Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
“Ishould warn you,” Eliza said as the carriage turned onto the lane leading to the village, “the children can be rather… enthusiastic.”
August looked up from adjusting his cuffs. “Enthusiastic in what manner?”
“They will want to touch everything. Your coat buttons, your watch chain, your hair if they can reach it. You are by far the most interesting thing they will have seen all month.”
“I am flattered to rank above the traveling puppet show.”
“There has not been a puppet show in six months. You are competing with a one-legged chicken and a visiting merchant who could juggle turnips.”
He grinned. “Then I believe my chances are excellent.”
The carriage slowed, and Eliza peered out the window.
The orphanage was a sturdy brick building that had seen better days though the gardens were neatly kept and someone had attempted to brighten the entrance with flower boxes.
It was not much, but it was home to twenty-three children who had nowhere else to go.
August descended first and offered his hand to help her down. His grip was warm, and he did not release her immediately when her feet touched the ground.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
“Terrified. But I find terror rather sharpens the mind.”
The door opened before they reached it, and Mrs. Everett appeared, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a woman of indeterminate age with graying hair and a smile that could warm the coldest room.
“Your Grace! Oh, and you have brought—goodness, is that—” She dropped into a curtsy so deep, August looked alarmed. “Your Grace. We are honored. Truly honored. I never thought—that is, when Miss Hartwell mentioned—oh dear, I am making a muddle of this.”
“Please, rise.” August offered her his hand. “I am the one who should be honored. Miss Hartwell speaks very highly of your work here.”
“She is too kind. We do our best, but with so many mouths to feed—” She caught herself and flushed. “Forgive me. You did not come to hear me complain. Please, come inside. The children are just finishing their breakfast.”
They followed her through a narrow hallway into a large room that served as dining hall, schoolroom, and general gathering space.
Long tables filled the center, and children of various ages sat eating porridge from wooden bowls.
The conversation died the moment they entered, twenty-three pairs of eyes swiveling to stare at the visitors.
“Children,” Mrs. Everett said, clapping her hands once. “We have guests. You remember the Duchess of course. And this is His Grace, the Duke of Wildmoore.”
A small boy of perhaps five raised his hand. “Is he really a duke?”
“Yes, Thomas, he really is.”
“Does he have a crown?”
“Dukes do not wear crowns, you cloth-head,” an older girl said, rolling her eyes. “Only kings and queens wear crowns.”
“But he looks very fancy,” Thomas insisted. “Fancier than Mr. Potts at the bakery, and he has silver buttons.”
August crossed to the boy and crouched down to his level. “I am indeed very fancy. Would you like to examine the buttons? They are silver as you correctly observed.”
Thomas’s eyes went wide. He reached out one grubby hand then pulled it back. “Am I allowed?”
“Of course. Though I must warn you, they are rather less impressive upon close inspection. I suspect Mr. Potts has the superior buttons.”
The boy giggled and touched one of the buttons reverently.
Within moments, August was surrounded by children, all wanting to see his watch chain, his signet ring, the embroidered design on his waistcoat.
He answered each question with patience, never once suggesting they should mind their manners or keep their distance.
Eliza watched him kneel to help a small girl retie her bootlace, explaining the proper technique as though it were a matter of state importance. He looked utterly at ease, and something in her chest pulled tight.
“He is wonderful with them,” Mrs. Everett murmured at her elbow. “You would not think a man of his station—well, you know how it is. Most would not bother.”
“Yes,” Eliza managed. “He is rather surprising.”
She busied herself distributing the new blankets, moving from child to child. Each blanket was thick wool, soft and warm, and she made sure every child understood it was theirs to keep. No sharing, no taking turns. Theirs.
“Miss!” A boy with a missing front tooth tugged at her sleeve. “Miss, do you have children of your own?”
The question stopped her cold. She looked down at the boy, at his gap-toothed smile and eager face, and could not seem to form words.
“Not yet, Peter,” she said finally. “Perhaps someday.”
“You should have lots. You would be a good mama. You are nice, and you bring us things, and you never shout like Mrs. Baxter does when we track mud inside.”
“Mrs. Baxter shouts because you deliberately jump in puddles before entering the house.”
“They are very good puddles,” Peter said solemnly.
Eliza laughed and ruffled his hair, but the question lingered. Children. She had never allowed herself to think about it seriously. Marriage had always been so abstract, so unlikely, that the possibility of children had seemed even more remote.
But now, she was married. To August. And children were no longer an abstract possibility but an eventual expectation.
She looked across the room and found him lifting a giggling little girl into the air, spinning her in a circle while she shrieked with delight. He was laughing, his face more open and unguarded than she had ever seen it. He looked young, happy, entirely himself.
The image shifted, reformed. She saw him holding a different child. Smaller, with dark hair and his eyes. Their child.
The thought slammed into her with such force she had to steady herself against the table.
Children with August. A family. A real marriage, not an arrangement or a performance but something genuine and permanent and terrifying.
