Page 59 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

“Yes.”

“Lady Isolde Carrington?”

“She is exactly the age at which people begin to say sensible things about her future.”

Leopold’s mouth pursed. “You have been discussing this without me.”

She gave him a cool look. “You are not usually present when people discuss your future.”

“That is because I would not allow it.”

“It is because you avoid it.”

He ignored that. “I am not interested in Lady Isolde Carrington.”

His mother’s expression did not alter. “That is irrelevant.”

“It should not be.”

“Your preferences have little to do with what is required.”

Leopold stared at her as though she had grown an extra head. “Required by whom?”

“By reputation.”

He leaned forward, both hands on the desk now. “You cannot be serious.”

“I am entirely serious.”

“I have a child in the nursery, a nursemaid whose background you distrust, and your solution is to send me to London and make a respectable match?”

“My solution,” his mother said, with more patience than he felt, “is to stop allowing the county to imagine a scandal that will eventually become useful to no one.”

Leopold scoffed.

“That is precisely my point, Mother. This alleged scandal will eventually become nothing. Especially when the next scandal that can be proven arises.”

His mother sighed.

“You cannot rely on future scandals. It is up to you, as the patriarch of this family, to put an end to our current scandal.”

Leopold’s voice cooled. “And Lady Isolde is your answer.”

“She is one answer.”

“I am not marrying her.”

His mother folded her hands again. “You may find that less true than you think.”

He let out a breath through his nose. “You have already made up your mind.”

She rose. “I have made up nothing. I have only reminded you of what the world will demand if you continue pretending it will not notice the child in your house.”

“It is not pretending.”

“No,” she said, “it is postponing.”

“It is not caring,” he said. “I do not care whether they notice, or what they think.”