She looked up, her gaze finding him immediately. Surprise flashed across her face before she gathered only a fragment of her usual composure. He had caught her too off guard for anything more.
He was quietly glad of it.
“Millicent,” she said after a moment, “has a great many ideas. She is that sort of rabbit.”
He stepped into the room. Violet heard him, turned her head, and made the sound she made when she had located somethingof interest. She held Archibald out toward him in a way that did not mean she intended to give it, but that she wished to establish that she had it.
“Thank you,” he said with a smile, sitting on the blanket. “He looks well.”
Violet retracted Archibald immediately.
“She does that,” Isadora remarked.
“I’ve noticed.” James looked at the shelf. At the remaining animals—the fox, the deer, the ambiguous badger. “How many of them have names?”
“The horse is Archibald. The rabbit is Millicent. The bear is private about his.” She glanced up at him. “The fox I have not gotten to yet.”
“The fox’s name should be something sharp,” James said, picking it up without thinking. “Something that sounds fast.”
Isadora looked at him.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She looked back at Violet. “Go on, then.”
He turned the fox over in his hand. It was small and well-carved, the kind of toy made with enough care that it had lasted long enough to become worn at the edges. He thought about his cousin, who had lived in this house and chosen these things for a child he had loved and would not see grow up.
“Sebastian,” he murmured.
Isadora tapped her chin. “Sebastian the Fox.”
“He is quick and clever, and he tends to appear when you least expect him,” James said.
He set the fox on the blanket in front of Violet, and she regarded it curiously. Then she picked it up and proceeded to stuff it into her mouth.
“Sebastian is perhaps not the peacemaker I hoped he would be,” James drawled.
Isadora laughed. It was a genuine laugh, unguarded, the laugh that did something entirely unreasonable to the atmosphere of whatever room it sounded in.
She caught him looking, so he turned his gaze to Violet.
The nursery was warm, the fire steady, the light turning amber through the windows. The maid had finished folding and slipped out at some point without either of them noticing.
Violet was sitting on the blanket with Archibald in one hand and Sebastian in the other, conducting some private arbitration between them.
“You were going to say something when you came in,” Isadora noted.
James looked at her. “Yes, earlier,” he said. “I do not do this well. I want you to know that I know?—”
The door opened, and Mrs. Plum came into the room, a folded blanket over one arm and Violet’s feeding things in the other hand. She stopped when she saw them both, assessed the room in one second, and inclined her head.
“Forgive me, Your Grace. Your Grace.” A brief acknowledgment of them both, slightly uncertain in its order, which was perhaps understandable given that there were two of them now. “It’s nearly two. Time for her feeding.”
“Of course.” Isadora rose with Violet in a single practiced movement before transferring the baby to the nurse’s arms.
Violet immediately objected.
“Archibald,” Isadora said, retrieving the carved horse from the blanket and pressing it into the baby’s hand. The objection ceased.