She wanted it. The realization was sharp and undeniable. She wanted his children, wanted to watch him be a father, wanted to build something real with him instead of this careful dance they had been performing for months.
When had this happened? When had her feelings shifted from polite tolerance to this aching want that made her chest hurt?
“Your Grace?” Mrs. Everett touched her arm. “Are you well? You have gone quite pale.”
“I am perfectly well. Only a bit warm, I think.”
“Perhaps you should sit. I shall fetch some water.”
But Eliza shook her head and returned to her task, handing out blankets and trying not to look at August, trying not to imagine things that might never come to pass.
The carriage rocked gently as they made their way back to Wildmoore Hall.
Eliza sat across from August, her hands folded in her lap, her gaze fixed on some point beyond the window.
She had been quiet since they left the orphanage, and August could not help but notice the way her brow furrowed, as though she were working through some complicated problem in her head.
He wanted to ask what she was thinking. Wanted to know if she had noticed the way he could not stop watching her as she moved among the children, so natural and easy with them.
Wanted to tell her that seeing her like that had done something strange to his chest, made him want things he had never allowed himself to consider.
Instead, he said, “You are remarkable with them.”
She startled out of her thoughts. “What?”
“The children. You know each of their names, their preferences, their fears. That boy, Thomas, told me you once stayed up all night with him when he had a fever. Mrs. Everett said you sang to him until dawn.”
“It was nothing. Any decent person would have done the same.”
“Most decent people do not, though. That is the difference between good intentions and actual goodness.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why are you so devoted to them? To this place?”
She was quiet for a long moment, her fingers worrying at the fabric of her glove. “It is not charity if that is what you are thinking. It is not some noble gesture to assuage my conscience or earn favor with heaven.”
“Then what is it?”
She looked at him, and something in her expression made his breath catch. “It is remembrance. Of what it felt like to be them.”
“What do you mean?”
She drew a breath, as though steeling herself.
“My mother married beneath her station. Or rather, she married for love which her family considered worse than marrying beneath her. When they discovered she had eloped with my father, they disowned her completely. No dowry, no support, no acknowledgment that she had ever existed.”
August felt his jaw tighten. “That is unconscionable.”
“That is society.” She turned her attention back to the window.
“My father worked as a clerk. They were not wealthy, but they were happy, I think. And then he died. An accident at the docks before I was even born. My mother tried to keep us afloat. She took in sewing, did laundry for the better houses, anything she could manage. But it was never enough.”
“Eliza—”
“I was eleven when she fell ill. Consumption, the doctor said though we could not afford proper treatment. So, I took over the laundry work. Hauled water, scrubbed linens, delivered them to the houses.” Her voice remained calm, almost detached, as though she were recounting someone else’s story.
“We had nothing. Some days, we did not eat. Some nights, we huddled together under one thin blanket because we could not afford coal for the fire. I know what it means to be hungry and cold and afraid. To lie awake wondering if tomorrow will be the day there is simply nothing left.”
August could not speak. Could not reconcile the woman sitting across from him—composed, educated, the Duchess of Wildmoore—with the image of a child hauling laundry through London streets, starving in a cold house while her mother died slowly.
“When did your uncle find you?” he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
“After my mother died. I was fourteen. He had not even known I existed until he received notice of her death.” She smiled, but it was sad around the edges.
“He was a good man. Took me in without question, gave me a home, an education, everything I had been denied. But by then, I had learned the lesson. That the world is full of children like I was. Alone and frightened and invisible to everyone who might help them.”
“So, you help them instead.”
“I try. It is not much, but—” She broke off, shaking her head. “It is not much, but it is something.”
August moved across the carriage before he could think better of it, sitting beside her rather than opposite. He took her hand, and when she did not pull away, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.
“You survived all that,” he said. “Alone. And then you used your survival to help others who had no one.”
“I did what anyone—”
“No.” He turned to face her fully. “Most people would have spent the rest of their lives trying to forget where they came from. Trying to bury that past beneath layers of respectability and pretend it never happened. You remembered. You chose to remember.”
She looked at him, her eyes bright with something that might have been tears. “I could not forget even if I wished to. It is part of me. Part of who I am.”
“I know.” He reached up and cupped her face, his thumb brushing across her cheekbone. “And it is the best part.”
He had not planned to kiss her. Had promised himself he would be patient, would let her set the pace. But sitting there with her story still echoing in his head, with the weight of all she had survived and all she had become pressing down on him, he could not help himself.
He leaned in and kissed her.
Not the careful, questioning kiss from the garden.
Not the performance they had given at their wedding.
This was something else entirely. This was want and admiration and a desperate need to show her that she was not alone anymore, that she would never be alone again if he had any say in the matter.
She made a small sound against his mouth and kissed him back, her hands coming up to grip his lapels.
The carriage rocked beneath them, but neither noticed.
There was only this. Only her mouth on his and her fingers twisting in his coat and the way she tasted like tea and something sweeter he could not name.
When they pulled apart, they stared at each other in surprise. August did not know what to say, and he suspected that Eliza did not know either.