Page 20 of Stolen By the Duke of Stone

The servants moved about her with precision; breakfast was served at nine precisely, and if she arrived late, she often found them packing her a tray. If she came early, there was no breakfast to be found, and the footmen sheepishly informed her that the duke had instructed them to provide breakfast precisely when he required it.

The same happened at dinner. For lunch, he often ate out at one of his clubs, and Jessamine was more easily able to request some bread and cakes be sent to her in the middle of the afternoon without fearing she was disturbing the duke’s routine.

Because, it seemed, he did not differ from that routine. After breakfast until perhaps one, he worked in his study. At one, he left the house, presumably to visit one of his gentlemen’s clubs for lunch, or perhaps for something else—Jessamine did not ask, and she did not particularly care. When he returned, at five or six, he would change, and dinner would be served at eight on the dot.

If Jessamine was late, he would not scold her, but treat her to a glare.

Breakfast and dinner were the two meals they were expected to share together. Except, of course, as she had predicted, William did not adhere to a schedule. In fact, his needs often overlapped with Andrew’s rigid mealtimes.

The first time she was more than a few minutes late to dinner, he came up to find her in the nursery, cradling a screaming infant against her shoulder and singing a lullaby under her breath. He froze in the doorway.

“What are you doing?”

“He won’t sleep.” Jessamine huffed hair out of her eyes as she walked back and forth, feeling as though she was wearing a hole through the carpet. Her arms and legs felt like lead, and her eyes were gritty. “I’ll come down as soon as he goes to sleep.”

Andrew surveyed her with an irritated expression. “He ought to get accustomed to sleeping by himself. Put him down and come to dinner.”

“If I put him down now, he will not settle, and I can’t eat while he’s up here screaming.”

“Does he need feeding?”

“No.”

“Can the nursemaid not do it?”

“She has been with him half the day,” Jessamine snapped. “And she has her own children too, you know. Not to nurse, but to care for. How do you think she still has milk? She has been caring for William excellently, but she must also think of her own children.”

Andrew’s expression set, and Jessamine wondered if he had considered this. That nursemaids did not merely exist outside of any other consideration.

No doubt he had not.

His gaze fell on the pots of herbs Jessamine had placed beside William’s crib. Their fragrance filled the room. “What are these?” he demanded.

“They are merely there to help him sleep and reduce his chances of nightmares.” Jessamine jutted her jaw. She’d had lavender beside her bed ever since she had moved to Scotland, and its soft perfume had lulled her to sleep when she had thought she would never rest again. Even now, the scent sent a wave of peace through her tense body. “It should help him rest.”

“Nonsense.” Andrew picked up the small pots and tossed their contents into the fire. “Do not make the mistake of listening to nursery tales and mistaking it for medical certainty, Jessamine.”

“I am doing no such thing,” she fired back. “These are all used in Scotland.”

“And does Scotland know better than the best medical professionals in the land?”

“There is something to be said for old medicinal cures.” If she were not holding William, she would have put her hands on her hips. Already, her fury at his having disposed of her herbs—her lavender and sage and valerian root—made her want to hurl something at his smug face. “Imagine presuming you know best when you do so little of the work, Your Grace.”

His eyes narrowed. “Then pass the child to me.”

“As though I should! You would merely dispose of him in his crib and inform me that we are going downstairs now, because his crying interferes with your schedule. When I’m sorry that this infant has not yet developed a sense of your precious discipline, but I will not punish him for it.”

Andrew sighed in impatience. “Then what do you intend, Jessamine?”

“To sing to him,” she said simply. “As I was doing before you ever arrived.”

His jaw set, but she turned her back on him, swaying gently as she crooned one of the old lullabies she’d heard countless times in Braemar from nursemaids and mothers and old scullery maids with gnarled fingers. They all sang to the babes, to quieten them and settle them and to protect them from evil spirits.

Jessamine did not believe in spirits, but she did believe in the power of song to soothe.

William blinked his large blue eyes up at her as he listened, and eventually they closed slowly, lulled into slumber.

Jessamine grinned in triumph and placed the sleeping infant down in his crib.