Chapter 3
Tristan’s carriage rattled up a narrow, rutted dirt track toward its destination, a cottage on top of a hill. The cottage was a small, neat little thing, covered in ivy and sprawling honeysuckle.
A long kitchen garden wove its way down the hill. Tristan drummed his fingers on the windowsill. He had no intention of looking too intently at the life Anthony had made for himself. It was far too late for all of that.
He didn’t see the old woman in the garden until she straightened up from a bank of peas. She placed her hands on her generous hips and watched in silence as Tristan climbed down from the carriage.
“You must be the duke, then,” the woman remarked. She sounded almost disapproving and did not venture a curtsy of any kind.
“You are correct, madam,” Tristan responded brusquely. “Where is my nephew?”
“In the house,” the woman answered, jerking her chin in the direction of the cottage. “He wasn’t hurt, which was nothing short of a miracle.”
Tristan glanced briefly at the cozy-looking little cottage. It was so small. How could Anthony have lived there? Did he never think regretfully of the vast houses and glorious company he’d kept in London?
It is too late to ask him now.
Tristan swallowed past a lump in his throat and forced himself to glance back at the woman.
On closer inspection, she was not as old as he’d thought.
She was perhaps in her mid-forties, with iron-gray hair and a lined, weathered face.
There was redness around her eyes, and Tristan realized she must have been crying.
“You missed the funeral,” she stated bluntly. There was no getting past the tone of accusation in her voice, and Tristan flinched.
“I came as soon as I could. My brother and his wife are buried in the churchyard, I might assume?”
She studied him for a long moment. “You don’t seem upset.”
Tristan flashed her a brittle smile. “Don’t presume to interpret my emotions, my dear woman. Do you have any idea of the details of what happened?”
She let out a long, ragged sigh, raking a hand through the braided hair. For the first time, Tristan saw dark circles under her eyes from exhaustion.
“Betty got sick first,” she murmured, almost in a whisper.
“Then Anthony took ill. It was some sort of fever, I think. A nasty one. It killed a good few of the locals last year. Well, they decided to find a better doctor in a neighboring town and took themselves off in the cart. It was raining heavily, and I suppose he was too ill to drive well, and…” She trailed off, shaking her head.
“The cart slipped off the road and rolled down a hill. Both of them broke their necks. It was as sudden as that,” she snapped her fingers, “which must be a comfort. The babe was wrapped up tight and secure in his basket and was miraculously unharmed. It was his squalling that led us to them, though. Poor little mite.”
Tristan found that his throat had tightened almost unbearably. He swallowed a few times determinedly, trying to compose himself.
“And the letter? Who sent me the letter?”
“I did.”
He blinked. “You wrote it? Extraordinary. Allow me to compliment you on your penmanship. Who taught you to read and write?”
The woman narrowed her eyes at him. Tristan had seen this look aimed toward him before, generally on the faces of people who were imagining hitting him with something heavy.
“Betty taught me,” the woman said at last. “She’s my niece.”
“I was not aware that seamstresses had such excellent handwriting.”
Betty’s aunt heaved an angry sigh. “Well, she was taught by a lady, wasn’t she?”
This gave Tristan pause for thought. He had had no idea that his brother’s ill-chosen wife had such lofty connections. Unless, of course, this woman thought that rector’s wives and farmers’ daughters counted as ladies.
“Lady? What lady?” he demanded.
“Her friend,” the woman snapped, losing interest and picking up her hoe again. “The lady in the house.”
“In the house?”
“Yes, in the house, little mockingbird,” Betty’s aunt snapped, beginning her work again. “Go on in if you like.”
Tristan spared no further pleasantries. He strode up the paved pathway toward the pretty little cottage. He was nearly at the door when movement caught his eye through the little window. Pausing, he peered inside.
A young woman stood there with her back to the window, cradling a baby to her chest. He could see the baby’s fat little hand reaching up toward her face. Her hair, a muted gold, was pulled back in a demure knot at the back of her head.
His heart sank. It was, quite unmistakably, Lady Madeline Huxley.
Oh, bother.
“I thought that you were going to be a good deal heavier, little one,” Madeline cooed down at the baby.
