Chapter 14
Thelma sat on the rug in the nursery, watching Liliana pull herself up along the edge of the low settee with determined little grunts. The baby’s chubby legs wobbled but held, and she let out a triumphant babble, turning her head to make sure Thelma was watching.
The morning light filtered through the windows, warm and golden, casting soft patterns across the floor. For a few precious minutes, everything felt peaceful.
Simple.
Then the raised voices drifted up from downstairs.
At first, Thelma thought she had imagined it.
But no, there it was again. A sharp exchange, muffled by distance but unmistakable in tone.
One voice belonged to the duke. The other, cooler and more controlled, was his mother’s.
The words themselves were unclear from the nursery, but the tension in them was not.
Thelma’s stomach tightened. She rose quickly, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt, and lifted Liliana into her arms. The baby protested for a second at being interrupted, then settled against her shoulder, one small hand fisting the fabric of her dress.
Thelma hesitated only a moment before slipping out of the nursery and moving quietly down the corridor toward the main stairs. She told herself she was only checking that nothing was wrong. That was all.
She stopped at the top of the landing, where the corridor branched. The drawing room door stood half-open below. The voices carried more clearly now.
“...found out you wrote to the orphanage near Bath,” the duke was saying, his tone low but edged with something sharp Thelma had rarely heard from him. “Enquiring about placing a child. A child one year old, no less. Did you think I would not discover it?”
His mother’s reply was composed. “I did what I thought was best, Roman. The scandal grows worse by the day. You cannot continue like this.”
Thelma’s heart began to pound. She shifted Liliana higher on her hip and took a careful step closer to the railing, staying out of sight. Liliana made a soft sound, and Thelma gently shushed her, pressing a kiss to her dark curls.
“Placing a baby whose origins we have not yet established in an orphanage is not what is best,” he continued, his voice rising slightly. “It is what is convenient. For you. For the family name. For the appearance of order.”
There was a pause. Thelma could almost see the dowager’s rigid posture, the way her hands would be folded tightly in her lap.
“The child is not your responsibility,” his mother said.
“She appeared on the doorstep. We do not know where she came from, who her people are, or what trouble she may bring with her. Sending her to a respectable institution is the merciful choice. She would be cared for. Educated. Given a future without the shadow of scandal hanging over her.”
“And if I refuse?” he asked. “If I say she stays until we know the truth?”
“Then you risk everything your father built. Everything you are meant to protect.” Her voice grew colder. “A duke does not play nursemaid to a foundling, Roman. You have responsibilities. To this title. To this family. To the future of Langley.”
Thelma’s breath caught. She pressed her back against the wall, one arm tightening protectively around Liliana. The baby patted her shoulder, oblivious to the storm brewing downstairs.
The duke’s response came after a heavy silence. “Do you know something about this child that you have not told me, Mother?”
The question fell like a stone into still water. Thelma held her breath.
The dowager was quiet for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady. “I do not know what you mean.”
“I think you do.” The duke’s tone had gone dangerously quiet. “You recognized that shawl the morning she arrived. I saw it in your face. You have been fighting to remove her from this house ever since. So I will ask you plainly. Do you know something about Liliana that you have not told me?”
Another long pause. Thelma could hear her own heartbeat in her ears.
“I do not,” the dowager said at last.
His laugh was short and bitter. “I do not believe you.”
The sound of footsteps followed, sharp taps on the floor.
The dowager duchess was leaving the drawing room.
Thelma startled and stepped back quickly from the railing, clutching Liliana close as she retreated down the corridor.
She slipped around the corner just as the drawing room door opened wider, pressing herself against the wall and holding her breath.
The footsteps faded toward the main staircase. Only when the house had fallen quiet again did Thelma allow herself to exhale. Her hands were shaking as they held Liliana. The baby looked up at her with wide gray eyes, as if sensing the sudden tension, and patted her cheek with a small, sticky hand.
Thelma leaned down and pressed her forehead gently against Liliana’s. “It is all right, my love,” she whispered, though her voice trembled. “I have you. I will always have you.”
But even as she said the words, fear coiled tight in her stomach. The dowager duchess was still trying to send Liliana away. In secret. And the duke, the man who had just confronted his own mother with such quiet fury, was the only thing standing between them and that fate.
What should I do?
She stayed there in the corridor a moment longer, holding Liliana close, her mind racing with everything she had just overheard. The warmth of the nursery suddenly felt fragile. Temporary.
And yet, the memory of the duke’s voice defending the baby refused to leave her.
That afternoon, Thelma found her way back to the kitchen after Liliana had finally settled for her nap. Her hands still carried a faint tremor from what she had overheard, and the familiar warmth of the kitchen felt like the only safe place in the entire house.
Patricia was kneading dough at the large table, her strong arms working rhythmically, a light dusting of flour across her apron. She looked up as Thelma entered, her hazel eyes narrowing slightly at the younger woman’s expression.
“You look like you’ve seen another ghost,” Patricia said, wiping her hands on her apron. She reached for the teapot without waiting for an answer. “Sit down before you fall. Tea’s fresh.”
Thelma sank into her usual chair, the wooden seat creaking softly beneath her. She wrapped her fingers around the warm cup Patricia placed in front of her, but the heat did little to chase away the chill that had settled in her chest.
