Chapter 13 #2
Her voice had thinned with concern.
“I do not know.”
Jonathan stepped closer. “Shall I fetch her nurse, Your Grace?”
“In a moment.” He held a hand up in protest.
Aurora stirred. Her lashes fluttered, but she remained caught in sleep. Hector looked at her small face, peaceful in the place made for her pleasure, and felt the sharp edge that often accompanied love when it arrived too late to be useful as innocence.
He had not considered that a child might prefer refuge to bed.
“I am pleased she loves it,” he said quietly. “But troubled that she is here at this hour.”
Her Grace kneeled beside him. The movement brought her shoulder near his. “Did you not know?”
“Know what?” he frowned.
She took a deep breath in before she continued, “Aurora has been sleeping poorly ever since she arrived here.”
He turned toward her, but she kept her eyes on Aurora. In the lamplight, her face was softened by fatigue, and yet she still looked beautiful. “I thought it might pass. She wakes early. Sometimes she asks whether the closet is still there. Sometimes she wants to see it before anyone else is awake.”
Hector absorbed this without speaking.
The words should have pleased him. The gift had succeeded beyond expectations. Aurora loved it. She found comfort in it. Yet beneath that lay another fact: comfort had become something she needed to confirm repeatedly, as though it might vanish if unobserved.
The duchess reached in and adjusted the fold of Aurora’s skirt with a tenderness so practiced it seemed unconscious. Hector watched her hands. He knew then, with alarming clarity, that his regard for her had already moved beyond admiration.
Aurora sneezed again, shorter this time, and blinked awake. For a moment she stared at them without understanding. Then her eyes widened.
“I was hiding,” she murmured.
“At midnight?” Hector asked.
She considered him sleepily. “Very hiding.”
Her Grace pressed her lips together, but concern overcame amusement. “Oh, darling.”
Aurora turned her face toward the sound. “Poppy?”
“Yes, I am here.”
“I was waiting for morning.”
“In the closet?”
Aurora nodded, then seemed to realize the weakness of her position. “It is my new closet.”
“So it is,” Hector said. “But your bed remains available.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“Sure of what?”
She rubbed one eye with her fist. “That it did not go away.”
No one spoke at once.
Hector looked down at the child and felt the quiet accusation of what she had not meant to accuse.
“It will not go away,” he assured her.
Aurora looked at him. “Promise?”
He had made vows before judges, bishops, creditors, tenants, and men who cared more for seals than souls. None had felt as exacting as this.
“I promise.”
She accepted it with the solemn exhaustion of four years. Her head drooped, and Her Grace moved to lift her, but Hector spoke first.
“I will carry her.”
She hesitated. “Your Grace—”
“I can carry my niece.”
The words came more sharply than intended. The duchess did not flinch, but she heard the edge, and he regretted it at once.
“I did not mean you could not,” she said quietly.
He nodded once. “I know.”
And he did. That was the difficulty. Her Grace’s concern did not diminish him. It asked only how best to help. He was unused to distinguishing the two.
Jonathan came forward without being summoned and placed the cane where Hector could take it after lifting the child.
Hector bent and gathered Aurora from the closet. She was warm now against his chest, heavier in sleep than waking, all loosened limbs and trust. Her head fell onto his shoulder. One small hand caught in his coat and remained there.
He stood carefully.
Her Grace watched, close enough to assist.
Aurora sighed. “My closet,” she murmured.
“Yes,” Hector said. “Your closet.”
“Fairy made it.”
The duchess’s gaze flicked to him.
He ignored it.
“Perhaps,” he said.
Aurora settled again.
Jonathan opened the study door. The corridor beyond was dim and quiet. Hector adjusted his hold on the child and reached for his cane, but Her Grace took it first.
“Allow me,” she said.
For a moment, he did not answer.
To carry Aurora, he needed both arms. To refuse his wife would be pride, not independence. He had spent years telling himself the difference mattered and then ignoring it whenever obedience to the distinction cost him less than trust.
He inclined his head.
She walked beside him, holding the cane. The simplicity of it unsettled him. Their steps fell softly through the sleeping house. Jonathan followed at a respectful distance, a shadow ensuring order did not abandon tenderness altogether.
At the threshold, Hector paused and looked back once toward the study.
The closet door remained open, its interior dark and empty now.
In daylight, Aurora would return to it. She would likely hide there again, despite instructions, despite promises, because love in children often repeated itself until it believed in its own safety.
He would have Mrs. Patterson place a blanket there, he decided. Not to encourage sleeping in it, but because forbidding a refuge did not make a child need it less. He would also speak to the nurse and maids.
Beside him, the duchess said, “You are thinking how to make it safer.”
He turned his head toward her.
Her face was glowing, but her voice held certainty.
“That is what you do,” she continued softly.
He should have denied it. Instead, with Aurora asleep against him and Her Grace carrying his cane through the dark, Hector found he had no wish to defend himself from being known.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”