He gave her a gummy smile, reaching up toward her face. A tendril of her hair had come loose, and baby Adam seemed determined to reach it and twine it around his damp little fingers.
“You don’t even know what has happened, do you?” Madeline murmured, dropping her voice. “You don’t understand.”
Of course, he didn’t understand. He was a baby.
The horror of losing his parents in such a way would be forgotten at once.
He would never even remember them. Perhaps when he was older, he’d think of them with a sort of wistfulness and wish that he had known them.
He might look at portraits and sketches given to him by other people, and try to see his own features in his parents’ faces.
There’d be no memories, though.
Was it kinder that way, or crueler? Madeline could not make up her mind.
“You shall come home with me, little Adam,” Madeline promised. “Your Aunt Hilda would love to keep you, but she has too many children of her own. Well, never mind, we shall come back and visit her, won’t we? You shall come back to London and live with Papa and me, just like Betty wanted.”
“I am not sure that will happen at all, my dear.”
She flinched at the sudden, familiar male voice. Her flinching jostled Adam, whose gummy smile turned into a burble of discontent. She whipped around, heart beating, and there he was, standing in the doorway.
The wretched Duke of Tolford.
His broad shoulders seemed to fill the small cottage doorway. The house consisted of only two rooms—a small bedroom and a larger space that served as kitchen, dining room, and parlor all in one. The ceiling was low, and the duke’s head brushed it.
When he stepped forward, he was obliged to duck down to get through the doorway, angling his shoulders sideways. He was wearing one of those dreadfully fashionable riding cloaks with about a hundred capes about the shoulders, which made him seem even larger.
“Your Grace,” she gasped. “What on earth are you doing here?”
He stared at her for a long moment, working his glove off his hand, finger by finger.
“I might ask you the same. Hand over that baby, won’t you?”
She cradled the baby closer, thinking furiously. Her carriage was left back at Hilda’s home, which was only a few minutes’ walk away. There was a coachman there, but he was old and good-natured, and would never be able to fight off a man like the Duke of Tolford.
“No, I will not. What claim do you have on him?”
The duke stared at her as if she were speaking gibberish. “What claim? Madam, you are holding my nephew in your arms.”
“Your nephew?”
“Yes. He is my brother’s son.”
Madeline’s eyes bulged. “You are part of Anthony’s family? His wretched, vile family that turned their backs on him when he married Betty? You’re beasts, all of you.”
The duke sniffed. “I believe you are not in possession of all the facts, my lady.”
“Well, now seems like the perfect time to possess me of them.” Madeline shot back.
He did not answer for a long moment, and instead strode thoughtfully around the small space, running a fingertip along the mantelpiece.
“I take it,” the duke remarked at last, “that you do not read the gossip columns.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Of course not. Well, that is my nephew, and his mother’s esteemed aunt…”
“Hilda.”
“Yes, Hilda. She wrote to me and informed me of my brother’s demise. That is why I am here.”
He held out his arms, clearly fully expecting Madeline to deposit the baby inside them obediently.
She glowered at him. “I’m sorry for your loss, Your Grace, but everybody knows that you and your family turned your backs on Anthony when he married Betty.
Betty was my friend, and she made me promise that if anything happened to her and her husband, I would raise her baby.
I intend to honor that promise, so you can put your arms away, climb back into your oversized and very noisy carriage, and take yourself back off to London! ”
There was a tense silence. The duke let his arms drop back to his sides.
“I see,” he said at last. “Well, Hilda might have written to you to bring you here, but she also wrote to me. Upon my brother’s request.”
Madeline clenched her jaw and glanced over to where Hilda stood silently in the doorway.
“Is this true?”
The duke stared at the sight of Hilda standing there.
“Heavens, you crept in here like a cat,” he muttered.
“It’s true,” Hilda said at last. “Betty was determined that you should be called, your ladyship, and Anthony wanted his brother informed. So I fulfilled their wishes.”
“Which of us do you think should keep the baby?” Madeline pressed.
