Page 56 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

Poppy absorbed this with the caution of someone accepting a fragile object. She did not wish to be persuaded too easily. A woman could make a prison of hope if she furnished it with excuses.

Yet Mrs. Patterson’s loyalty did not seem blind. It had the texture of long evidence.

“The children changed matters,” the housekeeper continued, and at that, Poppy’s full attention stayed on her. “Aurora and Princess?”

“Yes. He did not know they existed until about a month ago.”

Poppy had known the rough outline of it, but not from anyone who spoke about it with certainty.

“He had no idea?” she asked curiously.

“None, Your Grace. Whatever else may be said, he was not neglecting them by choice.” Mrs. Patterson’s face tightened, the closest she had come to open feeling. “When he learned of them, everything in this house changed. He began searching at once. Sent inquiries. Pressed men who did not wish to be pressed. There was no delay in his search to find them.”

Poppy remembered Aurora at the orphanage, small and watchful, trying to be brave in a world that had already asked too much of her. She remembered Princess’s thin cry, the way the baby had clung to life throughout her fever.

“He might have ignored it.” Mrs. Patterson sniffled, and Poppy felt her own eyes tear up. “Many men in his position would have. Children are inconvenient when they arrive with scandal and need. Especially children no one expected him to claim.”

Poppy looked down at her hands. Her fingers had twisted together without her noticing.

“But he did claim them,” she whispered.

Mrs. Patterson nodded. “Before he ever saw them, before he knew whether they would bring him anything but trouble, he prepared this house and searched for them.”

Poppy had spent days arranging the duke in her mind. There was his coldness and the unsettling precision with which he spoke. She had not known where to place kindness. She had not been sure there was any to place until she saw him embracing his niece in the maze and heard his gentle instructions to her. Now Mrs. Patterson had handed her several small facts, plain and unadorned, and they disturbed the arrangement entirely.

“A man could be harsh and still just,” she said softly, offering a smile to the elderly woman who smiled back.

For one brief, unwelcome moment, Poppy imagined what he might be if the ice in him thinned so that the man beneath might be visible. She imagined his voice without its edge. His hand extended to comfort her, not from duty but from choice. She shivered as she imagined his warmth against her cheek.

The thought was so intimate that she rejected it at once.

“That is good to know. Thank you, Mrs. Patterson.” She heard how careful she sounded.

Poppy drew herself back into the present.

“You are very welcome, Your Grace.”

“I have invited my sister and cousin for tea tomorrow,” she said after a moment. “I hope that does not inconvenience the household.”

A flicker of approval passed through the housekeeper’s eyes. “Not at all. We will see everything prepared.”

“Julia has only met the girls once. At the orphanage.” Poppy hesitated. “Her own child occupies her almost entirely now, but I think she will be glad to see them again.”

“And glad to see you, I expect.”

Poppy smiled faintly. “Yes. I think so.”

From the nursery came a muffled sound. The cry rose, then quieted under the nanny’s murmured care.

Poppy listened until it settled. Then she stepped away from the window.

“My Princess is calling,” she said with a heavy heart as the housekeeper smiled knowingly at her before she bade her farewell, and they both parted ways.

Chapter Thirteen

“Your Grace,” Mrs. Patterson said from the doorway of his study.

Hector lifted his head.