Page 40 of An Offer By the Beastly Duke

“What were you good at straightaway?”

Malcolm stopped. He thought about it, which was irritating. “Shooting,” he finally said. “And patience.”

“Patience?” Nicholas sounded genuinely surprised. “You do not seem very patient, Your Grace. You seem… fast. Like you are always about to go somewhere.”

Malcolm set the bar down with a controlled clang. He turned to find Nicholas sitting cross-legged in the grass, Hector’s heavy head resting on the boy’s knee. The child was looking up with an open, forensic curiosity, as if Malcolm were a map he was trying to memorize.

“I am patient,” Malcolm said slowly, “when it matters.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I choose when to use it. It was like when we were on Lord Hillsborough’s hunt. If you move too early, you lose the prey. If you move too late, you starve. Patience is the gap between the two.”

Nicholas’ face screwed up as he thought on Malcolm’s words. “Like with the pheasant! You were very patient before you fired. You did not even breathe.”

“Yes.”

“Can you teach me how to do that?”

Malcolm picked the bar back up. “I can try one day.” He pointedly went back to his exercising.

Nicholas was quiet for nearly thirty seconds, which appeared to be his absolute limit for silence. “What was the worst thing about the Navy?”

Malcolm paused at the top of the lift, holding the iron steady. The memories of the Channel, the salt-rot, the smell of blood and wet wool, flickered behind his eyes. He lowered the bar slowly.

“The waiting,” he said.

“But you just said you were good at patience.”

“There’s a difference between choosing to wait for a shot and being made to wait for a command that never comes. Being patient is a discipline. Being forced to wait is a prison.” He set the bar against the wall and turned around. “Do you see the difference?”

Nicholas considered this with a serious, unhurried expression. “Like when Mama makes me wait to go outside until I have finished my Latin. That is being kept waiting.”

“No,” Malcolm said. “Not quite, but now is not the time to explain. You promised not to interrupt me, remember?”

Nicholas nodded dutifully and turned back to his ball, tossing it up before catching it in his palm once more. He scratched Hector’s ears, content to simply sit there again.

Twenty-three minutes passed.

Malcolm noticed when he checked his pocket watch. He had intended to dismiss the boy at exactly twenty. He stood looking at the watch-face, the ticking of the seconds feeling louder than usual.

Twenty-three.

He slid the watch back into his waistcoat. “Time,” he said.

Nicholas looked at Hector. The dog gave a slow, mournful wag of his tail. Nicholas ran his hand along the dog’s ears, then reached up and scratched that specific, sensitive spot behind the left ear. A spot Malcolm had never told him about, yet the boy had found it anyway.

He stood and brushed the grass from his trousers. He straightened his small jacket with both hands.

“Thank you, Your Grace.” he said.

It wasn’t a plea for more time. It wasn’t a lure for a return invitation. It was simple gratitude. He put his hand on Hector’s head one last time, turned, and disappeared into the woodlands at the back of the garden.

Malcolm stood up, the sweat cooling on his skin. Hector sat at his feet and stared at the tree line, too.

Twenty-three minutes.

Chapter Thirteen