Chapter 6
Clara had not been standing at the window long before a soft knock came at the door.
“Come in,” she said, turning.
Richmond entered, followed by two footmen carrying between them a small, carved, wooden cradle.
It was a beautiful thing, pale with age but clearly well made with delicate scrollwork along the sides and a gentle curve to the base that would allow it to rock.
The footmen set it down carefully beside the bed and withdrew without a word.
Richmond remained. He looked at the cradle for a moment with the sort of expression that told her he was experiencing a wave of nostalgia.
“His Grace slept in this very cradle,” he said. “As did his father before him, I am told, though that was before my time here.” He straightened slightly. “It is a fine piece. Solid. They do not make them quite like this anymore.”
Clara looked at it. In her arms, David stirred but did not wake.
“It is lovely,” she said and meant it.
“I am glad it pleases you, My Lady.” Richmond moved to position it closer to the bed.
Then he stepped back and looked around the room with a small frown.
“I must apologize for the state of the chamber. It has not been in regular use, and I am afraid we were not expecting guests. His Grace just returned from Southampton himself a few days ago, and we just finished opening the house up.”
“It is quite all right,” Clara said. “I understand perfectly.”
“Mrs. Parker is already seeing to fresh bedding and a fire. I believe she has also located some suitable blankets for the young…” He paused and glanced at the baby, his eyes narrowing for a moment as his brain adjusted to the new circumstance. “For Master David.”
Clara looked up as he said the name. It was the first time anyone besides her and Julian had spoken it aloud, and hearing it from this man made it feel suddenly, uncomfortably real.
“Thank you, Richmond,” she said.
He nodded and moved toward the door then paused with his hand on the frame. He turned back, and for just a moment, the formality of his expression softened into a warmer expression.
“If I may say so, My Lady,” he said, “it is a very great pleasure to have both a duchess and a child in this house. It has been rather quiet here for rather a long time.” He offered her a small, genuine smile. “His Grace’s mother would have been most pleased.”
Then he bowed and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
Clara stood very still in the middle of the room. Over the next half an hour, the housekeeper, a tall, slender woman with a severe countenance but a warm mannerism once she spoke, brought bedding, a maid lit the fire, and another maid brought up a tray with food.
“I brough up some gruel for Master David. I was not sure if you are still feeding him or if he can eat gruel.” She paused for a moment.
Did he eat gruel? She had no idea. In fact, she did not know when David had last eaten. What if he got hungry? Worse, what if she fed him gruel and he could not eat it yet?
Her heart raced at the thought. Would he starve if he did not eat overnight?
“I am unsure if he can eat gruel,” she admitted. “I have never tried it.”
The maid looked up from the fire and locked eyes with the housekeeper, who nodded.
“Very well. I will leave it here in any case. Do ring the bell if you need anything else. Do you have a lady’s maid?”
She shook her head.
“I will have someone assigned then. Goodnight, Your Ladyship.”
The woman got up and left, and the maid rose from the fire. She took a couple of steps closer to her.
“My little brother ate gruel when he was just two months old because my mama died in the child bed. Your son is how old? Three months by the looks of it?”
She curtsied and hurried away as the housekeeper turned around.
Did she know? Did she suspect? Or was she merely showing a kindness?
She didn’t know, but she was more than grateful. Clara settled on the chair and took the tray with the food. To her relief, David appeared to take the gruel happily. Once he was done, she walked him up and down, patting his back, as she’d remembered hearing babies needed to be burped.
The fire had begun to catch now, throwing a low, warm light across the walls. Everything was exactly as it ought to be. Everything looked entirely, convincingly right.
And she felt like an absolute fraud.
She crossed slowly to the cradle and knelt beside it, settling David carefully down into the blankets that had been arranged inside.
He made a small sound of protest at the loss of her warmth, his tiny face creasing briefly before smoothing again into sleep.
She tucked the blanket gently around him and stayed crouching there for a moment, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest.
His Grace slept in this very cradle.
She thought of Julian, perhaps at the same age as this baby, lying in this same carved wooden bed in some other room of this house. She thought of Richmond, younger then, carrying it through these same hallways. She thought of Julian’s mother leaning over it just as Clara was leaning over it now.
And she thought of how Richmond had looked at her when he said it is a very great pleasure to have a duchess in this house, as though she were something this house had long been waiting for. As though she belonged here.
She did not belong here. She had arrived less than an hour ago under entirely false pretenses with another woman’s child and a story created in a carriage on the way from a ball she had not even wanted to attend.
By morning, the whole of London would be talking about the secret marriage of the Duke of Lynden.
By the end of the week, the story they had built between them would either hold or it would not, and either way, her life would never again resemble the one she had expected when she’d woken up that morning.
David sighed in his sleep and turned his small head to one side.
Clara reached out and rested two fingers very lightly against his cheek. It was impossibly soft.
“You have no idea,” she whispered, “what a great deal of trouble you have caused.”
He slept on, entirely unflustered by this assessment. She almost envied him.
She straightened, removed her gloves, and sat on the edge of the bed. Outside the window, the grounds of the Brixton estate stretched away into the dark. Somewhere out there, she knew, was the statue garden she remembered from childhood visits with Arabella.
She and Arabella used to chase each other between the stone figures on summer mornings.
Julian had been eighteen to their nine the last time they’d had such a visit, and he was therefore entirely above such things.
He sat on a nearby bench pretending to read and occasionally telling them to be quiet.
She wondered where Arabella was tonight. Whether she was safe. Whether she guessed that her son was sleeping in a carved wooden cradle that had once held a duke in a house that smelled of old wood and beeswax.
She hoped so.
Clara lay back against the pillow, still fully dressed, and looked up at the ceiling.
She did not expect to sleep. There was far too much to think about, far too much that tomorrow would bring, far too many conversations she could not yet imagine having with her mother, with Helena, with the world at large.
And Julian… There was Julian. Would he be the support she needed?
He wanted to be, she could tell. And the child was a relation of his.
How odd it was that they were in this together now.
She’d known him for so long, and yet they had not seen each other in what felt like an eternity only to now be locked together in some fashion for the rest of their lives.
All these thoughts were keeping her awake and keeping her from resting.
She’d have a restless night, she was sure.
But the fire was warm, and David’s breathing was soft and steady beside her, and the house around her was quiet in the way that only very old houses can be quiet.
And thus, before she had quite made up her mind about any of it, her eyes closed and the land of nod carried her away to a more peaceful realm.