Chapter One #3
Ravenshaw was very still for a moment that lasted longer than the silence warranted. Then he turned.
“Mrs Alder.”
The housekeeper descended. “Your Grace?”
“The east wing. A fire, clean linen, hot food. Send for Mr Meade before dawn.”
“At this hour, Your Grace?”
“Did I stutter, Mrs Alder?”
“You did not, Your Grace. I was merely observing that Mr Meade is a man of considerable routine.”
“Then his routine is about to be disrupted. Go.”
“At once, Your Grace.”
He turned to the footmen. “You will speak of tonight to no one in this household or beyond it. Should it reach my ears that the slightest particular of this lady’s arrival has been whispered, I will identify the source, and the consequences will be swift and permanent. Am I perfectly understood?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” they said together, with the fervour of men who had just decided that a well-schooled ignorance was his greatest professional asset.
The hall emptied. Within a minute Beatrice stood alone with the Duke of Ravenshaw and a baby who had finally stopped crying.
“You will tell me everything that connects you and this child to Lord Adrian Voss.”
“I will tell you what I can. It is not the same thing, and I will not pretend otherwise.”
“You are aware that I am offering you shelter in my house.”
“I am aware.”
“And protection, such as it is, from a man whose ring you are carrying in your pocket.”
“I am aware of that as well.”
“And yet you will not tell me the full truth.”
“I will tell you the truth, Your Grace. I will simply not tell you all of it tonight, and I will not apologise for the distinction.”
“You are the most stubborn woman I have encountered in a decade of avoiding women specifically to prevent this kind of conversation.”
“Then your decade has been poorly spent, Your Grace, because stubborn women are precisely the kind you ought to have been cultivating.”
Martha, who had not left with the servants, was standing near the corridor with the valise at her feet. She maintained a steadfast silence with downcast eyes, though the strain of doing so was written plain upon her features.
“Then tell me what you can, and I will decide what is to be done.”
“And if what I tell you puts the child at risk?”
“No one is asking you to surrender him.” His voice had changed. The courtroom distance was gone. What remained was lower, plainer and harder to dismiss. “Do not mistake this house for your father’s.”
The words struck something she had been holding rigid and upright since the morning her father had looked at Ned in Martha’s arms and said: send the child away, Beatrice, or I shall have it done for you. The rigidity gave way all at once. The hall tilted. The candles smeared into amber streaks.
“Martha,” she managed.
Martha was already moving, but Ravenshaw was closer. He caught her before the floor did, one arm beneath her shoulders, the other steadying Ned between them. The baby gave one startled whimper and then burrowed into Beatrice’s cloak, having found warmth and formed a policy about it.
“I have her, Your Grace,” Martha said, arriving at a near-run. “If you will take the boy.”
“I have the boy. Take her other arm.”
Martha took Beatrice’s arm. Fourteen years of fevers, stubbornness and grief had taught her exactly how much weight to take, and she took it.
“Can you manage the stairs?” he asked.
“Yes, Your Grace.” She did not elaborate. She did not need to.
“The east wing. Mrs Alder will have the room ready.”
“And the child?”
“The child stays with her.”
Beatrice tried to speak. What came out was Helena’s name, murmured once into the shoulder of a man who had no reason to hold her and had not yet let go.
Mrs Alder appeared at the foot of the stairs, slightly breathless. “The east wing is prepared, Your Grace. The fire is lit, the bed is turned, and I have sent Thomas for the physician.”
“Very well.”
“Shall I take the child?”
Ravenshaw looked down at Ned, who had his fist curled into the wool of the duke’s banyan and was sleeping with the ferocious determination of a baby who had found a satisfactory arrangement and did not intend to renegotiate it.
“He appears to have made his own arrangements, Mrs Alder.”
“So I see, Your Grace.”
“I shall carry him.”
“Very well, Your Grace. I did not presume to suggest otherwise.”
Ravenshaw looked at the maid, then at the baby, then at the unconscious woman in his arms. His carefully ordered life had, in the space of twenty minutes, been breached by a woman who had carried a baby through a storm and had not once asked for pity.
“Mrs Alder,” he said. “Lead the way.”
“At once, Your Grace.”
“And Mrs Alder.”
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Send for more blankets. The child is cold.”
Martha, climbing the stairs beside him with the valise in one hand and her other gripping the banister, said quietly: “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Do not thank me. I am merely preventing the noise from resuming.”
Martha said nothing to that. But she looked at him once, briefly, as they reached the landing, and the look contained something that a lady’s maid would never have put into words and that a duke would never have acknowledged receiving.