Chapter 4
“You should not be here again.”
Alastair’s voice carried none of its usual languid amusement as he stared at Penelope from behind his desk.
He looked surprised, though he ought not.
He should have known that once she had gotten over the surprise, she would return.
This time, not under the cloak of night—but with the break of dawn.
Penelope remained still in the doorway with her cloak still fastened at her throat, her maid hovering anxiously in the corridor beyond.
“I could not stay away,” she said, her voice steadier than the frantic beating of her heart. “Not after... not without understanding.”
“There is nothing to understand.” He turned away, bracing his hands against the desk as though it were the only thing preventing his collapse. “You should forget what you saw last night. Forget you were ever here.”
“Forget?” The word came out sharper than she intended. She stepped fully into the room, letting the door fall shut behind her despite Annie’s small sound of protest. “You summon me in the middle of the night, show me a child—a baby, Your Grace—and expect me to simply forget?”
“Yes.” His shoulders drew tight beneath his rumpled shirt. “That would be considerably easier for both of us.”
“Easier.” She moved closer, drawn by concern. “Is that what matters to you? Ease?”
He laughed, a sound scraped raw. “You have no idea what matters to me, Miss Hartwell.”
“Then explain it to me.” She stopped on the opposite side of his desk, her fingers curling against her palms. The basket caught her peripheral vision, and her chest constricted. “Whose child is that?”
Alastair’ sighed deeply. For a long moment, he said nothing, and in that silence Penelope’s mind began constructing explanations with the cold efficiency of arithmetic. A duke. A notorious rake. A baby appearing without warning.
The conclusion was inevitable.
“Yours,” she whispered, and the word felt like swallowing glass. “The baby is yours.”
His head snapped up, eyes meeting hers with horror or both. “What?”
“Do not insult me by denying it.” Her voice gained strength even as her stomach turned. “You are known throughout London for your... dalliances. It was only a matter of time before one of them produced consequences.”
“Miss Hartwell—”
“And now you need my help to raise your poor bastard child.” The cruel word hurt to say and she winced, but she forced it out anyway, forced herself to look at him without flinching.
“Is that it? You thought the spinsterish Miss Hartwell might be desperate enough, dull enough, to agree to some arrangement that saves your reputation whilst—”
“Stop.” He moved around the desk with startling speed, catching her wrist before she could retreat. Not roughly—never roughly—but firmly enough to halt her words. “Just stop. You are wrong.”
“Am I?” She tried to pull free, but he held fast, his thumb pressing against the frantic pulse at her wrist. “Then explain. Explain why there is a child in your study. Explain why you summoned me. Explain—”
“Read this.” He released her abruptly, turning back to the desk and snatching up a folded piece of paper with hands that trembled. “Before you accuse me of fathering every nameless infant in London, read this.”
He thrust the letter at her with barely controlled violence.
Penelope took it, her fingers brushing his for one electric instant before he jerked back as though burned. The paper was of good quality, she noticed distantly, even as her vision blurred at the edges. She forced herself to focus on the words written in an elegant, feminine hand.
To those who would protect what I cannot...
Her breath stopped.
I entrust this child to the only two souls in London whose character I have witnessed beyond doubt. Miss Penelope Hartwell, whose compassion knows no boundary of propriety. And Alastair Reed, Duke of Blackmere, whose honor exists despite his reputation rather than because of it.
The words swam. Penelope blinked hard, forcing them back into focus.
I cannot keep my child. To do so would destroy them, would destroy everything. But I cannot abandon them to strangers, to an institution that would strip them of dignity before they learned their own name.
Please. I beg you both. Protect them. Love them. Give them the life I cannot.
The world will judge you for this kindness. Society will not understand. But I pray you might forgive a desperate mother who had no other choice.
The signature was not a name. Simply a single letter, written with a flourish that suggested both elegance and anguish.
M.
Penelope’s hands began to shake. She read it again. Then again. The words did not change. Her name. His name. Chosen deliberately. Trusted absolutely.
“Who...” Her voice came out as barely more than breath. She looked up, finding Alastair watching her with an expression she had never seen on his usually controlled features. Desperation.
Raw and undisguised. “Who is M?”
“I have no idea.” He dragged a hand through his already dishevelled hair.
“I have spent the entire night trying to determine who might have written this. Who might know both of us well enough to—” He broke off, shaking his head.
“I have nothing. No answers. No explanations. Just a child who will not stop crying and a letter that makes no sense.”
Penelope’s mind raced, sorting through every acquaintance, every conversation, every woman she knew whose name began with M.
Marianne. The thought struck like lightning, electric and impossible.
But Marianne had been sent away, had been absent from London for months, had written only brief, stilted letters that revealed nothing of substance.
