Chapter 9 #2
“There now,” he murmured, his voice low and soothing. “That is quite enough dramatics for one afternoon. You are perfectly safe, and perfectly fed, and perfectly dry. This is simply a test to see if your new caretakers possess adequate nerves, which I assure you we do not.”
Rose’s cries softened to whimpers. Then to silence.
Then, impossibly, to a tiny, hiccupping sigh as she settled against his shoulder.
Alastair glanced up to find Penelope staring at him as though he’d performed some manner of sorcery.
“How did you—” She broke off, apparently unable to finish the question.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “Pure chance, most likely. She was ready to calm, and I happened to be holding her when—”
“You knew exactly what to do.” She sounded rather angry—as though he had betrayed her trust. “That was not chance. That was experience.”
“Minimal experience at best—”
“You lied to me.”
She spoke softly.
He stilled, the baby warm and trusting against his shoulder, and met Penelope’s eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
“You told me you knew nothing about children.” Her voice remained low, barely above a whisper so as not to wake the now-sleeping infant.
But the fury in it was unmistakable. “You stood in my drawing room and suggested we take this child to an orphanage because you were not equipped to care for her. And now I discover you can soothe her in under a minute when I have spent two days learning how to perform even the most basic tasks.”
“That is not—” He stopped, aware they were veering into dangerous territory. That this argument had very little to do with the sleeping baby between them and everything to do with the chasm of mistrust and misunderstanding that gaped wider with every word.
“Did you lie to make this easier?” She took a step closer, her eyes bright with unshed tears she would never allow to fall.
“To ensure I would bear the burden whilst you returned to your comfortable life in London, secure in the knowledge that you had performed your duty by marrying me and nothing more?”
“No.” The denial came harsh, louder than he’d intended.
Rose stirred against his shoulder, and he forced himself to gentle his voice even as everything in him wanted to shout the truth—that he’d left because being near Penelope made him feel things he had no right to feel, want things he had no business wanting.
“I left to search for answers. I left because I thought—”
“You thought you could abandon us,” she finished. “You thought this marriage would require nothing from you except your name and your title. Well. Allow me to clarify your misconceptions, Your Grace.”
She crossed the distance between them in three swift strides, close enough now that he could see the exhaustion carved into her features, the determination burning behind it.
“You do not get to do this,” she whispered, her voice shaking with the force of her control.
“You do not get to leave me here alone, return at your leisure, and expect me to simply accept whatever scraps of attention you deign to offer. If this is to be a partnership—if we are to raise this child together—then you will stay. You will help. You will be present, not when it is convenient, but when it is necessary.”
The baby was a warm weight against his chest. Penelope stood close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her hazel eyes, could smell the faint scent of lavender that clung to her.
And something in him—some carefully constructed wall he’d spent three decades building—began to crack.
“You are right,” he said quietly. The admission cost him more than it should have.
“I should not have left. I should have discussed my plans with you before departing. I should have—” He broke off, uncertain how to articulate the tangle of guilt and confusion and something too close to admiration that had taken root in his heart since returning to find her here, exhausted and furious and completely magnificent.
“You should have treated me as your partner rather than your burden,” Penelope finished, her voice still low but no less cutting for its softness. “That is what you should have done.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I should have.”
They stood in the quiet nursery, the late afternoon light turning everything golden and soft, the sleeping baby the only sound in the charged silence stretching between them.
Alastair was acutely aware of how close she stood, of the rapid rise and fall of her chest, of the way her eyes searched his face.
“I will stay,” he said at last. “I will help. Though I warn you now, Duchess, I am far better at soothing infants than I am at any other form of domestic responsibility.”
There was almost a smile forming on her lips, but she held it back. “I shall hold you to that promise, Your Grace. Do not make me regret my decision to keep you.”
The words should have been light.
But there was nothing light in the way she looked at him, in the tension humming between them like a plucked string.
Alastair opened his mouth to respond—to make some quip that would diffuse this strange, unsettling moment—when Rose stirred against his shoulder, her tiny hand fisting in his shirt collar.
And Penelope’s gaze dropped to where the baby slept so trustingly against him, something raw and unguarded crossing her features before she could hide it.
“She trusts you,” Penelope said softly, and there was a strange longing in her voice that made his heart skip a beat. “Already, she trusts you.”
