From his place at Margaret’s feet, the doctor extended the small bundle to Lottie, nodding for her to pass the boy to Margaret.
With breathless awe, Lottie carefully took the swaddled babe and looked down. The newborn stared up at her, wide and wondering, his eyes pools of soft gray.
And in that moment . . .
Lottie fell instantly, irrevocably, eternally in love with her nephew.
She pressed a kiss to the baby’s head and laid him gently into her sister’s arms.
“He’s beautiful,” Lottie whispered.
Margaret nodded and stared at her son, rubbing the back of one finger across his cheek.
“He is, isn’t he?” Margaret’s voice held a sort of awed wonder. She touched her son’s tiny, perfectly-formed hand that had crept out of his swaddling.
Margaret lifted her brimming eyes to smile at Lottie. She reached up and pulled Lottie’s wrist, encouraging Lottie to lie down on the blanket.
Lottie smiled and stretched out beside her sister, the wee babe between them.
“Thank you, dearest.” Margaret appeared exhausted yet euphoric. “This has been a most trying day for you—”
“Don’t be a goose.”
“No, do not dissemble. I have treated you horridly, but I could not have managed without you.” Margaret smiled. “Thank you, sister dearest.”
Lottie swiped at her own wet cheeks, pressed a kiss to Margaret’s forehead, and then placed another on the baby’s cheek.
Familae primum semper cognosce.
Think first of family.
Lottie wrapped her arms around Margaret and her newborn nephew before stealing a look at Cousin Alex washing his hands once more.
Her heart ballooned in her chest.
Family could be grander than she had ever supposed.
Doctor King Louisthe XIV—the man who had become Cousin Alex one memorable summer day in Yorkshire—held fast in Lottie’s memory. He was an unexpected golden apple on a distant branch of their family tree.
And Cousin Alex had helped bring her favorite person—Frederick GeorgeAlexanderFulton—into the world.
Margaret insisted that theAlexanderin Freddie’s name had nothing to do with Cousin Alex.
“It is an old Whitaker family name, dearest,” Margaret said several weeks later, her expression patient. “That doctor is no real relation.”
Lottie, of course, did not point out the faulty logic in her sister’s statement. That Cousin Alex had likely been named Alexander for the same reason as Freddie—because itwasan old family name.
Of course, Lottie told her betrothed, Theo, about Cousin Alex when next she saw him in London.
It was a gloomy day in October when the clouds hung low in the sky, threatening rain but never quite delivering it. She and Theo braved a walk through Hyde Park, as it had been months since they had seen one another, much less talked.
“Dashed bit of rum business, I say, this doctor claiming to be a supposed cousin.” Theo mumbled the words as was his habit, his eyes on the ground and then on the trees and finally stopping on the swans in the Serpentine. Anywhere but on her.
Lottie frowned. “Did you not hear what I said? I believe heisa cousin, regardless of Margaret’s suspicions. He stated his last name before I stated mine. He was not attempting to ingratiate himself—”
“Yes, but the whole affair scarcely matters,” Theo interrupted, bending to toss a pebble into the water. “Once we are married, you will become part of my family and leave yours behind. We shan’t spare a thought for your distant cousin.”
“Pardon?!” Lottie froze in place, her heart tumbling in her chest. The wind tugged at her new bonnet and billowed her Paisley shawl. She clutched both tighter to her body.
