Page 121 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

His mother looked at him. “I thought I was protecting you.”

“You were protecting yourself. I know about Celestine’s unique condition and your vile reaction to it.”

She did not argue.

Leopold looked at the woman who had raised him and felt, for perhaps the first time, that he did not know her.

“Cecily is my niece.”

Her face changed, showing Leopold something else he had never seen in her before. Grief. True, genuine grief. “My granddaughter,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said with exasperation, holding up the ransom note. “Now, she is locked in a room somewhere because Isolde arranged it.”

The dowager duchess went very still. “Isolde?”

“She sent Honora away in a carriage.”

His mother stared at him, then at the letter, then at Mr. Bellamy, seeming to understand all at once.

“What will you do?”

“I will bring them home.”

For the first time since Cecily’s arrival, the dowager did not argue with her son. Leopold pointed toward the writing desk. “The birth record.”

Her eyes lifted. “It is in the bureau.”

“Give me the key.”

Reluctantly, she reached into her pocket and handed him a small key. “The top drawer.”

Leopold took it. He crossed to the bureau, unlocked the drawer, and found the record exactly where she said it would be, reading the name, the date, his mother’s name, his father’s name. Nothing further needed reading. The truth was in his hands.

He closed the drawer.

Barnaby was already moving toward the door. “I will have the horses saddled.”

Leopold turned. “What does the ransom letter say about the location of the house again?”

Barnaby picked it up. “It has an address.” He read it. “To a house outside Alton.”

Leopold’s heart thumped so fiercely, he could have sworn it was restarting. “Then that is where we go.”

Barnaby nodded and was out the door before Leopold reached the hall.

Leopold followed. At the entrance, he paused only long enough to put on his gloves. Behind him, Bellamy stood beside the study door.

Leopold looked back at him. “I will bring them home.”

Bellamy’s face tightened. “I know.”

Leopold stepped outside. The horses were already being brought around. Barnaby mounted first. Leopold swung into the saddle and gathered the reins. For one moment, he looked back at Belgrave. The house stood exactly as it had three days before. But everything had changed. Then, he turned east. He and Barnaby rode hard down the drive and toward Alton.

As Leopold turned east, one thought steadied him against the fear: Honora had given the kidnappers his name because some part of her still trusted him to come. He would not fail that trust again. He bent low over the horse’s neck and rode to bring Honora and Cecily home.

Chapter 24

By the fourth day in captivity, hope had become too exhausting to maintain. The men had claimed they were going to send the letters they had shown her, but Honora realized she had no way of verifying that they did.