“Infants are remarkably poor judges of character,” he said, forcing lightness he did not feel. “Give her a few weeks. She will learn better.”
But Penelope did not smile at the jest. Instead, she reached out—slowly, carefully—and adjusted Rose’s blanket where it had come loose, her fingers brushing against his chest in a way that sent heat racing through him despite every effort to remain unaffected.
“Perhaps,” she said, her eyes still on the sleeping child rather than on him. “Or perhaps she sees something the rest of the Ton has missed.”
Before he could ask what she meant—before he could process the strange intimacy of this moment, the three of them standing together in the golden light like some portrait of domesticity he had no business imagining—footsteps sounded in the corridor.
The wet nurse appeared in the doorway, no emotion visible in her expression, as she took in the scene: the Duke holding the sleeping baby, the Duchess standing close enough to be improper, the charged silence between them.
“Begging your pardon, Your Grace,” she said, addressing Penelope with a slight curtsy. “But if the babe is sleeping, I can take her now. You’ve barely rested these two days.”
Penelope stepped back immediately, the careful distance reasserting itself like walls rising between them. “Yes. Of course. Thank you, Lottie.”
Alastair transferred Rose to the wet nurse reluctantly, aware that the strange spell that had held them both in thrall was breaking with each inch of space Penelope put between them.
The wet nurse disappeared with the infant, leaving them alone once more in the transformed nursery.
Penelope moved to the window, her back to him, her shoulders rigid.
“You should rest,” he said, the words inadequate but all he could manage. “You look exhausted.”
“As you so gallantly observe,” she said without turning. Her voice held a edge he couldn’t interpret. “Tell me, Your Grace, do you make a habit of critiquing ladies’ appearances, or am I simply fortunate enough to receive your blunt honesty?”
He’d meant it as concern. She’d heard it as criticism.
Of course she had.
“I merely meant—” He stopped, frustrated by his own inability to navigate whatever was happening between them. “You have worked yourself to exhaustion whilst I was away. I thought perhaps you might benefit from—”
“From your expert opinion on my deficiencies?” She turned now, and the afternoon light caught the gold in her hair, the shadows beneath her eyes, the stubborn set of her jaw. “I am well aware of how I appear, thank you. I am tired.”
“That is not what I—” He broke off, aware that every word was making this worse. That he was failing at something he couldn’t name, proving her right about his fundamental uselessness in every way that mattered.
“What did you mean, then?” she asked, and there was desperation in the question. “What did you truly mean when you said I looked exhausted? That I appear haggard? Unkempt? Unfit to serve as your duchess?”
“I meant,” he said softly, holding her gaze despite the urge to look away, “that you have accomplished in two days what would have taken most women two weeks. I meant that you look like someone who has fought a battle and won it despite overwhelming odds. I meant—” He stopped, the next words catching in his throat.
I meant that you look beautiful. Even exhausted.
But he could not say that. Could not voice the thought that had ambushed him the moment he’d seen her kneeling beside that cradle, dusty and determined and utterly herself.
“I meant no insult,” he finished lamely. “Merely observation.”
She studied him for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then, softly: “You are terrible at this.”
“At what?”
“At being honest.” She moved toward the door, pausing in the threshold to glance back at him.
“You hide behind charm and deflection, but I see through it. I see you trying to say something genuine and then retreating behind walls the moment it becomes uncomfortable. And I wonder—” She stopped, shaking her head. “Never mind. It does not matter.”
“What?” he asked, taking a step toward her despite every instinct screaming at him to let her go. “What do you wonder?”
She met his eyes, and in that moment, the careful masks they both wore seemed to slip just enough for truth.
“I wonder if you are capable of letting anyone see you,” she said quietly. “Truly see you, without the armour and the performance and the careful distance you maintain. Or if you are so committed to being what everyone expects that you have forgotten how to be anything else.”
The words struck with devastating accuracy, cutting through defences he hadn’t realized he was maintaining.
Before he could respond—before he could formulate any answer that would not be a lie or an evasion—she was gone, her footsteps fading down the corridor, leaving him alone in the golden light of a nursery she’d transformed.
Leaving him with questions he had no idea how to answer.
And the terrible, unsettling realization that somewhere between his departure and return, something fundamental had shifted.
He’d left a wife he barely knew.
He’d returned to find a woman he could not stop thinking about.