterfly in Kent will have heard about your remarkable pursuit.”
That earned a watery giggle. Henry pressed his face against Tobias’s shoulder, one small hand fisting in his shirt, and sighed with the particular exhaustion of childhood dramatics thoroughly spent.
