Chapter 15 #2
Cecily fell asleep against Phoebe’s shoulder before they reached the drive, one hand loose against her collar and the other around the ribbon tied at her sleeve. Phoebe shifted her more than once, trying to keep her comfortable while also keeping pace, until at last, Leopold held out his arms.
“You can give her to me.”
Phoebe looked at him. “She will wake.”
“Perhaps.”
“She is heavy.”
“I have noticed.”
She hesitated only a moment before transferring Cecily to him.
His hand brushed her arm as he took the baby, and both of them became aware of it at once.
Phoebe’s fingers moved lightly against her own sleeve.
Leopold adjusted Cecily on his shoulder and said nothing.
Phoebe said nothing as well.
Neither of them needed to.
By the time they returned to Belgrave, the afternoon had deepened, and the house had already begun to smell faintly of fire and tea and polished wood. Leopold was still carrying Cecily when he reached the front hall and found his mother waiting there.
She had the look of a woman who had been waiting for precisely this and resented the necessity of it.
Her gaze passed over Phoebe, then over Cecily in Leopold’s arms, and settled on him.
“We need to talk,” she said.
Leopold stopped.
Phoebe shifted her bag of supplies in one hand and moved a half step back, as if she knew enough to avoid the center of what was about to happen.
His mother did not bother with preamble. “I have tried everything.”
Leopold’s face hardened at once. “If this is about the nursery...”
“It is about the child.”
“No,” he said, “it is about your refusal to accept that I am not sending her away.”
Her eyes flashed. “I have tried reason, tried patience, and tried waiting for you to come to your senses on your own.”
Leopold said nothing.
She took a breath, then continued in a lower voice, “This is my last offer.”
He looked at her.
His mother’s expression had become very still.
“If you insist on keeping the baby,” she said, “then you need to marry.”
Leopold stared at her.
She did not look away.
“A settled duke with a wife and a legitimate household can weather a foundling scandal,” she said. “An unmarried duke cannot.”
His jaw tightened. “You are serious.”
“Entirely.”
Leopold let out a breath that was more disbelief than humor. “You have arranged all of this already.”
Her chin lifted. “I have done what I thought needed doing.”
His voice cooled. “Without asking me.”
“You would have refused.”
“I am refusing now.”
She held out a letter.
He did not take it.
“I have written to the Earl of Penmere,” she said. “His daughter Isolde has been available for years.”
Leopold’s expression went very still.
She continued as though she had not noticed. “You knew her in London.”
“I knew her in the same way one knows a room one has entered before,” he said coldly. “That does not mean I know her.”
“You rejected the idea three years ago.”
“Yes.”
“The situation has changed.”
Leopold stared at her. “I am not agreeing to this.”
His mother’s answer was immediate. “Then the alternative is the orphanage.”
The words struck with quiet force.
Cecily, drowsy in Leopold’s arms, stirred at the tension in the room and made a small complaint before settling again.
Leopold looked down at the child for half a second, then back at his mother.
“You would do that.”
“I would do what is necessary.”
“You would send her away.”
“I would protect the family.”
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “By placing a baby in an orphanage.”
Her face did not change. “By preventing the family from becoming a public joke.”
The silence that followed was sharp enough to hurt.
Leopold finally said, “I will not agree to marry Isolde Carrington because you have decided she is a solution.”
Her gaze did not soften. “Then think carefully about what you will do when the county decides it for you.”
She placed the letter on his desk in the study with deliberate neatness, then set another beside it.
Leopold looked down at the second envelope and knew at once what it was.
The orphanage had accepted the baby.
He felt the room narrow around the two letters.
She did not wait for his response. She turned and went out without another word.
Leopold stood still for a long moment, Cecily asleep against his shoulder, the two letters on the desk in front of him.
Then he reached for the one from Penmere.
The seal broke cleanly.
He unfolded the paper and read.
The reply was brief.
Polite.
And final.
Lady Isolde Carrington had already accepted the terms of the arrangement.
She would arrive at Belgrave at the end of the week.
Leopold stared at the page.
For one long moment he could not move.
The house behind him was quiet. Cecily breathed softly against his coat. The other letter sat unopened on the desk beside the first.
At last he lowered the paper.
His hand remained on the edge of the desk while he looked, not at the letter, but somewhere past it, past the window, past the room itself.
A woman on a village green laughing at daisies with a baby on her lap.
That image came back to him first.
Not his mother’s warning, not the orphanage letter, not Isolde Carrington, already committed to a future he had not chosen.
Only Phoebe, sitting in the grass with Cecily and smiling at something the child had done.
Leopold closed his eyes briefly.
The worst part was not that Isolde was coming. It was knowing that Isolde was nothing like Phoebe, and realizing that bothered him deeply.
It was that he now knew exactly what he stood to lose.