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‘You think that you will win with me where you have not won with my son?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Have a picnic.’ It was William’s first acknowledgement of Briggs.
They both stared at the child. Who looked serious.
‘Have a picnic,’ he repeated.
‘There,’ she said, smiling up at Briggs. ‘William wishes you to have a picnic.’
Chapter Seven
Briggs was... He didn’t know what he was. Of all the things he had expected when he had walked into his son’s room, it had not been to see Beatrice sitting with a determinedly cheerful expression on her face in the middle of a blanket on the floor, eating a picnic.
Nor did he expect to see William laying on his side, staring at the wall.
Beatrice might interpret this as insolence, but Briggs knew that it was not. He also knew that if William were unhappy with Beatrice’s presence, he would’ve made it known. He would not simply lie there quietly.
He had been avoiding her.
That was the truth. And now that he acknowledged it to himself he felt replete with cowardice, and cowardice was not something he trafficked in. He had told himself that it was for her own good. After all, the conversation in the carriage ride had steered far too close to intimate for what he had decided their marriage would be. But he had also decided that she was his. And he fundamentally could not excuse his neglect of her. Not when her care and keeping was his responsibility.
What he had not expected was for her to be with William. And he felt... Oddly exposed, and angry about it. At war with the emotions that Beatrice created inside him.
And he found himself sitting down. On the floor. He hated that she was right. But he could not deny William. And he had asked him to have a picnic.
‘William has shown me his collection of cards.’
‘Has he?’
‘Yes. I quite enjoyed hearing about everything he knows.’
‘Unless you’ve spent a considerable amount of hours with him, you have not scratched the surface of what he knows,’ Briggs said, marvelling slightly at the pride that he felt when he said it. William was in possession of a great deal of information. And while he might not be able to carry on a fluid conversation about whatever you wanted him to, he could certainly give you all of the information there was to have on the Roman Colosseum.
‘I don’t doubt that,’ Beatrice said.
William rolled over then, as if he was intrigued by the direction of the conversation. Briggs couldn’t help but smile.
‘You know quite a lot, don’t you, William?’
‘I know everything about the Colosseum,’ William said.
‘William, are you interested in London?’
‘London is interesting,’ he said. ‘Westminster and St James’s Palace.’
‘You’re very clever,’ she said. ‘Do you look forward to joining us in London?’
‘He won’t be joining us,’ Briggs said.
William did not react to that.
‘Why not?’ Beatrice asked.
‘He will not be joining us because he does not like to travel. He finds carriage rides to be interminable, and the disruption to his routine makes him fractious.’
‘Oh, it all makes me fractious as well,’ Beatrice said. ‘I am quite upended, and a bit fussy. But that does not mean we should not do things.’
