Tommy did not stop one bit.
Evander crouched beside the basket. He had commanded hundreds of servants. He had managed an estate since the age of seventeen. He had faced three armed men in a Southwark alley and walked away with nothing worse than a knife wound. None of this had prepared him for the focused, ear-splitting rage of a very small person who wanted to be somewhere else.
He tried patting the blanket around Tommy’s chest. The screaming intensified. He tried rocking the basket on the floor, a gentle back-and-forth motion that seemed logical. Tommy’s face went from radish to beetroot. He tried making a low humming sound, which produced no effect whatsoever except to make Evander feel ridiculous.
This was absurd. He was a grown man with a Cambridge education, and he could not manage a creature that weighed nine pounds.
Mary’s voice surfaced in his memory, fragments from the conversations he had overheard through nursery doorways and pretended not to hear.Hold him close. Rock him. Small movements, not large.He had watched her do it a dozen times from the corridor, memorizing the angle of her arm and the rhythm of her step without admitting to himself that he was learning.
Evander reached into the basket and lifted Tommy.
The baby was warm and furious and surprisingly solid. Evander tucked him against his chest the way he had seen Mary do, one hand spread across Tommy’s back, the other supporting hishead. The wailing continued against Evander’s collarbone, wet and hot and outraged.
“All right,” Evander murmured. “All right.”
He began to walk. Down the corridor, past the gallery of portraits where his ancestors watched with painted disapproval, and back again. His steps were slow and even, and he rocked Tommy against his chest with each stride, a small, rhythmic motion that felt awkward at first and then, gradually, began to feel like something else.
Something that fit.
Tommy’s screams thinned to sobs. The sobs thinned to hiccups. His fists, which had been battering Evander’s chest, unclenched and gripped the lapel of his coat instead. Progress, of a sort. The baby was still crying, but it was the exhausted crying of a battle winding down rather than the opening salvo.
Evander stood at the end of the corridor and rocked his nephew and searched for something else, something to fill the silence between the hiccups.
A song, perhaps.
Mary sang to Tommy. Mrs. Bridwell hummed. Evander had not sung anything since school, and the thought of his baritone echoing through the corridor at midnight was enough to extinguish the idea entirely.
But his mother had told stories.
The memory arrived unbidden, vivid in a way that old memories sometimes were when summoned in the dark. His mother’s voice, low and warm, her hand on his back as he lay in bed. She had told them the same story every night for years: a tale about a brave little fox who lived in a hollow oak at the edge of a great wood and went on small adventures that always ended with him returning home to find his supper waiting.
Richard had loved the fox. Evander had loved the sound of his mother’s voice.
“There was once a fox,” Evander began. His voice was low, barely above a whisper, and the words felt strange in his mouth, as though rusty from disuse. “A small red fox who lived in a hollow oak tree, and every morning he woke up and looked out of his tree and wondered what he might find if he went a little further than the day before.”
Tommy’s hiccups slowed. His eyes, dark and enormous in the dim corridor, were fixed on Evander’s face with an intensity that bordered on the unsettling.
Evander continued down the corridor, his voice low, the words finding a rhythm that matched his stride.
“The fox crossed the brook, which was wider than it looked and colder than he expected, and on the other side he met a hedgehog sitting on a log.” Tommy’s fist loosened on Evander’s lapel. “The hedgehog was very old and very prickly and not atall pleased to be disturbed. ‘Where are you going?’ the hedgehog asked. ‘I don’t know yet,’ said the fox. ‘Then you had better keep walking,’ said the hedgehog. ‘Standing still won’t help you find it.’”
Evander turned at the end of the corridor and started back. Tommy’s body had gone heavy against his chest, the rigid fury melting into warm, boneless weight.
“So, the fox climbed the hill beyond the brook, and at the top he found a meadow full of rabbits.” Tommy blinked up at him, his dark eyes wide and fixed on Evander’s mouth. “The rabbits were useless. They couldn’t tell him where to go or what to do. But they were entertaining, and the fox sat and watched them chase each other through the grass for a while, because sometimes that is enough.”
A small sound from Tommy. Not a cry. Something softer, almost conversational, as though he had an opinion about the rabbits.
“At least you have taste,” Evander murmured. “You recognize quality storytelling.”
Tommy blinked. His mouth moved, working around nothing, and his eyes stayed locked on Evander’s face.
He rounded the landing and paced back toward the nursery. Tommy’s eyelids drooped, fought open, drooped again.
“The fox followed the river after that, all the way to a pond at the edge of the wood, where a very old toad sat on a stone.” Evander’s voice had dropped to barely a whisper. “The toad had been sitting on that stone for a hundred years, and he had seen every creature in the forest pass by at one time or another. ‘What are you looking for?’ the toad asked. ‘Something I haven’t found yet,’ said the fox. The toad thought about this for a long time. Then he said, ‘The bravest thing a fox can do is know when to go home.’”
Tommy’s eyes closed. His breathing evened out, each exhale a warm flutter against Evander’s neck. His fingers uncurled from the lapel, one by one, and his body surrendered entirely to sleep.
Evander stood in the corridor outside the nursery and finished the story in a whisper.
