Chapter 247: The Future that we Want Part 2

Ernest let out a quiet, amused breath into the shade of the copper beech. "You waited less than ten seconds to overrule my deposition."

"I gave your argument full, judicial consideration," Eleanor said, lifting her head to look into his eyes. "And then I remembered my own life."

Ernest tilted his head slightly. "Your three brothers."

"Our house was never quiet, Ernest. It was noisy, untidy, and thoroughly chaotic. Someone was always shouting down the corridor, someone had torn the knee of their trousers, someone was demanding assistance with Latin grammar, and Lucas was inevitably conducting an experiment that threatened the structural stability of the scullery."

"A harrowing domestic model," Ernest remarked dryly.

"It was wonderful," she said, her eyes shining with genuine warmth. "When Henry left for the university, the halls felt terribly hollow. When Thomas went away to school, it felt worse. An only child lives in a world built entirely for adults, Ernest. I want our children to have one another when we are old. I want our halls to be loud."

Ernest sat in silence, letting the picture form in his mind.

The house he had begun sketching on the southern crest of Oriel. Not an empty, echoing museum of polished parquet, ticking regulator clocks, and velvet ropes, but a living home. Small boots left haphazardly on the threshold. Stray volumes abandoned open on the gallery stairs. The sound of running feet down the eastern corridor while he sat at his desk. Eleanor’s voice calling up the stairwell.

"Three," Ernest conceded quietly.

Eleanor straightened up, her gray eyes widening in surprise. "Truly?"

"I am willing to accept the revised specification."

She narrowed her eyes with immediate suspicion. "That was remarkably swift. What is the contingency clause?"

"I reserve the right to petition for an operational truce after the arrival of the first."

She laughed aloud, wrapping her arms around his neck. "Fair enough."

She settled back against his shoulder, her gaze drifting back to the green lawn by the pond. "Do you care whether they are boys or girls?"

Ernest considered the question carefully. "No." He paused, watching a young father haul a giggling toddler out of the flowerbeds across the grass. "Though I believe I would like a daughter."

Eleanor tilted her head back, looking up at his sharp jawline. "You would be entirely defenseless."

"I possess considerable executive authority, Eleanor."

"You would give her whatever she pointed at within three seconds," Eleanor said with absolute certainty. "She would possess her own steam launch before she reached long skirts."

"A small steam launch could provide exceptional practical instruction in marine mechanics," Ernest pointed out defensively.

Eleanor stared at him, her lips parting in disbelief. "You have already considered the mechanical curriculum for a hypothetical daughter."

"Supervised instruction in thermodynamics fosters independent reasoning."

"She is currently imaginary, Ernest!"

"That does not invalidate the educational utility of the apparatus."

Eleanor pressed her face into the crook of his neck, her shoulders shaking with helpless laughter. "Heaven preserve that child. She will be forced to calculate boiler pressure before she learns long division."

"She will be thoroughly educated," Ernest insisted, his hand settling over hers.

"And a son?" she asked softly, her amusement settling into something gentler.

"The same," Ernest said. "Whatever they wish to become. If one of them possesses an interest in the foundries, I will teach them the chemistry of iron. If they wish to study medicine, you will guide their clinic work. And if they care for neither..."

He looked out over the quiet park, his voice firm, steady, and unshakeable.

"Then they will find their own work. I built Teucher Industrial to serve the realm, Eleanor. I did not build it to become an iron collar around our children’s throats. They will not be born with an obligation to carry my ledger."

Eleanor watched his face, her gray eyes softening with profound respect. She touched the lapel of his coat, her thumb resting over his lapel. "No succession charts?"

"None," Ernest said. "They will be our children. That is entirely sufficient."

They sat together as the afternoon light lengthened across the water, the sun dipping behind the chestnut trees and painting the grass in long, golden bands of amber and bronze.

"Have you considered names?" she asked after a while.

"No," Ernest said.

"None at all? Baron Teucher without a preliminary draft?"

"I don’t think a name can be fully determined from an engineering table," he said, turning to look at her. "I think I would need to see her face first. To know who she is."

Eleanor gazed at him, the teasing light entirely gone from her eyes. She reached up, her thumb lightly tracing the ridge of his cheekbone. "You are going to be a wonderful father, Ernest."

Ernest caught her wrist, holding her palm gently against his cheek. "I have no reference manual for fatherhood, Eleanor. I expect to commit significant procedural errors."

"We will make them together," she said softly.

"Together," Ernest repeated.

He leaned down and kissed her, an unhurried, peaceful embrace beneath the copper leaves.

They eventually rose from the bench, brushing dry moss from their clothes. Further along the pathway, they passed a village father teaching his young son to ride an early two-wheeled velocipede. The boy wobbled alarmingly, his small boots slipping from the pedals.

Ernest instinctively slowed his pace, his eyes narrowing. "His center of mass is positioned too far aft. If he does not correct the steering angle—"

Eleanor took his elbow, tugging him firmly along the gravel. "Do not intervene, Baron."

"He will lose traction, Eleanor."

"That is how children learn balance."

"He could reduce the probability of abrasion by forty percent if he simply adjusted his posture."

The small iron front wheel caught a rut, and the boy tumbled sideways onto the turf with a loud squeak of surprise.

Ernest halted instantly.

The child sat up, rubbed his dusty elbow, sniffled twice, and looked up at his father. The man knelt in the grass, brushed the dirt from the boy’s knees, spoke a few low words of encouragement, and helped him right the frame. Within a minute, the boy was pedaling again, wobbling determinedly toward the gate.

Eleanor looked up at Ernest, her lips twitching. "You are going to be completely terrible at this."

He turned to her, feigning offense. "At what?"

"At watching our children make mistakes."

Ernest frowned. "I understand that mechanical failure is highly educational."

"With machines, Ernest. Not with living people."

"I am entirely capable of restraint."

"You will attempt to install brass safety railings on every tree at Oriel."

"Trees present severe structural hazards to developing limbs," he muttered, though his ears flushed pink.

"Our children are climbing trees, Ernest."

"Only species with low branch forks," he countered.

"High trees," she smiled, linking her arm through his. "Very high trees."

They bought paper cones of fresh cream ice from a painted handcart near the park exit. Eleanor chose wild strawberry; Ernest selected plain vanilla. Before they had taken three paces down the village lane, Eleanor leaned across and took a generous taste from his cone.

Ernest stopped, looking down at his ice cream. "You possessed the opportunity to order vanilla."

"I desired strawberry."

"Then why are you consuming my portion?"

"Marriage," she stated simply, licking her lips with satisfaction.

"That word is becoming an all-purpose justification for administrative theft."

"It is a remarkably useful statute," she laughed.

They walked slowly through the quiet lanes of Willowbrook as the streetlamps began to flicker awake in the twilight. The air smelled of woodsmoke, damp earth, and blooming orchard boughs.

Ernest held his wife’s hand, the platinum bands clicking softly with every unhurried step.

For the first time in his life, Baron Ernest Teucher had no schedule to maintain, no trains to dispatch, and no blueprints to draft. And looking down at Eleanor walking beside him in the dusk, he knew that the greatest enterprise he would ever undertake was the life they were beginning to build together.