“Your Grace.” She curtseyed to them both. “The physician is still upstairs with the older children. He’ll be finished by noon.” She paused. “More new blankets arrived yesterday. All of them.”
“Good.” William nodded.
“And the kitchen–” She stopped. Collected herself. “The cook says there is proper food for the week, and she has been given a budget for the month. She came and told me. She said she wanted me to know.”
“You should know,” William agreed. “You all should. Put it in writing if it helps. The steward who was in charge has been dismissed. The trust arrangement is formal and permanent, and the figures are secured. This will not change again.”
Cecily’s eyes widened in surprise.
Mrs. Peel stared at him for a moment. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
She looked at Cecily and curtsied again. Then she turned and led them through.
The main room was warm. The children at the nearest table looked up when they entered. The small boy in the grey coat was still there, the wooden horse in his hands, but he looked different somehow. Brighter.
William felt Cecily go still beside him.
He knew what she was seeing. He himself had stood here on Tuesday, alone, after the first supplies had been delivered and before Aldiss had confirmed the trust documents. He had stood in this room and looked at what it was becoming, and thought about a woman who had walked into his study and discovered the manipulation in one morning.
“The nursery?” Cecily said to Mrs. Peel.
“This way, Your Grace.”
She was awake. The baby—theirbaby, he thought, was awake in the crib nearest the window, which was no longer drafty, the new frame set properly, the gap sealed. She was alert and wide-eyed, tracking the light, her small fist loosely curled against the blanket. A proper blanket. Wool. The kind that kept warmth in.
Cecily made a sound that was very small and very genuine.
He looked at her face. She was not quite holding it together, and he understood that, because he was not quite holding it together either. Her eyes glistened as she crossed to the crib and leaned over it. The baby found her face immediately. Cecily said something so quietly that he didn’t hear, and the baby’s fist opened and closed.
He looked at them.
I almost walked away from this.
Mrs. Peel withdrew with practiced discretion, understanding when a room needed fewer people in it. The nursemaid moved to the far corner.
William came to stand beside Cecily, and for a moment, they simply looked at the baby, who looked back at them with serious, unblinking attention.
“She’s bigger.” Cecily laughed through her tears.
“A lot.”
“She’s got more color.” She looked up at him. Her lashes were wet.
“She’s being fed properly,” he said. “The nursemaid says she is feeding every three hours.”
Cecily looked back at the baby. William watched her breathe carefully, wiping her face with her sleeve.
“Cecily.” She looked at him. “Come outside with me. I need to… There are things I want to say, and I would like to say them properly.”
There was a small courtyard at the back of the building, reached through a side door, just a square of flagstone with a low wall, a bare tree in the corner, and the sky above it. William had found it on Tuesday and had stood there for ten minutes.
He thought about what he was about to say. No version of it was going to be anything other than exactly what it was.
They stood in the courtyard with the cold air around them, and he looked at her—at the face he had described to James in a club four months ago as the kind one looked at and then found themself looking at again. He had been right about that and had not yet understood the full extent of it.
“I was wrong,” he began.
She raised an eyebrow.
