Page 86 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

And yet her chest still hurt.

She looked down at her hands.

The village trip from the day before came back to her first. Leopold carrying Cecily on the walk back when the baby had fallen asleep against his shoulder.

The way he had taken her without comment, the way he had smiled in the draper’s shop when Honora had fumbled over being called Your Grace, and how that small smile had been so unexpected that it had made her blush worse than the mistake itself.

She swallowed.

The worst of it was not even the courtship.

It was the thought she had begun to have more than once in the past week.

Telling him the truth.

Not all of it, not yet. She was not that brave. But enough to stop pretending that her name was real, enough to admit that Cecily was not a child from Wiltshire and that she had not arrived by accident, enough perhaps to explain why she had lied at the gate.

She was not ready.

That, too, she knew.

But she was closer than she had been a week ago.

That frightened her more than the lie did.

Martha, who had been kneading dough while all of this passed across Honora’s face, said nothing at first. Then she gave a short breath and went back to her work.

“She will arrive in the afternoon,” Martha said. “There will be tea. Her Grace will be on her best behavior.”

Honora looked up. “Will she?”

Martha snorted. “No. But she will try.”

Honora almost smiled.

Almost.

Instead she bent to lift the basin again, though she did not need to. “Thank you for telling me.”

Martha’s gaze softened by a degree, though only a degree. “You ought not let your face show so much when bad news comes.”

Honora glanced at her. “Does it show much?”

“Yes.”

That was the end of that, and Honora returned to the nursery with the basin in both hands and a hollow feeling she could not quite set down.

By afternoon, Belgrave had begun to change its atmosphere.

She felt it first in the halls. Mrs. Pritchard had the drawing room in order before the usual hour. The maid who carried up fresh towels did so with the brisk nerves of someone who knew a guest was expected and wished not to be caught looking curious. Even the air felt altered, as if the house were holding itself in check.

Honora had Cecily with her in the nursery when the sound of voices drifted up from below.

Not just any voices.

Her Grace’s, cool and precise.

And another woman’s, lower and more polished, with the easy self-possession of someone who knew how to enter a house that already wanted her to stay.