The Baby on the Duke’s Doorstep (Where Dukes Dare and Ladies Love #1)

Chapter 1

Tuesday had started ordinarily enough, which perhaps should have been a warning.

Roman Berengar, Duke of Langley, had been at his desk since half past six, which was not unusual, though the fact that he had also been at it since eleven the previous evening was a detail he preferred not to examine too closely.

The estate accounts had required his attention, then the correspondence from his solicitor in London, then a rather tedious letter from a cousin he had not seen in seven years who had somehow developed the impression that the dukedom came with a standing invitation to borrow money.

He had answered them all in his usual manner, precise and patient and entirely noncommittal on the subject of loans, and had moved on to his father's ledgers.

Eight months, he thought. Eight months, and I still cannot make sense of his system.

The candle beside his elbow had burned down to a stub, and the morning light was beginning to creep through the tall windows behind him, pale and gray and entirely unenthusiastic about the day ahead.

His neck ached from bending over the desk, and his handwriting had deteriorated sometime in the past hour; from its usual precise script into something that more closely resembled the scribbling of a man who had forgotten what sleep felt like.

He was reaching for the inkpot to refill his pen when his elbow caught the edge of the blotter, and the inkpot tipped, and a dark bloom spread across the open page of his father's ledger with the quiet, unhurried finality of a thing that could not be undone.

Roman stared at it for a moment, then at his ink-stained cuff, then back at the ledger.

Perfect. Just perfect.

A sound from the doorway made him look up.

Earnest Case, the butler, was standing there. He had been with the Langley family for over thirty years, and he stood with the kind of professional stillness that Roman had always found vaguely comforting, as though the house itself had developed a spine and learned to stand up straight.

But there was something different about Earnest this morning, something in the set of his jaw that Roman had not seen before.

"Earnest," Roman said. "What is it?"

The butler hesitated, which was unlike him. "There is a situation at the front door, Your Grace."

Roman waited, but Earnest did not elaborate.

"A situation," Roman repeated.

"Yes, Your Grace."

"What kind of situation?"

Earnest's mouth pressed into a thin line. "I believe it would be better if you saw for yourself, Your Grace."

Roman looked down at the ink spreading across his father's ledger.

It would be better if I saw for myself. Of course it would. Nothing in this house could ever be simple.

He set down his pen, straightened his coat, and followed Earnest down the corridor.

The entrance hall was cold because someone had opened the front door and not properly closed it. Roman could feel the October air cutting through his coat as Earnest led him across the checkered marble floor.

The butler's footsteps were unhurried, as though the house were not currently hosting whatever had put that look on his face.

"Earnest," Roman said as they walked, "you have been with this family for thirty-one years."

"That is correct, Your Grace."

"Surely you have seen enough in that time to describe a situation without requiring me to view it firsthand."

Earnest considered this. "I have seen many things, Your Grace. But I have not seen this."

Roman stopped at the threshold.

The basket was sitting on the front steps. That was the first thing he noticed. A simple woven thing, lined with a worn blanket, sitting there as if it had grown overnight.

His first thought was that someone had left a delivery from the village, a basket of eggs or a cut of meat or some other mundane thing that had somehow acquired the quality of an omen simply by virtue of being unexpected.

But then the basket moved.

Just slightly, a small shift from within, and Roman heard a sound. A soft, fussing sound, the kind a kitten might make.

No, he thought. No, it cannot be.

He stepped outside.

The baby was small. That was his second thought, after the initial wave of disbelief that had rendered him temporarily speechless.

Smaller than he had expected, though he was not sure what he had expected, because he had spent very little time around babies in his thirty-two years and had never once stopped to consider the actual dimensions of one.

The baby was wrapped in a pale pink wool shawl that had been tucked around it… well, her… with care, and her face was visible above the folds, dark-haired and gray-eyed and entirely unbothered by the cold and by the Duke of Langley staring down at her.

She was also, Roman noticed, awake.

She looked up at him with an expression that was difficult to read.

She is a baby, he told himself. She is not studying you. She is simply existing. And yet those gray eyes seemed to be waiting for something, as though she had been left there for a reason and she intended to see it through.

Roman looked at the shawl more closely. The wool was soft with age, and as his eyes traced the edge of it, he saw the corner. The Langley family emblem. Stitched into the fabric in thread that matched the wool perfectly.

Why is this here?

He did not understand it. He could not begin to understand it.

The shawl was old, and it bore his house's emblem, and someone had wrapped this baby in it and left her on his front steps.

But why? And whose baby was she? And how had someone outside their household gotten their hands on a shawl that old, that specific, which clearly connected to his family?

His thoughts were interrupted by a small fist emerging from the folds of the shawl. The baby waved it once in the cold morning air, and then she made a sound that was somewhere between a coo and a demand.

I should not pick her up, Roman thought. The correct course of action is to contact the parish authorities. That is what my father would have done. That is what any sensible person would do.

He reached down and lifted her out of the basket.

She weighed almost nothing, which was somehow more alarming than if she had weighed a great deal.

He adjusted the shawl around her, and as he did, she grabbed his lapel with both fists.

She held on with the confidence of someone who considered the matter settled.

Roman stood on the front steps of his estate holding a baby who had apparently decided that he belonged to her now, and he found that he had no immediate desire to put her down.

"Roman! I came down for breakfast, and one of the maids told me you were at the door, and I assumed you had finally lost your temper with the cook about the bacon, but this is not what I expected to find."

Orson Mercer, Viscount Ashmore, was walking up the drive with his greatcoat buttoned against the cold and his blonde hair still damp from the morning.

He had the easy stride of a man who had never been in a hurry in his life and did not intend to start now.

