Page 61 of Married to the Icy Duke
He shook his head again. “Green.”
“What about my flowers, Tommy?” Sybella chipped in, excitement wavering in her voice. “This large one here is white, isn’t it?”
Tommy laughed, shaking his head. “Purple, Aunt.”
Two words! Two at once! Charlotte clutched her flowers to her chest, smiling so widely that she thought her face might tear in two. Sybella flinched back, eyes wide, delighted.
“So it is,” she whispered, reaching out to touch the curve of Tommy’s plump cheek. “What a clever nephew I have.”
“What about the sky, Tommy?” Mary asked, in the excited silence that followed. “It’s rather pale today, isn’t it? Gray, do you think?”
Tommy tilted his head up to inspect the sky, then glanced back at Mary.
“Blue,” he said, in the confident tones of a child who knows he is right.
Almost at the exact same instant, the three women gave strangled screams and flung themselves at the little boy. Sybella snatched him up first, holding him tight, and Charlotte peppered kisses on his cheeks and forehead. Mary smoothed his hair back from his forehead, her eyes bright with pride.
Tommy squealed with delight, flailing to escape. He managed at last to free himself from Sybella’s tight grip and sat on the picnic blanket, giggling. Then, his gaze slipped past them all and fixed on something in the distance. He sucked in a breath, eyes widening.
“Uncle!” Tommy yelped, scrambling to his feet. “Uncle!”
CHAPTER 18
Therethey were. Isaac’s chest loosened when he spotted Charlotte, Sybella, and Tommy up ahead, all sitting on a picnic blanket with a pair of footmen kicking their heels in the background. He swallowed down his anger and slowed his horse to a trot.
Tommy came running towards him, beaming.
Isaac stopped the horse altogether and slid down from the saddle. He threw a quick, furious glance at Charlotte and Sybella—he wasn’t sure which of them was to blame for taking Tommy out of the house without his say-so, but it was likely a team effort—and then glanced down at Tommy, forcing a smile. Now was not the time, he supposed.
“Do you want to see my horse?” he asked, trying to sound calm and playful. “Would you like me to lift you up so that you can stroke his mane?”
Tommy nodded eagerly, and Isaac swept him up. Lifting him up, he let Tommy gently stroke the horse’s smooth white mane.
“When you are old enough,” Isaac promised, “you’ll have a horse of your own. You can choose one, and I’ll buy it for you. How does that sound?”
Tommy beamed.
“In the meantime,” Isaac continued, “you have a fine rocking horse in the nursery. Why don’t you practice on that?”
Tommy said nothing, which Isaac took to be ano. Before he could say a word, Charlotte appeared at his elbow. A quick glance over the top of her head showed that Sybella was still on the picnic blanket, talking to Mary. His arrival, it seemed, had not sent them into a flurry of guilt and panic. Instead, they seemed to merely think that he’d come to join them.
Well, they were wrong.
“I don’t think Tommy likes the rocking horse very much,” Charlotte said.
Isaac pressed his lips tightly together. He set Tommy down on his feet, and the little boy rushed off like a wind-up toy, hurrying back to where Sybella and Mary sat.
Before Charlotte could continue, Isaac spoke, his voice clipped and hissing.
“Tell me, was it you or my sister who chose to take Tommy out of the housewithoutmy permission?”
She blinked, faltering. “I … What?”
“Don’t act the fool with me, Charlotte. You and Sybella took my own nephew out of the house and brought him here, to a public space with all manner of dangers, without so much as a by-your-leave. What have you to say for yourself?”
Charlotte stared up at him, visibly stunned. This somehow made Isaac angrier. Whywasshe stunned, acting as thoughhewere the one being unreasonable? It was bad enough that clearly nobody—not even Perling or Mrs. Ribb—had thought to inform him that Tommy was gone. He had been forced to come home and discover that his nephew, his bride-to-be, and his sister were all missing, only to be told, quite matter-of-factly, that they’d all gone out.
He folded his arms tightly across his chest and glared down at Charlotte.
