Chapter 3
“If you have come to laugh at me,” James said, his voice dry and precise in the way it got when he was covering something else entirely, “I assure you I have already suffered enough humiliation for one morning.”
Isadora stepped into the room. She, Cecily, and William had arrived at Ashbourne not twenty minutes ago, wind-cold and travel-stiff, and she had followed the sound of crying straight up the stairs while the others were intercepted by the housekeeper.
She stepped into the room now and took in the scattered clothes, the waiting nurse, and James in his shirtsleeves in the center of it all, with the baby cradled against his shoulder and his hair entirely disheveled.
“How long has she been crying?” she asked.
“This episode?” He shifted the baby slightly. The crying continued, unimpressed. “Since half past six. Before that, since four. Before that—” He stopped and exhaled. “It has been a long morning.”
“Has she eaten?”
“She had some milk an hour ago. She did not keep it.” A pause. “The nurse believes it may be her teeth. Or the change in the household. Or the weather.” He looked up at the ceiling briefly. “The prevailing theory changes every half hour. I am worried she will fall ill.”
The nurse, who was standing near the window, inclined her head apologetically. “She’s been out of sorts since the first days, My Lady. Nothing settles her for long.”
Isadora crossed the room.
James watched her approach with the expression of a man who had run out of alternative strategies and was therefore cautiously open to new information.
“May I?” she asked.
He looked at her for a moment. Then he looked at the baby, who was small and red-faced and thoroughly miserable against his shoulder.
“She will not—” he began.
“Let me try.”
He transferred the child with the careful, slightly awkward deliberateness for a moment, the baby’s cries grew louder at the disruption, and she felt James go still beside her, bracing himself.
She settled the child against her chest, one hand on her back, the other beneath her rump, and simply held her. Firmly. Warmly. The way she had held Cecily and William’s children.
She began to move in a slow, rhythmic sway, nothing effortful, just the steady rocking motion of someone in no hurry.
She felt the baby’s breathing change first. The sharp hiccups smoothed by degrees, the rigid small body softening incrementally against her, as though something had been wound very tight and was slowly, tentatively releasing.
The crying faded, but not at once. It died down in stages with a few whimpers of protest, a shuddering breath, then a sigh of such profound exhaustion that it seemed impossible it had come from someone so small.
Isadora looked down at the baby, who had tucked her face against her collarbone with absolute conviction.
The nurse made a soft, relieved sound from the window.
James had not moved.
Isadora looked up to find him standing exactly where he had been when she took the child, watching her with an expression she had not seen on him before.
It was not the wry distance he usually maintained nor the careful charm.
It was unguarded, something that had not had time to arrange itself into something more manageable.
“How did you do that?” he asked quietly.
“I held her.”
“I was holding her.”
“You were holding her as though she might break,” Isadora emphasized, not unkindly. “Or as though you might. She could tell.”
His jaw tightened slightly.
“She does not know me,” he said. “I am—to her, I am a stranger. She has no reason to—” He stopped.
“She will,” Isadora assured him. “It takes time.”
James looked at the baby, who was making the small sounds of a baby drifting off to sleep against someone’s warmth. Worry filled his eyes.
“She cried for two hours yesterday,” he said, “and I could not—” He broke off, pressing his fingers briefly to his jaw. “I have managed estates and creditors and my father’s catastrophic finances, and apparently one baby of twelve months is entirely beyond my capabilities.”
“Babies,” Isadora said, “do not respond to management.”
“So, I have discovered.” He looked at her. “How long will she sleep?”
“I do not know. The crying wore her out. An hour, perhaps, if we’re fortunate.” She glanced toward the nurse. “Has she a proper routine?”
“We’ve been attempting one,” the nurse replied in the diplomatic tone of someone being generous. “The changes in the household have made it difficult to keep. And His Lordship—” She caught herself. “His Grace does not always—”
“I come at irregular hours,” James cut in, with the flatness of someone admitting to a charge. “I am told this is counterproductive.”
“It unsettles her,” Isadora confirmed. “Predictability matters to them at this age. She needs to know what comes next.”
He absorbed this. “She is one year old.”
