Chapter 17 #2
Phoebe looked up. Leopold looked down. Leopold’s heart pounded so fiercely it could have earned a place in a derby race.
Looking into Phoebe’s eyes, he saw a tired, worried woman who loved the baby they were holding and was looking at him as though she never wanted to look away.
Leopold realized he did not want her to look away either.
Then Cecily made a small unhappy noise and the moment ended.
They took turns after that. One walked while the other sat, one held her while the other prepared the compresses. The hours passed without either of them mentioning them.
Near three in the morning, Cecily finally slept. Phoebe lowered her carefully into the crib. Neither of them moved away immediately. Leopold watched the child’s breathing until he was certain it had settled, then sat on the floor with his back against the crib. Phoebe lowered herself beside him.
For several minutes neither spoke. The nursery fire made a soft clicking sound.
Leopold looked toward her. “How did you know about the compresses?”
Phoebe folded her hands in her lap. “I told you.”
“You did.”
“A previous position.”
He waited. She looked toward the crib. “That is all.”
“Which child?”
Her gaze moved back to him. For a moment, he thought she would refuse to answer. Then she sighed softly. “My niece.”
Leopold blinked, surprised.
“You have siblings?” he asked.
“Had,” she said quickly.
Leopold’s heart dropped. Had. He was not too tired to understand what that meant.
She had had at least one sibling, but she did not any longer.
Whether because of death or disownment or elopement, he did not know.
But suddenly, the things he had been questioning about Phoebe were making a bit more sense.
He was still not quite sure how Phoebe seemed to know Cecily specifically so well. And he did not know what had happened to her sibling, or the niece she had just mentioned.
However, that single word told Leopold that the matter was far too painful to idly discuss. He was unsure whether his suspicions were fully placated. But right then, he would let the matter go. Perhaps, he now knew the only part of Phoebe’s past with children that he needed to know.
“I see,” he said, silencing any further questions in his mind, at least for the time being.
Phoebe’s shoulders eased slightly. Neither of them spoke after that. The silence was not uncomfortable. It was simply late, very late, the kind of hour that stripped away most of the things people usually carried into a room with them.
Phoebe no longer looked like a careful nursemaid. Leopold no longer felt like a duke. He was simply a tired man sitting beside a sleeping child, and she was simply the woman who had stayed awake with him.
At some point Phoebe’s head tipped back against the crib. Her eyes closed.
Leopold watched her for a moment. “Miss Redmond?”
No answer. She had fallen asleep sitting upright.
A few seconds later, her head slipped sideways and came to rest against his shoulder. Leopold looked down at her. He should have moved.
Instead he remained where he was. Her hair brushed his cheek. She breathed slowly, completely unaware of where she had fallen asleep, one hand still near the edge of the crib, as though even in sleep she meant to keep contact with the child.
Leopold looked down at Cecily. Then at Phoebe.
Lady Isolde had arrived two days ago because his mother had arranged it. He had agreed to the courtship because the alternative was an orphanage. It had seemed simple when he made the decision. Protect the child, protect the household, provide a respectable future.
Now he was sitting on a nursery floor at three in the morning with a woman he could not verify and a baby he could not give up. He looked at the sleeping child, then at the woman against his shoulder. The arrangement had become considerably less simple.
Leopold let his head rest back against the crib. Outside, the first faint hint of morning remained hours away. Inside, the fire burned low. Cecily slept. Phoebe slept against him. And he sat very still, listening to both of them breathe.
A little before dawn, Cecily stirred. Leopold felt it immediately.
Her skin was cooler. He touched her forehead.
The fever had broken. For the first time that night, Leopold allowed himself a proper full, deep breath of relief.
He looked toward Phoebe, who was still asleep against his shoulder.
He shifted carefully, not wanting to wake her.
Cecily’s fever was gone. Phoebe’s explanation of the compresses ought to have settled his doubts, and for a time it nearly had. Yet another detail returned now, unwelcome and insistent.
Before. With her niece. That was the answer Phoebe had given him, and grief had plainly made the subject painful. Still, the ease with which she understood Cecily, and Cecily understood her, left him with the uneasy sense that the explanation was true without being complete.
He looked at the woman asleep beside the crib. Perhaps Cecily merely resembled the niece Phoebe had lost; perhaps loving one child had taught her how to comfort another. Leopold wanted to accept that.
He found, however, that he could not entirely silence the question of why Cecily reached for her as though she had always known her.