Chapter 4
“Shall I draw a bath, Your Grace? It helps with the soreness.” Hattie stood beside the dressing table with a pitcher of warm water in one hand and a look of gentle knowing on her face.
The morning light pushed through the curtains and fell across the bed, which was rumpled on one side and untouched on the other.
Mary felt the heat climb from her collarbone to the tips of her ears. She pulled the coverlet higher. “A bath would be lovely. Thank you, Hattie.”
Hattie curtsied and disappeared through the adjoining door. Mary listened to the sound of water being poured into the copper tub and pressed her palms against her face.
There was no soreness from the wedding night, for the Duke had not come to her room.
She had lain awake for an hour after climbing into bed, listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the house.
The tick of the clock on the mantelpiece.
The creak of old timber settling. Footsteps in the corridor that had slowed near her door, paused, and continued past. She had held her breath. The footsteps had not returned.
She should have felt relieved. She did feel relieved. The Duke was a stranger, and the thought of him crossing that threshold, standing at the foot of her bed in the candlelight, was enough to make her stomach clench with something she refused to examine.
And yet…
Mary pressed her fingers harder against her cheeks and pushed the thought away. She had married a man who viewed their union as a transaction. Disappointment had no place in the arrangement, and she would not give it room.
She rose, bathed, and dressed. Hattie pinned her hair into a simple knot and fastened a strand of pearls at her throat. Mary studied herself in the mirror. She looked like a duchess, but she felt like a woman wearing a costume that did not fit.
“Where is His Grace this morning?” she asked.
“Gone out, Your Grace. Before dawn, Mrs. Cahill says. Business in the city.”
Mary nodded. Of course he had.
She descended the staircase, took breakfast alone in the dining room where they had argued the night before, and then went upstairs to the nursery.
“He took the whole bottle this morning, Your Grace. Every drop.”
Mrs. Bridwell lifted Tommy from the crib and settled him into Mary’s arms with the practiced ease of a woman who recognized when a request was unnecessary. Mary had not asked to hold him. She had walked into the nursery, looked at the crib, and Mrs. Bridwell had simply placed him there.
Tommy blinked up at her. His eyes were dark blue, the murky, shifting color of a newborn who had not yet decided what he would become. Charlotte’s nose. Charlotte’s chin. Mary traced the curve of his cheek with one finger, and something ached behind her ribs.
“He’s grown,” she said.
It had been six days since she first held him in the parlor. Six days, and his face had changed. His cheeks were fuller. His fists gripped with more purpose.
“They do that, Your Grace.” Mrs. Bridwell smiled. “Blink, and you’ll miss it.”
Mary settled into the rocking chair and held Tommy against her chest. He made a soft sound, something between a sigh and a hiccup, and turned his face into the warmth of her neck. She closed her eyes and rocked.
This was the part of her new life that made sense.
Not the vast, echoing dining room. Not the bed that remained half empty.
Not the husband who spoke to her as though she were a tenant presenting a complaint.
This. The weight of this child in her arms, the rise and fall of his breathing, the smell of milk and clean linen.
She spent the morning in the nursery. She fed Tommy his next bottle when the time came, holding him upright against her shoulder afterward.
“Higher on the shoulder, Your Grace. Yes, just there. Now tip him forward a touch.”
Mary adjusted her grip, and Tommy burped with a force that startled them both. Mrs. Bridwell laughed. “There. You’re a natural.”
“I am covered in milk.”
“That is what natural looks like with a newborn.”
Mary wiped her shoulder with the cloth and settled Tommy back into the crook of her arm. His eyes were open, tracking her face with the unfocused intensity of a baby still learning what faces were.
“The pins,” Mary said, nodding toward the changing table. “Show me again. I made a mess of it this morning.”
Mrs. Bridwell laid out a fresh cloth and talked her through it a second time, patient and unhurried, correcting the angle of Mary’s hands without making her feel foolish.
Tommy kicked through the whole business and screamed when the cold air hit his skin, and Mary fumbled the pin twice before getting it right.
“Better,” Mrs. Bridwell said. “By next week you won’t need me standing over you.”
“I will always need you standing over me.” Mary lifted Tommy against her chest and felt his screaming taper into hiccups. “Charlotte would have known all this already. Our mother taught her. I was the one reading in the garden while Charlotte practiced swaddling the cat.”
Mrs. Bridwell smiled. “Cats and babies are nothing alike, Your Grace.”
“The cat didn’t cry, though.”
Tommy hiccupped once more, then settled. Mary rocked him and hummed a melody she hadn’t thought of in years, something her mother had sung to Charlotte when Charlotte was small enough to be held this way. The second verse caught in her throat, and she stopped.
Charlotte should have been here. Charlotte should have been the one holding this baby, learning his sounds, memorizing the pattern of his breathing. Instead, Charlotte was somewhere beyond London, beyond reach, and Mary stood in her place, falling in love with a child who was not hers.
She thought of the Duke’s words.
Our arrangement.
She thought of Lord Grentport shoving her father to the ground. She thought of the vestibule and the whispers and the long ride to Blackholm House in a wedding dress.
She had always wanted a family. A husband who looked at her with warmth.
Children of her own. A household built on affection, not obligation.
She had accepted Grentport because her father needed her to, and she had accepted the Duke for the same reason, and neither man had asked her what she wanted because neither man had thought to.
Tommy stirred in his crib and fussed. Mary lifted him and settled him against her shoulder, and his fussing stopped, and the ache in her chest deepened into something she could not name.
At least she had this.
For now, she had this.
“You’re back.”
The Duke looked up from his desk.