“Yes.”
“She cannot possibly understand.”
“She understands more than you think.” Isadora adjusted the baby, who stirred and then resettled with a small, decisive sigh.
“She cannot understand words. But she understands consistency. She understands when a person is calm or frightened. She understands whether the arms holding her feel certain or uncertain.” She looked up at him.
“She is not confused by the house or the new faces. She is confused because the people around her are frightened, and she has no framework for what that means.”
James regarded her for a long moment.
“You’re saying that she knows that I do not know what I’m doing,” he said.
“I’m saying that she knows you’re afraid of getting it wrong.” She held his gaze. “There is a difference.”
He said nothing.
The June light poured through the window into the quiet room. For a moment, it was only the three of them and the small sound of a baby finally, if not temporarily, at rest.
“Stay,” he said. The word came out low, and she watched him register it in the slight shift of his expression.
“That is, if you are willing. With her. While she sleeps.” He looked away.
“The nurse has not had more than four consecutive hours of sleep. I would rather she rest while the child is quiet.”
“Of course,” Isadora agreed.
The nurse left with quiet, exhausted gratitude.
James did not follow immediately. He stood where he was, looking at the baby, at the small weight of her against Isadora’s shoulder.
“What is her name?” Isadora asked.
“The solicitor calls her the child,” he said. “The nurse calls her little one. The former Duke apparently called her Violet in his letters.”
“Violet,” Isadora repeated softly, testing out the name. The baby’s small hand curled against her collarbone. “She looks like a Violet.”
James watched her for a moment.
“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “I think she does.”
He picked up his coat from the chair. He did not put it on. He stood for another moment in the doorway, looking at them both—at the baby, at Isadora, at some point in the space between them. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.
“I’ll be in the study,” he said. “If she—”
“I’ll send for you,” Isadora assured him.
* * *
The study smelled of someone else. James had noticed it the first evening and noticed it again now. It smelled of leather and old paper and something faintly medicinal that probably belonged to the late Duke’s physician and had simply never been aired out.
The desk was mahogany, vast, covered in the organized chaos of a man who had apparently believed that important documents left in visible piles were the same as important documents addressed.
The chair behind it was upholstered in leather, dark with age, shaped by decades of a different man’s posture.
James sat in it anyway, because there was no other chair in the room large enough to hold the scale of what needed doing, and because at some point in the past two weeks, he had run out of the energy required to feel like an intruder in his own house.
My own house.
He looked at the desk.
He reached for the nearest stack of correspondence and read the first line of the top letter for the third time.
Regarding the matter of the eastern tenancy agreements and the outstanding question of…
He set it down.
There were, at last count, forty-seven letters requiring his response. And upstairs, there was a baby girl of twelve months who did not know him, did not trust him, and had spent the better part of a week making her feelings about the situation known.
She knows I’m afraid of getting it wrong.
He pressed two fingers to the bridge of his nose.
Isadora had said it kindly, which had somehow made it worse.
He had spent all his years cultivating the very specific skill of not appearing afraid of anything, and a woman who had known him since she was old enough to form opinions had looked at him across a disordered nursery and taken the whole performance apart with one sentence.
He had not wanted this. That was the truth of it, the one he had not said aloud to anyone and did not intend to, because it served no purpose and changed nothing.
He had not wanted the duchy or the study or the desk or the portrait of his predecessor that hung above the fireplace, regarding him with what he felt was a faint and posthumous skepticism.
He had not wanted to be anyone’s closest male heir. He had been perfectly content as a marquess, with a solvent estate, manageable responsibilities, and the freedom to live as he chose.
But now…
He looked around the study. The portrait looked back.
“I did not ask for any of this,” he muttered.
The late Duke said nothing, which was about as useful as everything else he had left behind.
Another knock sounded at the door.
James straightened, resuming the appearance of productivity. “Come in.”
The door opened to reveal a man he had not seen before. He was small and neat, with sparse hair. He carried a leather bag in one hand and a sheaf of papers under his arm.
James recognized the type before he had crossed half the room.
He was a solicitor. Someone who had come this evening for a specific purpose. James could already sense that something was very wrong.