Page 112 of A Baby for the Duke

“Then it is a great deal better than morning,” Leonora said, pressed her face into his shoulder, and did not move for a further half hour.

Mrs. Pike knew before either of them came down, which was not a surprise.

Leonora had worked out on the stairs that there was no version of a Tuesday morning in which the household did not know. The lamps had been on the lawn all night, and somebody had put them out. His coat had been on the boards of a treehouse under her and had come back into the house over somebody’s arm. And she had gone up to the treehouse at nine o’clock in a nightgown and a pair of boots and had not come back in until dawn.

She went into the breakfast room with her chin up.

Candles were burning at eleven in the morning, which nobody had ever ordered. There were flowers on the table, badly arranged in a jug. Mrs. Rowe had sent up eggs, kidneys, ham, three types of bread, and a dish of stewed fruit that nobody in the house had eaten in six years.

“Good morning, Your Grace,” Mrs. Pike greeted, straight-faced.

“Good morning.”

“There is a great deal of breakfast.”

“So I see.”

“Mrs. Rowe was up at five,” Mrs. Pike revealed. “I could not stop her. I did not try very hard.” And then she walked out before Leonora could get her face in order.

She got through half a cup of hot chocolate before Hobbs came in with the post on a salver, set it at her elbow, and went out again with the face of a man who had seen nothing in his life and did not intend to start.

It was Peg, coming back for the tray, who did not retreat.

“Was there something, Peg?”

“No, Your Grace.” Peg looked up at the ceiling. “Only… Begging your pardon, Your Grace.”

“Go on.”

“About the other night.” The girl had turned crimson to the ears. “When I came in with the candle. Mrs. Pike says I’m to say nothing about it ever, and I shan’t. Only I’ve been so mortified these three weeks, and I’d rather say sorry and be turned off than go on being mortified.”

Leonora set down her cup. “Peg, look at me.”

The girl looked at her.

“You came in because a seven-month-old child had a fever and the housekeeper sent you. You did right, and you did it quickly. If you had knocked and waited, we should have lost four minutes. Nobody in this house is going to say one word about it, and neither am I, except this: thank you.”

Peg burst into tears, said that she was very sorry, and scurried out.

“That,” Mrs. Pike drawled from the doorway, “will be around the kitchen within the hour.”

“Good.”

Colin came down at noon, with sawdust on him, which meant that he had been out to the tree and back before he would consent to be seen at a table.

Leonora watched him walk into the room full of candles and flowers and stewed fruit and understand the whole situation before he took his seat.

“Ah,” he murmured.

“Yes.”

“How many of them know?”

“All of them. Susan told me last night that everybody was glad, which I did not entirely register at the time because I was putting on my boots.”

Colin sat down.

“I find,” he said after a moment, “that I do not mind in the least. I am waiting to mind, but it is not arriving.”