Page 38 of The Feared Duke’s Found Family

“I could sit with him for a short while,” Fanny suggested gently, testing the boundary. “Just to keep him company until tea.”

“Oh, I could not impose upon you, Your Grace,” Veronica replied immediately, her tone hardening under the veneer of politeness. “His late mother always entrusted his care to me. I know his particular moods better than anyone, Your Grace. It is truly best that he remains undisturbed.”

Before Fanny could reply, the woman curtsied low, stepped back, and clicked the latch shut.

Fanny stood in the drafty corridor, staring at the painted timber. It was the fourth time this week. Every morning, every afternoon, the door remained barred by a wall of polite excuses.

Restless. Delicate. A headache. A chill.

A prickle of heat crawled up Fanny’s spine as she turned back down the hall. Michael was not being cared for; he was being systematically hidden.

Her thoughts were interrupted as she reached the head of the gallery stairs.

Lysander was standing on the landing below, conversing with his land steward. At the sound of her slippers on the runner, he paused mid-sentence and lifted his dark head. His piercing gray eyes locked onto hers across the open space, heavy, unblinking, and absolute.

Fanny’s breath caught. Her pulse gave an involuntary, frantic jump against her ribs.

For the past two days, she had felt that gaze everywhere. When she walked the gardens with Peter, when she helped Emily mend a ribbon in the drawing room, when they sat across from one another at the long dining table in stony silence—Lysander watched her. He did not make small talk, but whenever she caught him looking, he never looked away.

Fanny clutched the mahogany banister as she descended the steps.

He is inspecting his new housekeeper to ensure she does not break the porcelain.

Yet as she reached the bottom step and his deep baritone murmured a polite dismissal to the steward, the raw, masculine heat radiating from his broad frame made every nerve in her body hum with an unsettling, terrifying awareness.

The clock in the downstairs hall struck twelve deep, resonant tolls.

Fanny had barely closed her eyes when a sharp, ragged wail tore through the stillness of the east corridor.

Peter.

Fanny threw back the heavy bedclothes, thrust her arms into a warm velvet dressing gown, and flew out of her bedchamber.

She arrived at Peter’s doorway at the exact same instant a dark, towering shadow stepped out from the main hall. Lysander was already there, his linen shirt unfastened at the throat, his dark hair uncombed, his jaw set in rigid stone.

Inside the small bedchamber, Peter was curled into a ball on his mattress, sobbing into his pillow, his small fists clutching the linen.

Veronica stood beside the bed, holding a flickering candle, smoothing the boy’s blankets with rhythmic, hurried strokes.

“What happened here?” Lysander demanded, his low voice slicing through the room like a drawn blade.

Veronica jumped, curtsying frantically as wax dripped onto the floorboards. “Your Grace! I heard him stirring from down the corridor. He only had a fright, Your Grace. A bad dream about the woods. I have already calmed him. Everything is quite well; you may both return to your beds.”

Lysander took a heavy step into the room, his gray eyes narrowing dangerously as he looked down at the shivering boy, then back at the servant.

“This is the second time this week Peter has woken the entire east wing, Veronica,” Lysander said, his gravelly voice dropping into a harsh, displeased growl. “Your duty is to keep order in this nursery. If the children are running unchecked through the halls in their sleep, you are failing to maintain vigilance.”

“Lysander.” Fanny stepped between him and the maid, not dramatically, just firmly.

Lysander stopped. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t raise his voice. He looked at Fanny, then past her to Veronica, then back to Fanny. The silence that followed was considerably worse than shouting.

“She is one woman,” Fanny said, keeping her voice low and even. “She has spent the entire day behind a closed door with Michael and half the night listening for footsteps in the corridor. She is not failing to maintain vigilance. She is exhausted.”

Veronica’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I do not mind, Your Grace. Truly. I love the dear children.”

Lysander said nothing for a moment. He looked at Peter, still curled in his sheets, the worst of the crying over, his small chest hitching in the aftermath. Then he exhaled—a slow, controlled breath through his nose—and turned back to the maid.

“See to him,” he said quietly. “Make sure he settles.”