Page 12 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

A burden.

She turned away before she could scream and went to find the kitchen maid.

The day dragged after that.

Honora went through the motions of it because the body knew how to move even when the mind had stopped making sense. She ate little. She answered questions poorly. She went upstairs twice and came back down again without knowing why.

She could not have told anyone what she had done between breakfast and dusk. The house seemed to pass around her in long, disjointed pieces: a footman opening a door, a kettle singing, the clock in the hall striking the hour.

By evening, the facts had begun to gather in her head like storm clouds.

Cecily had been taken in the night.

Her father had done it himself. Or at the very least, he ensured the arrangements were made.

He had known where.

He had been prepared to be obeyed.

Honora sat in the kitchen long after the rest of the household had gone quiet, and the lamps had been trimmed low. The kitchen maid, a young woman with hands red from scrubbing, hovered near the stove and tried not to look nervous.

Honora had asked for her by name, remembering only that the girl had once been kind to Cecily and had a habit of speaking without thinking—useful in a house where everyone else had learned to measure every word.

At last the maid came close enough and said in a whisper, “You ought not be down here, miss.”

Honora lifted her head. “Did you see who took her?”

The maid glanced toward the door, then back. “Not exactly.”

“Did you hear anything?”

The girl hesitated.

Honora straightened. “Tell me.”

She swallowed. “Mr. Bellamy gave instructions late last night. I was in the passage when he spoke to the groom. He said the child was to be gone before morning.”

Honora’s fingers gripped the edge of the chair. “Gone where?”

The maid looked troubled. “I only heard the name once.”

“Whose name?”

“The Duke of Belgrave.”

Honora stared at her.

“Belgrave,” she repeated.

“Yes, miss.”

Honora sat still.

The Duke of Belgrave.

She had never truly heard of him—perhaps a name spoken in passing at table, or glimpsed in a newspaper column and forgotten by tea. She did not know what connection he had to her father, or why Gideon Bellamy would send Cecily to a duke she had never met.

The maid looked at her uneasily. “Miss?”