Page 89 of A Baby for the Duke

“It was not a compliment,” Colin said. “It was an assessment.”

She laughed before she could stop herself, and the sound echoed in the carriage.

He looked up at her, eyed her for four full seconds, then said, “Leonora,” in a voice she had not heard since a window seat in the morning sun.

Every inch of her went still.

The carriage slowed and rolled through the gates.

Colin closed his mouth and looked out the window. “The auction is on Thursday,” he said. “The one you kept. I have had Gedge send me a catalogue.”

CHAPTER 30

That was the fortnight in which they were perfectly happy, and Leonora hated every day of it.

Her mother came on Monday and stayed four hours and did not notice a thing.

That was its own proof. Olivia Belmont could detect an engagement across a ballroom and a quarrel through a wall, and she sat in the drawing room at Thorton for four hours with her granddaughter on her lap and pronounced the marriage a triumph.

“He is devoted,” she said in the hall, tying her bonnet.

“Mama.”

“I have watched him for four hours, my girl, and I know what I am looking at. He fetched your shawl. He fetched it before you were cold. There is not one man in twenty who does that, and your father is not among them.” She kissed Leonora on the cheek. “I was very frightened for you in May. I do not mind saying it now. I used to lie awake at night.”

“I know you did.”

“Well, I was wrong. Now I am delighted, and I shall tell everybody.” She stopped on the step. “Nora, is there any news?”

“Mama.”

“I am only asking.”

“You are not only asking, but you also underlined it twice in a letter.”

“Every mother in England underlines it twice,” she stated with dignity, before climbing into the carriage. She poked her head out of the window. “There is no hurry, however. It took me the better part of a year, and your father was extremely patient about it.”

“Mother.”

The carriage took off down the drive, and Leonora stood on the step and waved until it disappeared from view. Then she stepped back inside and went up to her room. She sat down on the edge of her bed for a while, without taking her shawl off.

She had been married for three weeks, and she had not once lain with her husband. Her mother had gone home entirely satisfied and would tell her friends, and it would be in a gossip column by Sunday that the Duchess of Thorton was very happy.

She was ashamed of her resentment, which made it worse, because everything was pleasant.

Katherine crawled the length of the gallery and back, and Colin was there for it. He lay full length on the floorboards to be crawled over. Leonora had to leave and stand in the corridor for a moment.

He came down for breakfast four mornings out of six. He read to the child at eleven o’clock from the picture book of animals with letters underneath, mimicked all the animals, and was mortified to be caught at it.

He walked the ditch. He opened the music room. He had a man come from Reading about a cracked window and stood over him for an hour and a half, and when the glass pane went in, he stood underneath it looking up for a good deal longer than was required.

He began to be seen too, which was the part the county could not get over.

He rode into Thorton Green on Tuesday and went into the alehouse, which no Duke of Thorton had done in living memory, and asked Peg’s mother a question about a well. On Thursday, he was spotted in the churchyard talking to the vicar for a good ten minutes, and the vicar told four people. On Saturday, two farmers came up to the house without being sent for, stood in the hall turning their hats over, were shown into the study, and came out an hour later looking as though the roof had come off the world.

“They will be talking about that for a year,” Mrs. Pike drawled, watching them go down the drive.

“They will be talking about it for thirty,” Leonora countered.