He was living in a barrel for a time which she considered appropriate. He outgrew the barrel. We tried a pen but she gestured at the current situation which served as its own explanation. The near smile threatened again. He suppressed it.
His self-containment was quite remarkable. She thought the kind of skill that suggests years of practice, much like certain musicians make the most technically demanding pieces appear effortless, except musicians usually aim to impress someone, and he seemed mostly intent on impressing himself. "Step out of the pond, Miss Bramwell," he said, and this time it was less a command and more a request, the shift in tone quite noticeable. She walked out of the pond. Water streamed from her skirts in a sustained and utterly undignified flow.
She did not look at it. She looked at the Duke, who was looking at her feet, which were wet, bare, and adorned with good Wiltshire pond mud from toe to ankle. He looked away, not dismissively, but quickly, as if the gaze was involuntary. "Mr. Holt," he said. The butler materialized from the path with the seamlessness of a man who had been present all along, which he had been, observing the situation with the expression of someone who has maintained dignity on behalf of others for two decades, and considered this morning a particular test of that vocation.
"Your Grace." "Please see if Mrs. Apprentice can find something suitable for Miss Bramwell." "Of course, Your Grace," Mr. Holt replied in the tone of a man who would certainly do this and also be privately pondering it for some time afterward. The Duke looked at Dioynes. Dioynes looked at the Duke with the placid attention of a creature who had assessed the situation and found it perfectly acceptable. Thomas can come for him with the net.
The Duke suggested, "Thomas can come for him with the net." "He does not respond well to nets," Felicity said. "He responds to bread, ideally stale, offered from the left hand because he approaches from the left when the bread is in the left hand, and from the right when it is in the right hand. He has views about approach-angles." The Duke looked at her. It was the look of a man encountering a level of duck-specific intelligence he had not anticipated at this hour of the morning.
"Is that so?" "I know it sounds particular." "It sounds," he said carefully, "very particular indeed." He paused. "We can find bread." Mrs. Apprentice, Alifford Court's housekeeper for fourteen years, whose organizational prowess was spoken of with the reverence usually reserved for architectural features, produced a dry dress, a towel, a pair of thick wool stockings, and a room to change in, all within seven minutes of Mr. Holt's return to the house.