He was also, Roman remembered, supposed to have left for his own estate three days ago, but he had not, because Orson never left when he said he would.

"Orson," Roman said.

Orson stopped a few feet away. He looked at the basket. Then, at Roman holding the baby. Then at Roman's face. Then back at the baby. Then back at Roman's face. His mouth opened, closed, and opened again.

"Is that a baby?" he asked.

"It appears to be."

"In your arms."

"I am aware."

"On the front steps."

"The baby was on the front steps," Roman said. "I am merely holding her."

Orson stared at him for a long moment. "You are holding a baby."

"Yes."

"A baby that was left on your front steps."

"That is correct."

"And you have no idea whose baby it is."

"Not yet."

Orson took a step closer, his eyes narrowing. "Roman, I have known you for fifteen years. I have seen you negotiate with men who wanted you dead. I have seen you ride into battle without flinching. I have never, in all that time, seen you hold a baby."

"There is a first time for everything."

"There is, and I am sorry I missed the moment when you decided that holding an abandoned infant was a normal thing for a duke to do on a Tuesday morning." Orson crossed his arms. "You have not put her down."

Roman looked down at the baby. She was still holding his lapel, and she had begun to make a soft, contented sound that was somewhere between a hum and a purr. "She appears to be comfortable."

"She appears to be claiming ownership of your coat."

"She has good taste."

Orson laughed, a sharp, surprised sound that seemed to startle him as much as it did the baby. The baby turned her gray eyes on him, and Orson, who had faced down hostile lords and unfriendly magistrates with equal composure, took a small step backward.

"She is looking at me," he said.

"She is a baby. Babies look at things."

"She is looking at me as though she is forming an opinion."

"Her opinions are likely limited to whether she is hungry or cold."

"I am not convinced of that." Orson took another step back. "Roman, is there any reason to believe this child is yours?"

"No."

"Are you certain?"

Roman looked at the baby's dark hair, at her gray eyes, at the fine wool of the shawl embroidered with his house's emblem. He thought about the shawl, which was old, bearing his family's crest, wrapped around a child who had been left on his doorstep like a letter he was not sure he wanted to open.

"I am certain," he said.

Orson let out a breath. "The society pages will not be interested in your certainty, Roman. By tomorrow morning, half of London will have already decided the answer, and the other half will be pretending they knew about it all along."

"I am aware."

"Do you want me to trace the shawl? Confirm if the emblem is authentic, and see if anyone in the household recognizes where it came from?"

"Yes."

"The baby stays?"

Roman looked down at the baby again. She had stopped making her contented sound and was now staring at Orson with her gray eyes wide and evaluating.

Her small fist was still wrapped around Roman’s lapel, and he realized that he had been standing on the front steps for several minutes in the cold without once thinking about going inside.

What is wrong with me?

"The baby stays," he said. "Until I know where she came from."

Orson looked at him for a moment, and then his gaze dropped to Roman's lapels, where the baby's small fists were still curled into the fabric. Something in his expression softened, just slightly.

"You are going to be very bad at this," Orson said.

"At what?"

"At not caring about her." He turned and walked toward the house. "I will find pen and paper. Try not to let her steal your watch."

Roman stood on the front steps holding a baby he had not expected and had no plan for. The baby showed no interest in releasing his lapel, and he found that he had no immediate plan for releasing her either.

He shifted her weight against his arm, and as he did, one small sock slipped loose from her foot and dangled at an angle. He caught it before it fell. He turned it over in his free hand.

Someone had embroidered a name along the cuff in tiny, careful stitches. Liliana.

He looked at the baby. She looked back at him, entirely untroubled.

"Liliana," Roman said quietly, testing the name on his tongue.

The baby blinked at him.

"Liliana," he said again.

She reached up and grabbed his chin.

Roman sighed, turned, and carried her inside. He had made it three steps into the entrance hall when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He looked up.

His mother, Lady Lorraine Berengar, Dowager Duchess of Langley, was standing on the landing. Her gray hair was pinned in its usual severe knot, and her eyes were fixed on the basket that Earnest had placed on the floor near the newel post.

"Mother," Roman said.

Her eyes moved from the basket to the shawl, still visible over the edge, and then to the baby in his arms. For a long moment, she did not speak.

"Where did that come from?" she asked.

"The front steps."

She took a step down. Then another. Her eyes stayed on the shawl. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she stopped a few feet away from the basket, close enough to see the emblem stitched into the corner. Her hands were trembling. Roman could see them clearly from where he stood.

"The front steps," she said.

"Yes."

She looked at the baby then. Her lips parted, as though she meant to speak, but no words came. Her hand lifted, just a few inches, and Roman thought she meant to reach out and touch the child's dark hair. Then she caught herself and let her hand fall back to her side.

"Mother," Roman said, "It’s…"

She looked at him. He saw her jaw tighten, and her lips pressed together.

"Mother."

"See that the child is cared for," she said without looking back. "I will not have it said that a baby was left to freeze on the doorstep of a Langley house."

She walked back upstairs, one hand on the railing. At the landing, she paused. She looked back down at the basket, and then she turned and disappeared down the corridor.

Roman stood in the entrance hall with Liliana in his arms and watched the empty landing.

The baby pulled on his lapel and made a small, insistent sound.

"Well," Roman said to her, "that was strange."

The baby blinked at him.

"Yes, I agree. My mother does not tremble. She does not hesitate. And she certainly does not walk away from something without asking questions first."

The baby reached up and grabbed his chin.

Roman sighed, shifted her to a more comfortable position, and carried her toward the morning room to find out if anyone in his household knew how to feed a baby.