Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Andrew leaned against the doorframe, watching Jessamine in the library, William in a small basket beside her. She had retrieved a book from the shelves and now read it aloud, animating her voice with so much enthusiasm, Andrew found himself smiling despite his best intentions.
William cooed in response, as though answering her, and she laughed, putting her book down and kissing the baby’s forehead. The domesticity of the picture tugged at something in his chest, making it ache.
“I wish your mother could see this,” he heard Jessamine said. “I will always be your mother, but I won’t hide your real mother from you. When you get old enough, I will tell you all about her.” Her voice caught. “How wonderful she was, and how much she loved you, right until the last.”
The twinge in Andrew’s chest tightened, becoming something rather closer to pain.
“And in her memory, I will always keep you happy,” she said.
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Andrew said.
Jessamine’s head snapped up, eyes wide as she took him in.
Red tinged her cheeks, and just like every other time he had seen her since the kiss, he wanted to take hold of her hair and punish her, lure her, with another kiss.
More kisses, until he had his fill of her and no longer wanted her the way he wanted her now.
Though it was perhaps not her fault, he still resented this lack of control on his part, the way she had drawn him to her from the very beginning.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Now that you’ve listened to me and agreed to allow him some space, he will get everything he could possibly want. How will that not make him happy?”
He advanced to sit beside her. “As a baby, perhaps that will suffice. But as he grows older, things will change. No matter what you offer him, he will test the boundaries and seek something different. He may even grow angry and resentful against us both for maintaining those boundaries.”
“Perhaps, if you enforce them in a way that brings resentment, but don’t speak about William as if he will have no sense of reason.
Most boys understand that there are certain expectations and boundaries in place for safety reasons.
As for other restrictions and expectations, perhaps they are not necessary. ”
“They are always necessary,” he said, biting back his irritation. “I have told you before that no one can have everything they want. Do you intend to spoil him?”
“I intend to make him feel loved! I do love him, and I show it every moment I can.”
“He will know he’s loved,” he said. “Unless we’re cruel.”
“Your standards are abominably low.”
“I am merely being practically minded.” Andrew set his jaw.
He had no idea how she managed to get under his skin so effectively. First he wanted her, and then he—
Well, he found it infuriating that she had so little concept of what it required to raise a healthy child with strong principles, one who would uphold his duty well and without complaint.
It was certainly not by coddling him.
William stirred, his face screwing into a red mask of displeasure, and let out an earth-shattering wail.
“Oh, my little prince.” Jessamine murmured, immediately leaning over to pick him up. “Have you grown tired of being on the chair?”
“Shall I call the nursemaid to feed him?” Andrew asked. “Or perhaps he needs changing.”
Jessamine sniffed the boy, then shook her head. “He doesn’t need changing.”
“I’ll call for Lucy, then.”
“Wait. He may just need a little comfort.” Jessamine cradled him in her arms as though she had never been without a child; it came to her as easily as breathing.
Andrew had never felt that. He spent hours worrying at night that he was stepping up to an imperfect guardian, and she had taken to motherhood the way a duck takes to water.
“Comfort?” he repeated.
“Babies need comforting too, you know. I think he just needs to be held.” She offered him to Andrew. “Perhaps he needs to be held by his fa—by his uncle.”
Andrew hesitated, even as he held his arms out for the child.
The sooner she stopped this ridiculous farce and actually attended to one of the boy’s needs, the sooner he would stop crying.
And if this was what was necessary to prove such a thing, then so be it.
Even as some part of him trembled at the thought of holding such a tiny child.
He could handle the practical applications of being a father, but this had never been something he’d had experience with.
William kept crying in his arms, tiny body squirming, and Andrew felt a mixture of relief and odd anxiety. “See?” he demanded. “I was right.”
“Well, if you are just sitting there like a scarecrow, then no wonder he’s still crying. Rock him a little. Say something comforting. Caress his head. Show him that he is loved.”
Andrew glared at Jessamine, but he merely waited for him to follow her instructions. He had never felt more ridiculous than sitting here, with all his bulk focused on such a minuscule being, one that controlled him utterly.
Evidently there was nothing more to do than to, as she said, although showing him that he is loved was vague enough for him to take issue with.
But William kept crying, so Andrew mimicked what he had seen Jessamine do on more than one occasion, rocking back and forth.
The gesture felt stiff and oddly uncoordinated, but under her bright smile, he kept going.
