I did not. Something in his expression flickered briefly. The slight adjustment of a person who has spoken and is reconsidering their intent. He recovered his composure with the practiced ease of long habit. I should have reported it, he repeated, which was technically a repetition but felt like a correction.
"He has excellent taste," Felicity offered. "Your pond is considerably better than ours." He looked at the pond. She had the distinct impression he hadn't previously considered his pond in terms of its comparative merits. Or perhaps he had, and was surprised someone else had reached the same conclusion. "Be that as it may," he said.
"I'm Felicity Bramwell. I'm visiting my cousin at Hullbrook House. I'd introduce myself more formally, but I'm standing in your pond, and I think the pond has already established the context." He looked at her with those storm blue eyes, and something shifted at their corners. Not quite a smile, more its precursor, the slight softening that comes before the decision to soften, which he clearly thought better of.
"I know who you are." Constance Hullbrook mentioned her cousin from London. "I hope not unfavorably." "The opposite," he said, which seemed to require a small effort, and which he immediately followed by straightening slightly, as if the honesty needed to be counterbalanced by posture. Miss Bramwell, if you would step out of the pond, my housekeeper can find you something dry. I still need the duck. He looked at Dioynes.
Dioynes looked back at him with the composed authority of a creature who has spent three consecutive mornings establishing the terms of a relationship and considers those terms settled. Leave the duck, the Duke instructed. I cannot leave the duck. He belongs to Constance. He appears to belong to this pond.
He has preferences about most things. He is Dioynes. The Duke looked at the duck with the expression of a man filing away new information. You named him Dioynes. Constance did.