Page 82 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

“Not cruel,” she said. “Just accurate.”

They sat there with the baby on the blanket while the village moved around them and the sky stayed pale and undecided above. Leopold found the conversation easy in a way he had not expected.

They spoke about the village, about the shopkeeper who sold the best ribbon and had opinions on everyone’s family, and about how long it took to mend a nursery curtain properly. Whether Cecily’s latest habit of pulling herself toward every interesting object was admirable or merely destructive remained an open question.

Phoebe remarked, with a dry look at the child trying to eat a leaf, “She has more opinions than sense.”

Leopold glanced at her. “That is hardly unique in this household.”

Phoebe looked at him with a flash of surprise, then laughed softly before she could stop herself.

It was a brief laugh, but it startled him more than it should have. He laughed in return, quiet and low, because her remark had deserved it.

She looked at him then as if she had not heard him laugh before.

That thought struck him oddly.

Perhaps she had not.

He did not laugh often. Certainly not like that, not here, not in a way that seemed to belong to the moment instead of to some remembered amusement. He saw, by the faint change in her face, that she had noticed it too.

Leopold looked away first.

The walk back was slower.

Cecily fell asleep against Phoebe’s shoulder before they reached the drive, one hand loose against her collar and the other around the ribbon tied at her sleeve. Phoebe shifted her more than once, trying to keep her comfortable while also keeping pace, until at last, Leopold held out his arms.

“You can give her to me.”

Phoebe looked at him. “She will wake.”

“Perhaps.”

“She is heavy.”

“I have noticed.”

She hesitated only a moment before transferring Cecily to him.

His hand brushed her arm as he took the baby, and both of them became aware of it at once.

Phoebe’s fingers moved lightly against her own sleeve.

Leopold adjusted Cecily on his shoulder and said nothing.

Phoebe said nothing as well.

Neither of them needed to.

By the time they returned to Belgrave, the afternoon had deepened, and the house had already begun to smell faintly of fire and tea and polished wood. Leopold was still carrying Cecily when he reached the front hall and found his mother waiting there.

She had the look of a woman who had been waiting for precisely this and resented the necessity of it.

Her gaze passed over Phoebe, then over Cecily in Leopold’s arms, and settled on him.

“We need to talk,” she said.

Leopold stopped.