Chapter 5
The nursery was quiet when Roman arrived the next morning. There was no crying, no fussing, no restless sounds at all.
Only the soft, steady crackle of the fire in the grate broke the silence. He had braced himself for the usual chaos that had filled every morning since Liliana arrived, but the stillness caught him off guard. He was not sure whether the quiet was a good sign or a bad one.
He knocked lightly on the door, careful not to wake the baby if she was sleeping.
“Come in,” called a voice from inside.
Roman opened the door and stepped into the room. Miss Hartley stood by the window with Liliana resting comfortably on her hip. The baby was awake, her gray eyes focused intently on the garden outside.
Her small face looked calm and placid. Miss Hartley herself looked tired, much as she had the day before, but there was a new steadiness to her this morning. It suggested she had managed at least a little sleep.
“Your Grace,” she said politely. “Good morning.”
“Good morning.” He closed the door gently behind him. “I hope I am not too early.”
“Not at all. Liliana has been awake for nearly an hour now. She has been watching the birds.”
“Were there birds?”
“Not yet.” Miss Hartley smiled faintly. “But she was watching for them anyway.”
Roman crossed the room and joined them at the window.
Outside, the garden lay gray and bare. The trees stood stripped of their leaves, and the sky hung low and heavy with clouds.
There were no birds in sight. There had probably not been any birds at all that morning.
Still, Liliana kept her gaze fixed on the empty branches, patient and determined.
“She is patient,” Roman observed.
“She is determined,” Miss Hartley corrected gently. “There is a difference.”
He turned his head to look at her. She met his eyes directly.
For the first time, he noticed that her eyes were not quite the same color.
One was a warm hazel, the other a clear green.
He had not registered the detail yesterday, or perhaps he had noticed and simply filed it away without thinking much about it.
“How was the first night?” he asked.
Miss Hartley shifted Liliana to her other hip. “She woke twice. Once at midnight and again at half past three. Both times she settled quickly.”
“Did you sleep?”
“A little.”
"How little?"
"Enough to function, Your Grace."
“Is that your only answer?”
“It is the only one I have, Your Grace.”
Roman almost smiled. He caught himself just in time, but it had been close.
Something was refreshing about the way she spoke.
She was direct and unapologetic. Most people in this house told him what they believed he wanted to hear.
Miss Hartley simply told him what he needed to know, whether he liked it or not.
“Is there anything you need for the nursery?” he asked. “Anything that would make your work easier or more comfortable?”
Miss Hartley looked around the room slowly. Her gaze moved across the crib, the rocking chair, the bookshelf, the curtains, and the small pile of toys in the corner. “The room is very well prepared, Your Grace. Whoever arranged it knew exactly what they were doing.”
“I arranged it.”
He had not meant to say it. It was not the sort of thing he usually volunteered. But the way she had said “whoever arranged it,” as though some nameless servant had handled the task, made him want to correct her.
Miss Hartley looked at him then. Really looked at him. Her expression changed. The careful guard she usually kept in place softened, and something warmer moved across her face.
“You arranged it yourself?” she asked, surprise clear in her voice.
“I did.”
“All of it? The crib, the curtains, the books?”
“I had help from the staff with the actual setup,” he admitted. “But I chose everything. I sent word to the village shops in the morning. They delivered the pieces by evening, and the staff worked through the night to have the room ready.”
He paused, then added quietly, “I did not want her to wake up in a strange place with nothing familiar around her.”
Miss Hartley looked down at Liliana. Her hand rose automatically to smooth the baby’s fine hair in a slow, gentle motion. “That was very kind of you, Your Grace.”
“It was not kind,” he said. “It was necessary.”
She lifted her eyes to his again. This time her gaze felt searching, as though she were trying to read something deeper in his face. “Those are not the same thing,” she said softly. “But I think you already know that.”
Roman did not know what to say in response to her words. The statement hung between them in the quiet nursery, and for once in his life, he found himself without a ready reply. So he chose silence instead.
He remained standing by the tall window, watching as Miss Hartley gently bounced Liliana on her hip in a slow, rhythmic motion.
The morning light filtered through the glass panes, soft and pale, catching the edges of her auburn hair and illuminating faint strands of gold and copper that he had not noticed before.
