Page 67 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

“Because most men would assume she could not answer.”

Leopold looked down at Cecily, who had now gripped two fingers of his hand and was concentrating on them as though they might be a fascinating object of study. “She cannot,” he said.

Honora lifted a brow. “And yet.”

“So it seems,” he agreed.

He shifted, still seated on the floor, and Cecily promptly used his arm for support again. The baby was babbling now with great authority, one small hand flapping against his sleeve whenever the rhythm of her speech became more emphatic.

Leopold listened as if every sound mattered.

Honora looked at him and felt something in her chest shift in a way that made her suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the bag under her bed.

Northumberland.

Her aunt.

The plan she had carried for three weeks and done nothing with.

Take Cecily. Leave Belgrave. Go north before anyone guessed too much.

The station, the coach, the lane to her aunt’s house, the hope that her aunt would let her stay long enough to breathe and think and decide what to do next.

Now she looked at Leopold on the nursery floor with Cecily clinging to him and found herself unable to summon the same certainty.

A month ago, that baby would not have gone to anyone but her.

Even that felt less true now than it had a week before.

Cecily had started to trust the room, the staff, the house, Leopold.

Instead it made Honora feel as though she was considering taking something away from a place that had already given more than she expected.

She looked at Leopold again.

He had one arm braced on the floor, the other steady under Cecily’s back. His coat was slightly rumpled from the child’s grip, his expression composed, though the attention he gave her was not half-hearted. He was watching the baby as though this mattered, as though the babbling in front of him deserved to be heard.

Honora wondered, with a sudden and unwelcome clarity, whether her father had known this.

Not Leopold specifically, perhaps. But the sort of man Belgrave’s heir was. Whether Gideon Bellamy had understood that the child he sent away might be cared for here. That the house into which Cecily was sent would not be cold, that there was a duke on the floor with her now, listening to every sound she made as if it had meaning.

Honora’s throat tightened.

What had her father thought would happen?

Had he expected the baby to be passed to a servant and forgotten, or assumed the duke would take one look and send her away?

She could not tell which possibility made her angrier.

Leopold looked up at her. “You have gone quiet.”

Honora collected herself at once. “Have I?”

“Yes.”

“I was thinking.”

“Something unpleasant, I suspect.”