Hilda sighed, scratching her head. “I couldn’t say, truly, I couldn’t. The way I look at it, whichever one of you takes the baby, he’ll get a better life than what I could give him. If you need me, I’ll be outside.”
With that, Hilda slipped away as quietly as she’d come, leaving Madeline and the duke glaring balefully at each other.
“It seems,” the duke said heavily, “that we have reached an impasse.”
Madeline tightened her grip on the baby.
“He needs a mother,” she tried again. “You don’t want the baby, surely?”
“I want to respect my brother’s wishes. Besides, he needs more than a mother. He needs a title and wealth.”
“Papa and I can give him those things!”
“I’m sure you could,” the duke shot back, offering a grim smile, “only that the baby was left to me, and I will be taking him.”
Madeline swallowed hard. So far, the duke had made no attempts to grab the baby out of her arms. What if he did? Were they really going to stand there and grapple over a baby?
I won’t let you down, Betty. I won’t let Anthony’s wretched family get their hands on your baby. I won’t let them take him.
“I’m sure you’ll agree,” she tried again, forcing herself to catch the duke’s eye and hold it, “that a lady is a far better choice to raise a baby than a wild, hedonistic gentleman. Better a quiet, educated lady than a…a…a Devil who spends his nights at a club, drinking and carousing and entertaining heaven only knows how many ladies!”
The duke gave a grim smile and a neat, mocking bow.
“I am touched at your high opinion of my prowess, Lady Madeline. To counter your point, I am sure that you would understand how a duke—a man of great and stable wealth—might be more equipped to raise his brother’s son than a young, unmarried woman who might one day marry and produce children of her own, therefore losing interest in the child she adopted as a passing whim. ”
Color flared in Madeline’s cheeks. “How dare you! This is not a passing whim!”
He inspected his fingernails. “I am quite sure you believe that. Let me be clear, Lady Madeline. I have no intention of allowing you to walk away with my brother’s child.
I have no intention of taking a back seat in the raising of my own nephew, nor will I watch anxiously as you build your own family and progressively lose interest in the child.
I will not collect my nephew from an orphanage, or let him rely upon the charity of others. ”
“I am not…”
“He is a Lovell, Lady Madeline,” the duke interrupted, eyes flashing. “He is a Lovell, as I am, and as his father was.”
Anger flared inside her. How dare he? How dare this man, who had turned his back on his brother and probably never even met Betty before, tell her that she did not care enough about Adam to care for him?
Buoyed by anger, Madeline took a step closer, close enough to hear the rasp of the duke’s breathing and smell the sharp scent of his cologne. He did not back away, only lifted his eyebrows in amusement.
“Don’t you dare accuse me of losing interest,” she hissed. “And don’t talk of those charities and orphanages as though they are hell on earth. As if a man like you knows what an orphanage is like! I doubt you’d visit an orphanage or offer any help if your very life depended upon it.”
“Eloquently put, my dear. But I will not fail my brother, and you cannot argue me out of it. Give me the baby, if you please.”
Madeline backed away until she bumped the wall, clutching Adam tight. The baby began to cry, a thin and reedy wail of displeasure. She hushed him absently, rocking him gently until his wail faded away.
“I will not fail my friend,” Madeline shot back. “I will not hand over the baby. You will have to wrestle him out of my arms.”
“Which I imagine I could do quite easily,” the duke responded. “You bore me, my dear.”
“I am not your dear. I am Lady Madeline Huxley.”
The duke stared at her for a long, taut moment.
Madeline refused to allow herself to look away.
Looking away was a weakness, and one that Madeline was heartily sick of allowing herself to indulge.
This was not a ball at Almack’s or an interminable dinner party.
She could not let herself wilt. This was important.
“We are wasting time,” the duke said abruptly. “The baby must be brought back to London, and that is a fact.”
Madeline lifted her chin. “His name, Your Grace, is Adam.”
The duke’s gaze landed on the baby, a faint line forming between his brows.
“Adam. Adam Lovell. A fine name. Well, Lady Madeline, seeing as you refuse to give up your claim to the babe, and I certainly will not give up mine, I see only one solution.”
“And what solution is that?”
His eyebrows flickered. “You are both coming with me.”