Chapter 4 #2
Then his gaze found Honora on the floor with Cecily in her arms. His expression became curious and thoughtful. For one absurd moment, she wondered if he had heard her latest thoughts of escaping with Cecily and had come to catch her. He closed the door behind him and came farther in.
Honora looked away first because she had intended to remain composed and had no wish to discover how long that would last if she looked at him too directly.
He was handsome in a way that was most inconvenient to notice. But more irritating was that Cecily, upon seeing him, gave a little eager sound and reached toward him with the hand not buried in Honora’s collar.
Leopold stopped. “Am I interrupting?”
“No, my lord,” Honora said.
He glanced from her to the baby. “She appears to disagree.”
Cecily made another sound, more insistent this time.
Honora’s mouth twitched before she could stop it. “She seems partial to interruptions.”
“That is unfortunate for all of us.”
He crossed the room and sat in the chair opposite them, the newspaper folded against his knee. Honora rose and adjusted Cecily high on her hip and tried to behave normally.
The duke opened the paper and read for a while in silence.
Honora looked at him, then away, then back again despite herself.
Cecily, however, seemed to want to look at nothing else.
She twisted and squirmed, straining to see the duke, who was still engrossed in his paper.
It was the first time the girl had acted that way with anyone but her.
Not wanting the child to disturb the duke, Honora took her to the cabinet, searching for a toy. She found a rattle and placed it in the girl’s hand. Cecily stared at it for a minute, shaking it fiercely before throwing it down onto the floor.
She cooed at Honora and patted her mouth, but it only took another second before she was grunting and trying to turn her head in the direction of the duke once more.
Before she could search for another means of occupying the child’s attention, the duke folded the newspaper again and set it beside him. He looked at the two of them not with annoyance, but with amused curiosity.
“Surely, she cannot read already,” he said.
Honora giggled despite the tension knotted in every inch of her body.
“I should think not.”
“If it is not the paper she wants, what has enthralled her so?”
Honora shrugged, slowly moving closer to the duke.
“I suspect we shall not need to wait long to find out,” she said.
His eyes held hers for a moment longer than necessary. Then he stood, opening his mouth as if he wanted to speak, though he hesitated for a moment.
As Honora expected, Cecily turned at once, as if sensing the movement, and stretched one little hand toward him again.
The duke paused. Honora held her breath as he approached close enough so that Cecily could catch hold of his finger.
She did so at once, staring intently. She frowned at his hand, then at his coat cuff, then poked the leather button with scholarly seriousness.
The duke waited. Honora watched him crouch to Cecily’s level, and her heart beat faster. And when he spoke to her in a voice Honora had not heard him use with anyone, it stopped altogether for a second.
“Is this your assessment?” he murmured, returning the gravity of Cecily’s expression, as if whatever answer she gave him was of grave importance.
Cecily looked up at him, blinking solemnly.
Leopold’s gaze remained steady on her face. “I see. And is it favorable?”
Cecily gave a little squeal and batted his finger. Honora could see that the grip she had was fierce as the tip of his finger began to turn purple. Yet he paid no mind, as though she could squeeze the finger until it fell off and he would simply continue gazing at her with fond curiousness.
It was as if she was watching a completely different man as he interacted with the infant. And the man before her was one that made her original intentions for going to his home all the more difficult.
He crouched for one last moment, let Cecily pat his cheek with an open hand, and then rose to his full height. Honora had the strange impression that she had just witnessed something private.
The duke looked at her again, his expression cool and professional once more. “Mrs. Pritchard will expect you in the kitchen after this. She has a list of supplies.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
He gave a small nod and moved toward the door.
As he passed, the narrow space between them forced him to brush her arm lightly in the doorway.
It was accidental. It was nothing. Yet Honora still felt it like a spark.
He paused just beyond her shoulder, only long enough to allow the contact to end, then went on into the corridor without another word. The door shut behind him.
Honora remained where she stood with Cecily warm against her chest and stared at the closed door long after the sound of his footsteps had faded. Then she realized she was listening for those footsteps to return.
Honora looked down at Cecily at once. “Do not look at me like that,” she whispered.
Cecily blinked solemnly.
“I am not thinking about him.”
The denial sounded foolish as soon as she spoke it.
She had thought about the way he crouched to meet Cecily’s gaze, about the patience in his voice, about how careful he had been not to startle her.
She had thought, too, about the brush of his sleeve against her arm, though that was exactly the sort of detail she had no business remembering.
Honora drew in a slow breath.
She was here for Cecily.
Only Cecily.
If she had to remind herself twice, it was because she was tired. Nothing more.
***
That evening, after Cecily had been fed and settled in the nursery, with the lamp lit low, Honora put the baby to bed and stood beside the crib until her little chest rose and fell in slow sleep. The house was quiet.
Too quiet again. She went to her room, sure of what she must do.
She needed to take Cecily and leave before things could become even more complicated.
Before Cecily could grow attached to people who were not her family.
She hurried to her quarters, thinking over every idea she had had of escape ever since she had learned where Cecily had ended up.
Her room was small but comfortable. The bed was made. The fire had been lit. A jug of water waited on the table beside a clean towel. Honora shut the door and stared at her bag, which was packed on a chair by the door.
Cecily is warm and fed and safe. And she hardly seems to be an inconvenience.
Even when she is fussy. She had imagined many horrible things during her journey to find her niece.
But what she had found was far more, far better than she could have ever dared to hope.
For the first time since she arrived, Honora wondered whether taking Cecily away would be saving her or punishing her for being loved by the wrong people.
With a shaky sigh, she lay down on the bed without undressing, one arm over her eyes, and tried to run through every version of leaving.
She knew the service stair, the side door with the sticking latch, the hour when the kitchen changed over. She could take Cecily, wrap her in a blanket, and move quietly enough.
The bag was packed. She knew where Cecily’s things were in the duke’s manor now, and she was confident she could pack enough quickly to last for a few days until she figured out what to do next.
She imagined the packed bag in her hand, Cecily on her hip, the service gate just within her line of sight, and no one around to give them a second glance.
It should have been a simple choice. Especially since she knew that if anyone learned she had lied about her identity, she and Cecily might be expelled from the only safety they had right then.
She whispered the plan once, just to hear how foolish it sounded aloud.
“Down the service stair. Through the side door. Across the kitchen yard.”
Cecily slept on, unconcerned.
“You need not look so doubtful,” Honora murmured, though the baby had given no opinion at all. “It is a perfectly sensible plan.”
The sleeping child sighed.
Honora rested her hand on the edge of the crib. “No, it is not. But it is the only one I have.”
Saying it made the truth worse. She could learn the doors and the staircases, but she could not learn certainty. Not while the duke looked at Cecily as though she mattered, and not while Cecily reached for him as though she understood it was safe to do so. That was the worst of it.
Honora could have hated him if he had been cold. She could have stolen Cecily and run if Belgrave had been what she expected. But kindness complicated everything, and his kindness was beginning to feel less accidental every time she saw it.
And I have no documents to prove who Cecily and I are or where we belong, she thought, the reasons to abandon her plan continuing to form. I only have three days’ wages from this job, and I would be evading a duke with every legal resource in London.
She considered the options twice, imagining every detail. But none of them ended well. The best ending would be her being sent away somewhere, with prison or an asylum being real possibilities, and she would never see Cecily again.
The worst would involve Cecily being sent away as well, with the excuse that her arrival heralded nothing but trouble for the duke and his family.
She should have fled the moment Mrs. Pritchard opened the door.
Now, she had no choice but to pretend to be the expected nursemaid and hope nothing unexpected happened to bring that into question.