“I am quite well,” she added. “And everything is settled now. You may tell the servants that everything has been resolved.”
Edward looked at her for a long moment, as though he meant to argue. But then, he inclined his head. “Very well.”
Beatrice stepped past him, her skirts brushing lightly against his feet. As her hand closed around the door handle, she paused.
“Thank you,” she said, without turning. “For seeing it through.”
After she left, Edward remained where he was, staring at the cradle. He did not touch it again.
CHAPTER 27
After the wedding and christening, the house felt larger when he stepped inside, as though someone had quietly removed its center while he was gone.
The door closed behind him with a familiar thud, but even that sound didn’t fill the rooms the way it used to.
“No need to announce me,” he told the footman quietly, handing over his gloves. “I’ll go in.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The footman hesitated, before adding, “Her Grace has been in the library most of the morning.”
Edward inclined his head in acknowledgment and dismissed the footman before anything else could be said. There were no soft coos or cries from Pip, no quiet hums from Beatrice. Just… stillness. He stood in the entryway a moment longer than necessary, gloves in hand, trying to place what had changed.But it wasn’t the house. It was the absence. The kind that didn’t shout or mourn. The kind that just waited, patient and hollow.
He told himself this was to be expected. The baby had gone home. Life had resumed its proper order.
So why did the order feel wrong?
He moved through the hall at an easy pace, taking in the unchanged furniture, the polished banister, the faint scent of beeswax and lavender. All the usual comforts. But none of them eased the tightness beneath his ribs.
When he got to the library, he paused. The quiet there had always soothed him—the soft scratch of a quill, the distant rumble of carriage wheels, the low crackle of the fire—but now he felt like the room was holding its breath.
Beatrice had once favored the plush armchair by the window. She used to sit in it, with Eliza’s blanket draped over her knees, reading or mending, the slightest crease of concentration forming between her eyebrows.
He had grown used to looking up from his correspondence and finding her there. Now, she sat at the writing desk, with nary an emotion on her face.
When he entered, she folded her journal with calm, practiced hands.
“Duchess.”
She didn’t look up immediately. But when she did, her expression was smooth, composed, impenetrable. “Duke.”
She stood up, smoothing her skirts with a gesture too controlled to be casual.
Before the christening, Beatrice used to glance up when he entered any room with a little tilt of her head, a soft hum of greeting that wasn’t quite a smile but felt like one.
Now, she kept her gaze ahead and blank, replying in a polite tone as if warmth were a luxury they could no longer afford.
“I did not mean to interrupt,” he said.
“You didn’t,” she assured, but she was already moving toward the door. “I just finished.”
She passed him on her way out with a gentle tilt of her head, nothing more.
Her perfume lingered half a second. He didn’t dare breathe it in.
Edward remained exactly where she had left him, staring at the space she had crossed, acutely aware that he had not asked her how she was, nor she him.
Several hours after, Edward was completely engrossed in reading when a footman entered quietly. “Your Grace? A note was left for you.”
Edward’s pulse quickened. The handwriting was unmistakably hers—elegant, spare, slightly slanted as though she wrote in thought more than haste.
