Chapter 1 #2
Leopold looked back toward the drive. No carriage. No footman running up the lane. No mother in tears. No explanation. Only the frost, the bare hedges, and a basket on his front step like a challenge.
“How long has she been there?” he asked.
“The kitchen maid saw nothing this morning, my lord. I believe she was set down sometime before dawn.”
“So someone walked onto my property in the dark, left a child on my doorstep, and vanished.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Leopold closed his eyes for a moment. “Of course they did.”
A door opened inside.
Footsteps crossed the hall, brisk and familiar. Then another voice, lower than Wilfred’s and carrying the faintest trace of dry impatience.
“If this is another tenant dispute,” said a man from inside the doorway, “I should warn you I have already had breakfast and am therefore in no charity with the world.”
Leopold turned.
Barnaby Henshaw, Viscount Dunsmere and Leopold’s longtime friend, stood just inside the hall with a cup of coffee in one hand and a slice of toast in the other. He took in the scene in a single glance: Leopold on the steps, a basket, the baby in Leopold’s arms, Wilfred behind him.
Barnaby paused.
Then he said, “Good Lord.”
Leopold gave him a look. “That was my reaction as well.”
Barnaby set the toast down on the hall table with care and came forward. “Is that a baby?”
“No,” Leopold said flatly. “It is a very determined ham.”
Barnaby’s mouth twitched. He looked from Leopold to the child again. “I am going to ask the obvious question, but only because you will be annoyed if I do not. Is she yours?”
Leopold’s answer was immediate. “No.”
Barnaby studied his face. “Are you sure?”
Leopold looked at him. “Barnaby.”
Barnaby lifted one hand. “All right. All right. The society pages will be thrilled, though. By tomorrow morning half of London will have decided you have been quietly ruining a young woman for months.”
Leopold gave a tired sigh. “Must you say that as if it is a cheerful prospect?”
“It is not cheerful. It is practical. They will invent the worst possible version before breakfast tomorrow, and then they will feel disappointed when the truth is duller.”
Leopold shifted the baby slightly. She did not wake. “The truth being that someone left a child on my doorstep.”
“Yes.”
“With my family shawl.”
Barnaby’s eyes sharpened. “What?”
Leopold held the shawl edge up enough for him to see the emblem. Barnaby’s expression changed at once, all humor gone. He set down the coffee.
“That is authentic,” he said.
“You are certain?”
Barnaby reached out but did not touch the fabric. He studied the stitching. “I have seen the house linens often enough. That emblem is correct. The work is old, too. Not recent. Someone had access to Belgrave’s stores, or to something from them.”
Leopold looked at the child again.
She opened one eye, regarded Barnaby briefly, and then closed it again with complete indifference.
Barnaby let out a breath. “Well. This is not good.”
“I had gathered that.”
“I mean it. Not good in the least.”
Leopold pressed his lips into a thin line. “What do you suggest?”
Barnaby was silent for a moment. “First, we do not let the house see us standing here like this for too long. The servants are already looking out the windows.”
Leopold glanced toward the front parlor. Two pairs of curtains shifted almost imperceptibly.
He muttered, “Excellent.”
Barnaby stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Second, I will begin tracing the shawl. If it really came from your family stores, I want to know how and when. There is no such thing as a baby on a doorstep without a reason.”
Leopold looked down at the child’s small hand still caught in his lapel. “There is no reason I can begin to imagine that would justify this.”
“No,” Barnaby said. “But it is a start, even if it is not justifiable.”
Leopold met his eyes. “And if there is no satisfactory explanation?”
Barnaby’s expression turned dry again, though the humor did not quite reach it. “Then you will be in possession of a foundling, your reputation will be under siege, and the county will be pretending not to look at you while looking at you constantly.”
Leopold gave him a flat stare. “You have a gift for comfort.”
“I know.”
Leopold looked down at the baby, whose breathing had become slow and even against his coat. “And if she wakes?”
Barnaby glanced at the infant, then at Leopold’s arms, then at Leopold’s face. “Then I suspect she will scream until someone better qualified intervenes.”
“I fail to see how that is helpful.”
“It is not meant to be helpful. It is meant to be honest.”
Leopold made a sound that might have been a laugh if he had not been so tired.
Barnaby looked at him a beat longer, then nodded toward the house. “Come inside. You are freezing, and the child has turned you into a statue.”
“I am not frozen.”
“You have not moved in five minutes.”
“That is because she is asleep.”
Barnaby’s mouth twitched again. “There. You see? Already a father.”
Leopold shot him a sharp look. “Do not start.”
Barnaby held up both hands. “I would not dream of it.”
But he was still smiling when he turned back toward the door.
Leopold stood on the steps for one more moment. The morning felt different now, though nothing about it ought to have changed. The cold still bit at his face. Frost was still clung to the stones. The basket still sat on the step with its pale lining and the ridiculous little booties.
And yet his arms no longer felt empty.
The baby made a small sound against his shoulder and tightened her grip on his coat with a sleepy fist.
Leopold looked down at her.
“You have made a serious error,” he told the child quietly.
She did not wake.
“I am not equipped for this.”
No response.
He stood there a second longer, then turned back toward the hall.
Wilfred was waiting at the door. He looked, Leopold thought, exactly like a man who had opted to survive the day by refusing to comment on it.
Leopold paused on the threshold. “Send someone for Mrs. Pritchard.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And have her fetch a maid who is good with children.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“And tea.”
“I thought you had already had tea.”
Leopold glanced down at the sleeping baby. “That was before.”
Wilfred inclined his head once and stepped aside.
Leopold crossed the hall with the child still in his arms. She did not stir.
Barnaby was already heading toward the library, one hand lifted to summon paper, pen, and whatever patience the day would require. Leopold could hear him muttering to himself about records and family linen and the stupidity of the world.
Leopold went to the study instead.
He laid the baby on the settee with a cushion under her head. She gave a little sigh, turned onto her side, and stayed asleep with complete trust that he would still be there when she woke.
Leopold stood over her, then glanced at the empty basket one of the footmen had brought in, the shawl folded over the armchair, and the booties he had placed carefully on the desk.
Cecily.
Someone had named her before leaving her.
Someone had dressed her in Belgrave wool.
Someone had brought her to his door in the dark and vanished into the morning.
Leopold looked at the child, then at the shawl, then at the ledger still open on his desk with the black stain of ink spreading through his father’s careful lines of numbers.
He had spent half the night trying to preserve order.
Now chaos had arrived on his doorstep in a basket.
It was a baby.
And for the first time since inheriting Belgrave, Leopold had no idea what the correct next step was.
That, he thought, was going to be a problem.
Then he looked again at the sleeping child with her dark hair and grave face and the tiny hand curled against his coat, and he realized, with a reluctant chill, that it was already more than a problem.
It was a beginning.
At that moment, footsteps sounded on the stairs.
Leopold turned.
His mother, the Duchess of Belgrave, Verity Harcourt, appeared in the doorway, her gray gaze moving at once from the study door to Leopold, then to the basket, then to the little body asleep on the settee.
She stopped.
Leopold had never seen his mother’s face do that before.
She looked at the baby.
Then at the shawl.
Then at him.
Her hand tightened at her side
Her voice, when it came, was very quiet.
“Where did that child come from?”
Leopold swallowed once and said the only true thing he had.
“The front steps.”
His mother said nothing.
For one long second, the entire room seemed to hold its breath.
Then she turned without another word and walked back upstairs.