Chapter Three

“But I don’t understand the purpose.” Adam had made that objection several times.

Lord and Lady Jonquil had suggested a number of games that any child would enjoy. Adam, as Robbie knew well, was not “any child.” They were being very patient with him, but they were clearly baffled.

“The purpose of a bilboquet is... entertainment,” Lord Jonquil said. “It’s a challenge to try to catch the ball on the stick. The attempts often go hilariously wrong, making it humorous to try and also to watch.”

“The purpose is to laugh at people?” Adam’s dark brows pulled inward, and his wee mouth tensed into a tiny twist of lips.

“Not at people,” Lord Jonquil was quick to say. “ With people, certainly.”

Robbie sat a bit apart from the couple and her little charge. Nursemaids weren’t meant to participate in these things, but the situation was an unusual one. Adam was visiting without a parent, and he hadn’t a governess—yet. He was left to navigate this uncharted territory without the usual support. Ought she to intervene? To explain a bit more about Adam?

His expression remained hard. “Sometimes people are laughing at someone even though they say they aren’t.”

“That won’t happen here,” Lady Jonquil said. “We would never permit it.”

Wariness remained on that little face. Robbie’s heart broke to see it. He’d always been a cautious boy, but the past months had turned his vigilance to fear. Too many people had disappointed and abandoned him. He expected it now.

“Do show him how to use the bilboquet, Lucas,” Lady Jonquil said to her husband.

While Lord Jonquil demonstrated, his wife rose from her chair and crossed to sit beside Robbie. “Has he truly never played with a bilboquet? I thought most children had.”

“I’ll not speak ill of the late duke,” Robbie said, “but I will tell you that Falstone Castle was a solemn place while this duke was a wee thing. He had a few toys, but not many. And his departed father was nae one for games and such, so our wee duke didn’t learn to enjoy them.”

“Ah.” Lady Jonquil nodded. “Hence, the reason he couldn’t fathom the purpose of the toy. He did not grow up realizing that toys don’t need a ‘purpose’ other than enjoyment.”

“I did try to teach him,” Robbie said.

Lady Jonquil gave her a reassuring smile. “I am absolutely certain you did.”

They were a generous-hearted couple. Robbie had realized that straight off.

“Do you suppose Adam would be more inclined to play if he thought the toy he was playing with had some educational value or strategy to its use?”

“Aye. ’Tis how I convinced him to learn chess and draughts. The strategy of them are good for the mind, he decided.” A hint of sadness touched her as she thought back on those discussions. How she wished he could have been a lighthearted little boy. The weight of a title and responsibilities had landed on him far too soon, and he’d lost his chance at being a child.

During this conversation, Adam had been convinced to accept the toy, but he didn’t seem overly sure of the thing. “What if the ball hits me?”

“It might,” Lord Jonquil said. “But it doesn’t truly hurt.”

“I don’t want to get hit.” He shoved the bilboquet back into his host’s hands, then folded his arms in a posture that was likely meant to appear authoritative but came across far closer to petulant.

Lady Jonquil rose. “Adam, what do you know of Sir Isaac Newton?”

“He was a man of science, and he is not alive anymore.”

The lady dipped her head in solemn acknowledgment. “Do you know that he developed a scientific theory that sought to explain the behavior of a toy?”

Interest entered little Adam’s eyes. “A toy?”

Lady Jonquil nodded again.

Adam looked to Lord Jonquil.

“Julia is far more intelligent than I am,” he said. “If you want the answer to a scientific question, you will need to inquire of her.” There was not a bit of jesting in his tone and not even a hint of disapproval. Indeed, he spoke with absolute pride in his voice.

“Would you like to learn more about this toy?” Lady Jonquil asked Adam.

“Yes, please.”

She opened the little chest of toys and diversions they’d brought out for Adam to enjoy. After a bit of digging, she pulled out three tops.

Adam eyed them, then her. “Tops?”

“Sir Isaac discovered a great many things about inertia and movement and gravitational forces. All these principles are part of what makes a top spin. There is much about the physical world that we do not truly understand. It is possible, in fact, that he will eventually be proven wrong in at least some of his theories. But he spent a great deal of time studying and pondering these things, and I do not think he is entirely in error.”

Lady Jonquil lifted the hem of her robe à l’anglaise and sat on the floor. The wide gown pooled around her, stiffened at the sides by her panniers. She didn’t wear as drastic a style as some ladies did. Then again, most ladies wouldn’t sit on the floor to play with a child, regardless of what they were wearing.