Then—miracle of miracles—the baby stopped crying.
William stirred a few more times, but then his eyes opened, and he stared at Andrew, unblinking. Unsure what to do, Andrew stared back.
Something warm erupted in his chest. He had always loved William because he was Rebecca’s son, and he’d feared losing him the night of the fever, but he hadn’t quite felt… this before.
“There,” Jessamine said, her voice soft as William’s eyes began to close. The boy was falling asleep. In Andrew’s arms. “Do you see now?”
He saw nothing very clearly except the fact that he had a child in his arms he had no idea what to do with.
And perhaps yes, he could believe that something as small and fragile as a baby required feeling safe before it could sleep.
Somewhere familiar or warm and protected, and Andrew could protect him.
He would protect him against any danger that came along.
“Shall we take him upstairs now?” Jessamine asked, still in a half-whisper.
Andrew nodded and rose as carefully as he could. William didn’t stir, and soon his tiny breaths were all Andrew could hear.
Jessamine followed Andrew upstairs, doing her best not to celebrate too loudly. If he saw her celebrating, he would probably hand William immediately back to her and take himself off again. A man of Andrew’s caliber did not like to be wrong.
But wrong he was.
She could hardly blame him, given he clearly had no experience with children.
In Scotland, she had seen plenty of children, although she’d never had any of her own.
It made fitting into London Society life feel strange in comparison, but this—caring for William—was a point of familiarity in an unfamiliar world.
And she was slowly but surely bringing Andrew into that world.
He hadn’t avoided her when he’d seen her in the library. He’d even held William, though she hadn’t missed his uncertainty, or the way he had very clearly not believed that this was best for William.
None of that mattered now.
They reached his nursery, and Andrew carefully laid William down in his cradle. Andrew went to ring for Lucy, and Jessamine stayed a few more moments, staring at William’s tiny, sleeping face and wondering how she could love him so very much when she had only known him for a handful of weeks.
“Rebecca would be so proud of him,” she whispered so Andrew wouldn’t hear, then followed him out of the room.
Andrew closed the door behind her, leaning over, and she caught the scent of soap and cotton and something else—a scent that she had smelled once before, when he had massaged her and drawn her in for a kiss.
The memory turned her face to fire, and a tingling went through her body.
He glanced down at her, seeming to realize their proximity for the first time, and stepped back. Jessamine opened her mouth to ask about the kiss, then hesitated.
What ought she to say? What was there to say?
He looked down at her seriously, and she found her attention drawn to his mouth once more. She’d never had occasion to look at a man’s mouth before now, and she didn’t know quite what to do with the sensation.
“Andrew,” she started, not knowing where she was going next. Even this corridor made him feel too close; so large was he, and yet the distance he maintained between them felt too far. “We ought to…”
His eyes flicked to hers, so dark they made her stomach flutter. “We ought to what?”
What? What did she have in mind to say? “Well done with William.”
His gaze searched her face as though he knew she had intended to say something else, but eventually, all he said was, “If you have anyone to thank, you should thank yourself.”
“We are both learning what we can as we go,” Jessamine said.
She stepped forward, a moth to a flame.
Keeping her distance from Andrew was impossible.
She had seen something else lurking behind that stern exterior, and she wanted desperately to uncover it and learn a little more about him.
All the things she had assumed at their first meeting were false, and she could no longer say she disliked him.
If anything, she thought she might like him very much if only he gave her occasion to.
“Good day, Your Graces,” Lucy said breezily as she approached, patting down the nursemaid’s cap on her head. “Is William sleeping?”
Andrew tore his gaze from Jessamine, and she felt bereft from under it, her chest tightening and releasing. “He is,” he said curtly. “Thank you for coming and sitting with him.”
“Oh, that’s my pleasure, Your Grace.” She bobbed a quick curtsy and disappeared inside the nursery.
Jessamine looked at Andrew, half reaching out, but he had already turned for the stairs. Running, yet again.
“If that is all,” he said, pausing several feet from her, “then I will take my leave, Jessamine. Let me know if William needs anything else from me.”
“Just to be held,” Jessamine said, although part of her wondered how much of that requirement was for William, and how much was for her. “That’s all.”
“I think you have that admirably under control.” He nodded at her, his stern mask fully in place, not a glimmer of emotion showing underneath.
Jessamine said nothing as he disappeared down the stairs away from her.
This time, it felt a little as though he had taken a very small piece of her with him. She was not sure how to get it back.