“I overheard something,” Thelma said quietly, staring into the tea. “In the drawing room this morning. The duke and his mother... they were arguing. About Liliana.”
Patricia’s hands paused on the dough. She said nothing, simply waiting, her broad shoulders shifting as she gave Thelma her full attention.
Thelma took a shaky breath. “The duke found out she wrote to an orphanage near Bath. Asking if they could take a child of one year old. Secretly. He confronted her about it. He sounded... angry. More angry than I’ve ever heard him.”
Patricia let out a slow breath and resumed kneading, though her movements were slower now. “This isn’t the first time Her Grace has tried to send the baby away,” she said after a long pause. “And it won’t be the last.”
Thelma lifted her gaze. “But why? Liliana has done nothing wrong.”
Patricia’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “Some people see anything that threatens the way things have always been as a problem to be removed. Not fixed. Removed.”
She divided the dough with a firm cut of her knife.
“But here’s the thing, Miss Hartley. A man who assembles an entire nursery overnight for a baby that isn’t his...
that’s not a man who’s going to let her go easily.
That’s a man who has already decided. And in all the months since the old duke died, this is the most interesting thing the young duke has done.
He’s fighting for her. That means something. ”
Thelma stared at her cup, the words sinking deep. Patricia’s quiet certainty wrapped around her like another layer of warmth in the kitchen, but it also made the knot in her stomach tighter.
If the duke was truly fighting for Liliana, then her own plan to take the baby away felt more impossible with every passing day.
***
In the evening, after Liliana had been fed and was sleeping soundly in her crib, Thelma returned to the nursery to tidy up.
The room was quiet, lit only by a single lamp on the side table.
She moved about methodically, folding blankets, straightening toys, and picking up the scattered blocks Liliana had knocked over during the day.
Her hands stilled when she reached the basket in the corner.
The pale wool shawl was still there, carefully folded where it had been kept since the morning Liliana arrived.
Thelma lifted it gently, holding the soft fabric up to fold it more neatly.
The wool was old and worn but still remarkably fine, the Langley family emblem stitched discreetly into one corner.
She ran her fingers along the edge, tracing the intricate stitching.
A soft rustle at the doorway made her look up.
The dowager duchess stood there, framed in the entrance. Her posture was as straight and commanding as always, but the moment her eyes landed on the shawl in Thelma’s hands, everything changed.
Her face went completely still.
It was the same expression Thelma had glimpsed that first morning, a sudden, frozen mask that lasted only a heartbeat before she regained control.
But this time Thelma was close enough to see the fine details, the slight widening of her eyes, the way the color drained from her cheeks for just a fraction of a second, the almost imperceptible tightening around her mouth.
The dowager took one slow step into the room. Her gaze remained fixed on the shawl. Then, as though drawn by something stronger than her own will, she lifted her hand and reached out.
Her fingers, long, elegant, usually so steady, trembled as they brushed the edge of the wool. The touch was feather-light, almost reverent, before she snatched her hand back as if the fabric had burned her.
For one suspended moment, the two women stood in silence. The dowager duchess’ chest rose and fell once, sharply. Then she turned on her heel and left without a word, her footsteps echoing down the corridor, fast and uneven in a way Thelma had never heard from her before.
Thelma remained frozen, the shawl still clutched in her hands. Her own heart was hammering.
What was that about?
A moment later, another set of footsteps approached. Earnest appeared in the doorway, tall and lean in his butler’s uniform, his graying hair neatly combed. He stopped abruptly when he saw the shawl. His reaction was more controlled than Her Grace’s, but no less telling.
His face remained largely impassive, the professional mask of a man who had served this family for over thirty years, but Thelma caught the subtle signs, the slight flicker in his eyes, the way his shoulders tensed beneath his coat, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw.
He looked at the shawl the same way the dowager duchess had. As though it belonged to someone he remembered.
Earnest cleared his throat softly. “You should put that back in the basket, Miss Hartley,” he said. “It does not do to leave such things lying about.”
Then he continued down the corridor without another word, his steps measured and unhurried once more.
Thelma stood alone in the nursery, the shawl heavy in her hands.
That night, long after the house had fallen quiet, Thelma sat at the small desk in her room with the lamp turned low. She had taken the shawl with her, unable to leave it behind. Now she held it under the warm circle of light, turning it slowly in her hands.
The wool was incredibly soft with age, the fibers thinned by decades of careful use.
The Langley family emblem was stitched into the corner with thread that had once matched the wool perfectly but had faded slightly over time. The workmanship was exquisite, the kind of detail reserved for family heirlooms.
Two people in this house had recognized it on sight.
Thelma’s fingers traced the emblem again and again.
Her father had wrapped Liliana in that very shawl before sending her here. She folded the shawl carefully and placed it back in the basket, but sleep refused to come. She lay awake in the dark, turning the questions over and over in her mind like the shawl in her hands.
What was my father’s connection to this family?
Why had he kept it from me all these years?
And why did the dowager duchess and a butler who had served here for thirty years look at that shawl as though they had seen a ghost?
The questions chased each other through the long hours of the night, refusing to settle. The bag under her bed was more of a weight than ever.