“If the top is still, it falls over.” She demonstrated for Adam.

Adam kneeled on the floor by her, concentrating on the toy. “You’re supposed to spin it.”

“You have used a top before.” Lord Jonquil dropped onto the floor near them both.

“Of course I have.” He sounded almost offended. His lack of familiarity with the other toys they’d suggested would make anyone wonder if he knew about toys at all.

“Centrifugal and centripetal forces are part of what makes things spin without falling over,” Lady Jonquil said, setting the top to spinning with a quick and expert flick of her fingers. “We are still learning a great deal about what keeps the top spinning.”

Adam watched, studying it. “What makes it stop?”

“Sir Isaac Newton wrote about a force he called gravity, which pulls all things toward the earth. It is believed the top falls on account of gravity,” Lady Jonquil said.

“Why doesn’t gravity knock it over while it’s spinning?”

Lord Jonquil set another top awhirl. “Centripetal and centrifugal force.”

With a firm nod, Adam declared, “This toy has a purpose. It makes cenpritipal and centrifipal force.”

Neither Lord nor Lady Jonquil corrected his mispronunciations. Robbie breathed a sigh of relief. They had made progress with the frightened little boy. If he thought they were laughing at him or thought low of him, he would close off again.

Lady Jonquil set the remaining top in front of him. “You can use this one.”

He eyed it with misgiving. Lord Jonquil laid down on the floor next to Adam and spun his top, watching it whirl. Robbie didn’t know if Lady Jonquil remained seated rather than lying down because her dress required it of her or because she wasn’t quite as spontaneous as her husband. But the lady did continue playing with the top.

Adam nudged it a bit but didn’t try to play with it. After a moment, he hopped up and rushed to where Robbie sat.

“Why aren’t you playing, wee boy?” she asked.

In a worried whisper, he said, “I don’t remember how.”

“You’ve seen Lord and Lady Jonquil spin their tops. Mimic what they do. You’ll catch the knack of it soon enough.”

“I’ll do it wrong, and then I’ll look ridiculous.” That word again.

“What if you take your top in the entryway, away from everyone, and practice a bit until you’ve sorted it?” Robbie suggested. “Then you’d not have onlookers while you set yourself to remembering the trick of it.”

Confidence reentered his expression. He rushed back over to his abandoned top and scooped it up. Tucking the toy against his black wool frock coat, he rushed from the room.

Lord and Lady Jonquil exchanged a series of looks, the sort that made up an unspoken conversation. Robbie had known a few couples with that kind of connection. She’d always wondered what that would be like. If servants were able to marry, she might’ve found that long ago. She didn’t want to entirely abandon hope of it someday but didn’t see how it was possible. She hadn’t enough saved for living on if she lost her position.

She liked her job, and she felt she’d done some good in the lives of her little charges. There was satisfaction in that.

“I hope we didn’t upset him,” Lady Jonquil said to Robbie. “We were so certain he wouldn’t have had toys to play with in his Harrow-adjacent boardinghouse. We thought he’d enjoy playing with them again.”

“He frets over being seen as an object of pity,” Robbie said. “He’s received a crushing amount of it in his short life.”

The duchess, Adam’s mother, seemed to feel nothing but pity for her child. Visitors to Falstone Castle had often responded to the scarred state of his face with a suffocating version of sympathy.

“He thinks he has to play expertly with toys or we will pity him?” Lord Jonquil asked, still lying on his stomach and spinning his top. Robbie suspected he truly enjoyed games and lighthearted diversions. And yet he gave no impression of flightiness or immaturity or simpleness.

“He fears what is unfamiliar and unexpected. He fears he’ll nae be good enough and will disappoint people.”

“Oh, the sweet boy.” Lady Jonquil looked in the direction of the doorway through which Adam had passed. “We simply must convince him he needn’t fret over any of those things while he’s here.”

“He’s in an unfamiliar place, with people he doesn’t know well.” Robbie sighed. “It won’t be an easy feat getting that wee’un to be at ease with all that.”

Lord Jonquil met her eye. “We’ve a builder here just now, putting in a walled garden. That’s another stranger. And the back lawn will be torn up in places, and I have the strong impression Adam is not overly fond of chaos.”

“I suspect the boy will give both the area of construction and your builder a wide berth.”

“Mr. Simpkin seems a single-minded fellow,” Lord Jonquil said. “He’ll likely be too focused on his work to take much note of our little duke.”

Robbie hoped that proved true. She’d have something to say on the matter if this stranger made her Adam unhappy.