Could it be?
No. It could not be. Marianne would have come to her directly, would have—
But would she? If her parents had discovered something, if she had been desperate enough, frightened enough...
“Miss Hartwell?”
Alastair’s voice pulled her back. She realized she was staring at the letter without seeing it, her thoughts spiralling into territories she dared not yet explore.
“We should take the child to a foundling hospital,” Alastair said, and his tone carried the careful neutrality of a man who had already made his decision. “It is the only reasonable solution. They will find a suitable family, someone equipped to—”
“No.”
The word was spoken before conscious thought, driven by some instinct deeper than logic.
Alastair’s brow furrowed. “I beg your pardon?”
“No,” Penelope said once more, meeting his gaze with a certainty that surprised even herself.
“We cannot do that.”
“Cannot?” His voice rose slightly, frustration bleeding through the cracks in his composure. “Miss Hartwell, be reasonable. We are strangers who happen to have our names in a letter. We have no obligation to—”
“Someone trusted us.” She gestured at the letter still clutched in her hand. “Someone who knew us both well enough to believe we would not abandon their child chose us specifically. There must be a reason.”
“Perhaps the reason is madness.” He turned away, pacing toward the window with the restless energy of a caged animal. “Perhaps this mysterious M simply plucked our names from thin air because we are both convenient and unlikely to question—”
“You do not believe that.”
Her quiet words stopped him mid-stride.
“You do not believe that,” she repeated, “or you would have already taken the child away. You would not have summoned me. You would not told me at all. You knew I’d run off if you told me, but you also knew I’d be back.”
His shoulders tensed, and for a long moment he stood silhouetted against the morning light, saying nothing.
“What would you have me do?” The question was tired, defeated. “What solution could possibly exist for this impossible situation?”
“I do not know yet.” Penelope moved closer, drawn by the exhaustion in his voice, by the vulnerability he was fighting so hard to conceal. “But giving the child to strangers, abandoning them to an institution when someone trusted us enough to—”
“And what do you suggest?” He spun back toward her, and there was something wild in his eyes now, something close to panic. “That we take care of a child, though we can hardly stand each other? How do you suppose we manage that?”
“I am not suggesting anything,” she managed, though her voice wavered. “Not yet. I am simply asking you to wait. One day. Give me one day to try to understand who might have done this. To determine if there is someone we know who—”
“And if there is not?” He closed the distance between them in two strides, and she could smell the brandy on his breath, could see the fine tremor in his hands. “If we discover nothing? If this M remains a mystery? What then, Miss Hartwell?”
She had no answer. None that made sense. None that would not alter everything.
“One day,” she whispered. “Please. Just give me one day.”
He looked down, a frown between his brows deepening. Finally, he nodded once, sharp and decisive.
“One day. But after that, Miss Hartwell, I am taking the child to the hospital. I will not allow sentiment to cloud judgment.”
“Of course.” She folded the letter carefully, her fingers steady despite the chaos in her chest. “I will write to you tomorrow. Once I have had time to think.”
She turned toward the door, her mind already racing through possibilities, through names and faces and connections she had never thought to question. Marianne. Could it truly be Marianne? And if so, why would she include the Duke’s name? What connection could possibly—
“Miss Hartwell.”
Alastair’s voice stopped her with her hand on the door handle.
“Yes?”
“When you leave here...” He paused, and when she glanced back, his expression had shuttered once more into careful neutrality. “You were never here. Whatever you discover, whatever conclusions you reach, remember that your reputation—”
“My reputation,” she interrupted softly, “is my concern. Not yours.”
She left before he could respond, slipping into the corridor where Annie waited with ill-concealed anxiety. They moved through the silent house quickly, neither speaking until they emerged onto the street where the hired carriage waited.
Only when they were safely inside, the door closed against prying eyes, did Penelope allow herself to breathe properly.
“Miss,” Annie spoke at last, “what are we going to do?”
Penelope shook her head.
“I have no idea.”
She closed her eyes against the vicious assault of the words. Even saying it made her feel impossibly powerless.
When the carriage finally stopped, it was not at the Hartwell townhouse. Instead, Penelope found herself staring at an unfamiliar street, her mind so consumed with thought that she had failed to notice the wrong direction.
“Miss?” The coachman’s voice filtered through the window. “Where would you like to go?”
She waited. Perhaps, she should return to the Duke’s house, try to make sense of everything. Perhaps...
No. If she was going to solve this, it would be on her one, she decided and leaned forward firmly.
“Take me home. I have a lot to think about.”
She was not quite certain that she would ever find the truth without doubt. But she was far too exhausted to think logically now. Sooner or later, however, she knew that she had to.