Page 136 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

“She should have told me herself, and long before now.” Leopold looked down the corridor toward the drawing room, where his mother had spent so many hours since the truth came out.

Wilfred said nothing to that, though he looked as though he was expecting punishment.

“I am glad someone finally did,” Leopold added.

“As am I, Your Grace.” Wilfred nodded his head once and continued down the corridor.

Leopold watched him go until he turned the corner and vanished from sight.

Thirty-one years of service, and one sentence from a dead duke has been enough to keep an entire household silent for all of them, he thought. And a shawl, somehow, survived every year of that silence intact to tell the story now that he is gone.

Leopold stood there a while longer before he finally went to breakfast, though he found he had very little appetite for it.

By the middle of the afternoon he was in the east study, a room he rarely used for anything at all. Part of the reason was that the late duke had kept most of his private correspondence there, and part of it was that Leopold had never found the patience to sort through what remained of it. That day, however, he had a reason he could not put off any longer.

The bureau stood against the far wall exactly where it always had. Its drawers were fitted with old brass locks, and the key his mother had given him fit the lower one without any trouble at all.

He opened it carefully. An envelope with Celestine’s name written across it lay on top, and Leopold knew it was the envelope that had sealed the proof of Celestine’s birth away from the world for so long. Underneath sat a small packet of additional papers: old accounts, faded receipts, and correspondence that looked as though it had not been touched in years.

Leopold went through the packet one page at a time. The private payments Barnaby had already uncovered were recorded there in his father’s own hand. Regular sums had been sent out over many years, always referencing Bellamy without any first name attached.

There were notes about school fees, about medical expenses, and even one brief line about new clothing purchased for a growing child.

None of it was elaborate, and none of it looked like there was any personal investment in it. It read simply as a careful record of money sent secretly to a family in Wiltshire, year after year, with no explanation attached. Leopold’s eyes moved down the final page and then stopped completely.

A letter lay beneath the last of the papers. It was unsealed, and his own name had been written plainly across the front in handwriting he recognized before he had even finished reading it.

Leopold.

My son, I do not know whether I shall have the courage to tell you this aloud.

Leopold sat down at the desk and began to read in earnest.

The letter was dated late in the final year of his father’s life. It explained the payments in detail, explained Bellamy’s role in the arrangement, and explained, finally, exactly who Celestine had been.

He detailed the reason Celestine had been sent away, including the fear of the scandal her albinism would surely have caused. Mr. Bellamy had agreed to secretly raise her as his own daughter in exchange for money sent regularly toward her care. The arrangement had been meant to give her a safe and ordinary life, far removed from the scrutiny that came with the Belgrave name.

To his surprise, there was no attempt anywhere in the letter to make the decision sound noble. His father had written plainly that it had been cowardice from the very beginning.

His mother had wanted the matter buried, and he had agreed to bury it, convincing himself along the way that distance would somehow make the guilt easier to bear over time. His father explained that he intended to tell Leopold the truth eventually. But by the time he had finally decided to speak, his health had already begun to fail, and time had simply run out before he found the courage.

One last line sat alone at the very bottom of the page.

I hope you will be a better man than I was when fear asks you to choose between truth and comfort.

Leopold lowered the letter slowly. He sat without moving for a long while before he finally folded the paper again and set it carefully on the desk in front of him.

Whether his father deserved to be forgiven for any of it, he had no idea, and he suspected the honest answer was that he did not. Still, the cowardice had at least been admitted plainly. That counted for something, even if Leopold could not yet decide how much.

He rose from the desk and left the study with the letter still in hand. He found Honora in the nursery a short while later. She sat beside Cecily’s crib, folding a small blanket while the child slept peacefully nearby. When Honora looked up and saw his face, she set the blanket down at once.

“What is it?” she asked, her brow furrowing as she saw his expression.

“I found this in my father’s private papers.” Leopold held out the letter as he crossed the room toward her.

“Your father wrote this?” She took it from him, her eyes moving slowly over the handwriting.

“Yes.”