His study was a dark-paneled room at the far end of the ground floor, lined with ledgers and correspondence. A lamp burned at his elbow. His coat was draped over the back of his chair, his cravat loosened, and there were ink stains on his fingers.
He looked as though he had been sitting there since he returned, and the shadows beneath his eyes said the day had not been kind.
“You needed something?” he asked.
Mary stepped inside. She had changed for dinner, but dinner was an hour away. When she had heard his footsteps in the corridor, she had followed them here before she could talk herself out of it.
“I wanted to let you know Tommy had a good day,” she said. “He took all his bottles. Mrs. Bridwell says he’s gaining weight. He slept well after his two o’clock feeding and—”
“You do not need to report everything to me.” Evander picked up his pen and returned his attention to the letter before him. “If you need something, just let me know. Otherwise, I trust you to manage the nursery.”
Mary stood in the doorway and watched him write. The pen scratched against the paper. He did not look up.
“Don’t you want to know about him?” she asked. “He is your nephew.”
The pen stopped. He exhaled through his nose, a controlled sound, the kind a man made when he was working to keep his patience.
“I am managing a scandal that has reached four newspapers. I spent this morning with my solicitor, this afternoon with a Bow Street runner I have hired to locate Richard, and the last two hours drafting correspondence to every contact I have in the northern counties. I am aware that Tommy is my nephew; I am also aware that I cannot care for him and manage the rest of this at the same time, which is why I married you.”
The last four words hung in the air.
Mary absorbed the blow. She kept her face still.
“Is that all I am to you?” she asked. “A nursemaid with a title?”
“You are the Duchess of Blackholm. That title carries duties and privileges that most women in England would consider more than sufficient.” He set the pen down.
“Our marriage was born of necessity, Lady Mary. I intend to honor my obligations to you, but I will not pretend this is something it is not. We will remain in the same house until I find Richard and Charlotte. Then I will arrange for their marriage, secure Tommy’s legitimacy, and ensure your comfort in the future. ”
Mary’s fingers tightened on the doorframe. “Ensure my comfort in the future.” She repeated the words as though tasting something bitter. “What does that mean?”
“It means you will want for nothing. And after Richard and Charlotte are found and they marry, we will not need to trouble each other.”
The room seemed to tilt beneath her feet. Mary heard the clock tick on the mantelpiece. She heard her own heartbeat, loud and unsteady.
“We are married,” she said. Her voice was low. “Bound to each other before God until death parts us. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It means I have given you my name and my protection. I do not recall promising anything beyond that.”
“You are a duke. Surely, you must have an heir.”
Evander leaned back in his chair. His expression did not change, but something behind his eyes closed, the way a door closes in a draft. “Richard’s children will inherit. That was always the arrangement.”
Mary stared at him. The floor shifted beneath her feet, a slow, sickening tilt. “You do not want children?”
“No.”
One word. Flat and final, without apology or explanation.
She thought of the nursery upstairs. Of Tommy’s weight in her arms. Of the song she had sung that afternoon, her mother’s song, and how she had imagined singing it to a child of her own someday.
A child with her eyes and his jaw and a laugh that filled a room the way laughter was supposed to fill a room.
That child would not exist. She was married to a man who did not want her and did not want a family, and the door she had not known she was holding open swung shut with a sound only she could hear.
Mary turned. She could not let him see her face. Not now. Not like this.
“We are not finished.”
She stopped. Her hand rested on the doorframe, and she willed the tremor out of her fingers before she turned back.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The Duke rose from his chair. He came around the desk and leaned against its edge, folding his arms. The lamplight caught the sharp lines of his face and threw the rest into shadow.
“Tell me about Charlotte,” he said.
“What about her?”
“The months before she disappeared. Did she say anything unusual? Did she receive letters? Meet with anyone you did not recognize?”
Mary’s jaw tightened. “Charlotte confided in me about the usual things. The wedding preparations. Her nerves about meeting your family. She never mentioned running.”
“And you noticed nothing?”
“I noticed my sister was frightened of the life she was stepping into. I noticed that she smiled less as the wedding approached. I noticed—”
Mary stopped.
The Duke was watching her with an expression she recognized. She had seen it on her father’s solicitors when they suspected a servant of stealing silver.
He was looking for a crack. A contradiction.
“You think I helped her,” She realized.
His silence was louder than any accusation.
“You think I helped my sister disappear.” Mary stepped toward him.
Her voice shook, and she did not care. “I stood in a church this week and married a stranger for the sake of my family. I hold your nephew in my arms every day because his mother is not here to do it. And you stand there and imply that I am the reason she left.”
“I am examining every possibility.”
“No.” Mary’s chin lifted. “You are looking for someone to blame because you cannot find your brother, and it is easier to suspect me than to admit that you have no idea where your brother is or why he left.”
The Duke’s jaw ticked. His arms unfolded. He opened his mouth, but Mary was finished waiting for his words.
“Goodnight, Your Grace.”
She walked out of the study, down the corridor, and up the staircase. She did not stop at her own rooms. She went to the nursery, where Mrs. Bridwell dozed in the rocking chair, and Tommy slept in his crib with his fist pressed against his cheek.
Mary stood over the crib and looked at the baby.
Charlotte’s baby. The only piece of her sister she had left.
The Duke did not want children. He did not want a wife. He wanted a solution to a problem, and Mary was the solution, and once the problem was solved, she would be set aside like a ledger that had been balanced.
She reached into the crib and rested her hand on Tommy’s chest. His heartbeat thumped against her palm, quick and steady.
“I am here,” she whispered. “I am not going anywhere.”