Page 10 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

Honora stared at him. “Where is she?”

Gideon’s gaze stayed on her face for a moment, then shifted past her into the room. “Somewhere safe.”

Her mouth went dry. “Bring her back.”

“No.”

The answer was so flat she almost did not understand it at first.

She took one step toward him. “What have you done?”

“What was necessary.”

Her hand curled at her side. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one you are going to receive.”

Honora looked past him at the empty nursery again, and something cold and hard moved through her chest. “You took Cecily from me.”

Gideon’s expression did not change. “She is not yours.”

The words struck so sharply she felt them physically.

Honora stared at him. “She is more mine than she is anyone else’s now that Celestine is gone ”

His jaw clenched. “You are twenty-six years old, unmarried, and a baby that is not yours will keep you that way if you let it. I have made sure it will not.”

Honora’s hand curled so tightly at her side that her nails dug into her palm.

The corridor seemed to narrow around her.

Her father said it as if he were discussing linens, or drainage on a field, as if Cecily were no more than a complication removed from the house so his life could continue undisturbed.

“You had no right,” she said.

“I had every right.”

“Cecily is my niece.”

“She is a burden.”

Honora’s head snapped up. “Do not call her that.”

Gideon’s face had gone harder now, as if her anger were merely proving something to him. “I am telling you what you will not allow yourself to think. You cannot keep her. You cannot support her. You cannot make a future for her by clinging to sentiment and pretending it is the same as reason.”

Honora could feel the heat rising behind her eyes, but she would not cry in front of him. Not here. Not over an empty nursery with the bed still unmade and the little blanket gone.

“Where did you send her?” she demanded.

“She is safe.”

“Where?”

He looked at her for a long moment and then said, “To a family who can manage her properly.”

The warmth drained from Honora’s fingers until she could hardly feel them.

“Who?”