The baby looked perfectly content, her small head resting against Miss Hartley’s shoulder as she gazed out at the garden.
He realized with a start that he had been standing there far longer than he had originally intended. Time seemed to move differently in this room lately.
“May I hold her?” he asked after a moment.
Miss Hartley looked mildly surprised by the request, but she recovered quickly. “Of course, Your Grace.”
She stepped closer, and with the practiced ease of someone who had done this many times, she transferred Liliana into his waiting arms. The baby felt warm and solid against his chest, lighter than the first time he had held her, though he doubted she had actually lost weight.
She simply fit better now. Or he had learned better how to hold her.
Liliana immediately reached up and grabbed a fistful of his lapel, clutching the fabric with surprising strength, the same determined grip she had used on the front steps the night she had arrived.
Roman felt a familiar tightness in his chest slowly begin to loosen, as though some invisible knot had started to come undone.
“She likes your coat,” Miss Hartley observed with a hint of amusement in her voice.
“She likes grabbing things,” he replied.
“She likes grabbing you,” Miss Hartley corrected gently.
Roman lifted his gaze from the baby to look at Miss Hartley directly. The corner of her mouth had turned up in a small, subtle smile, and her warm brown eyes were brighter this morning than they had been the day before. There was a spark there that had been missing earlier.
“Are you laughing at me, Miss Hartley?” he asked.
“I would never dream of it, Your Grace.”
“You are.”
“I am merely observing,” she said, her tone light. "Laughing would be unprofessional."
He recognized the words. He had said something very similar to her only yesterday. She was quoting him back, and he could not quite decide whether she was teasing him or testing the waters between them.
“You have a good memory,” he remarked.
“I have a good memory for things that interest me.”
The answer surprised him. “And I interest you?”
She did not reply immediately. Instead, she simply held his gaze.
For a long moment, the air in the nursery felt thicker.
Roman was not sure what to do with the sensation, but before he could dwell on it, Liliana solved the problem for both of them by sneezing directly onto his cravat with surprising force.
Miss Hartley’s hand flew up to cover her mouth. “Your Grace, I am so sorry. That was—”
“It is fine,” he said calmly.
“She sneezed on you.”
“She is a baby. Babies sneeze.”
“But she sneezed on your cravat,” Miss Hartley insisted, her eyes wide. “That is silk.”
“I have others.”
Miss Hartley stared at him as though she could not quite believe what she was hearing. Then she laughed. It was not a small, polite chuckle this time.
It was a real, open laugh that filled the nursery and warmed the space around them. Roman felt his own lips curve into a smile before he could stop himself. The expression felt strange on his face. He had not smiled like that in a long time.
“You are very calm about this,” she said once she had caught her breath, still smiling.
“I have been sneezed on before. By adults. It was considerably worse.”
She laughed again, a lighter sound this time. Liliana turned her head at the noise and blinked up at Miss Hartley with wide, curious gray eyes, as though trying to understand what all the happiness was about.
“She likes your laugh,” Roman said.
“She likes noise,” Miss Hartley replied. “Any kind of noise. She is not very discriminating yet.”
“She likes you.”
Miss Hartley’s smile faded, just slightly. She looked down at Liliana, and for the briefest moment, something that looked almost like pain crossed her face. It was there and gone so quickly that Roman wondered if he had imagined it.
“Yes,” she said softly. “She does.”
Roman filed the moment away in the back of his mind, along with all the other small details about Miss Hartley that did not quite add up.
The way she spoke. The way she held the baby was with such natural confidence.
The careful way she chose her words. He had learned long ago to pay attention to things that did not fit neatly into place.
He ended up staying in the nursery for nearly another full hour. He told himself he was simply ensuring that Miss Hartley was competent and that Liliana was adjusting well. He told himself he was being a responsible guardian.
But if he was honest with himself, none of those reasons was completely true. The simple fact was that he enjoyed talking with her. She was sharp and intelligent, with real opinions that she expressed without excessive flattery or hesitation.
When he asked her about the books on the nursery shelf, she gave honest, unfiltered answers.
“This one,” she said, pulling a thin volume from the shelf and holding it up, “is complete nonsense. Do not let anyone try to convince you otherwise.”