Page 13 of A Baby for the Duke

As they prepared to leave, the Duke walked them to the door himself. He took Leonora’s gloved hand at the step and bowed over it. His mouth did not touch it, but she felt the warmth of his breath through the kid leather all the same, and she was extremely glad of the dark.

“Lady Leonora.”

“Your Grace.”

“You are certain of this arrangement?”

“I am not certain of anything at all,” she said. “But if my presence helps the child settle, then I would proceed with it.”

CHAPTER 5

“Say it again.”

“Marina.”

“Say it again slowly. I want to be sure I have it. You went to look at a study.”

“I did not go to look at a study. He offered a tour, and I accepted because I was frightened, and I thought if I were going to be ruined I would rather it happened in a corridor than in front of the turbot.”

“And you came back betrothed.”

“Yes.”

“To the Beast of Thorton.”

“To the Duke of Thorton. And it isn’t a real betrothal; it’s an arrangement. It ends the moment somebody finds the baby’s mother.” Leonora took the pins out of her hair and dropped them one by one into the dish on the dressing table. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“I’m not looking at you like anything.”

“You are looking at me exactly like Papa looks at a ledger.”

Marina drew her knees up under her chin. She had been sitting on the end of Leonora’s bed for forty minutes in her shift with her hair down, and she had asked a great many questions and laughed at most of the answers. Now, she had gone quiet the way she only ever did with her twin.

“He caught your wrist,” she said.

“He did.”

“Nora, if he hurt you…”

“He didn’t.” Leonora looked at herself in the mirror and found her face flushed. “He held it for a moment and then let it go. He was almost civil. He made me a bargain like a man buying a horse, and then…” She stopped.

“Then what?”

“Then his daughter would not stop screaming for anybody in that house, and they gave her to me, and she stopped.”

Marina said nothing.

“She is six months old,” Leonora continued. “Somebody dressed her in her best gown, folded a second one under her, packed her doll, left her on his doorstep in the dark, and then walked away up a drive. I keep thinking about the walking away. How far do you suppose you get before you turn round? A hundred yards? The gates?”

“Nora.”

“I’m perfectly well.”

“You’re crying.”

“I’m perfectly well and crying,” Leonora rasped, “which a person can be.”

Marina got up off the bed and went to put her arms about her, and neither of them said anything else for a while.