Their gazes held for a moment.
There was something on his face that she did not have a name for. Not composure, not the deliberate ease he arranged himself into in rooms full of people, but something older than that and less defended. The expression of a man not currently standing between himself and being seen.
It lasted only a moment before he looked back at the baby. But she had seen it.
Something shifted in her chest—not the quick warm feeling she had been managing since the library, not the complicated awareness of him she’d been cataloging since the garden. It was something quieter and more serious than that. Something that felt, uncomfortably and undeniably, like the beginning of being in genuine trouble.
She looked at the baby instead.
The child had closed her eyes. Her breathing was the deep, slow rhythm of sleep, her small fist loosely curled against William’s shoulder, her face arranged in the profound peace of someone who had found a warm and solid place in the world and had decided to stay for now.
“She needs more than warmth and time,” Cecily said, turning to Mrs. Peel, who had been standing quietly near the door with expectation and hope in her expression. “She needs better feeding. More regular. And this room is cold near that window. There is a gap in the frame, I can feel it from here.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“Who is responsible for repairs?”
Mrs. Peel’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly. “The requests go through the estate, Your Grace.”
“And how long have you been waiting for this one?”
A pause. “Since August, Your Grace.”
William looked up. “You submitted a request for repairs in August?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“It’s November.”
Mrs. Peel said nothing.
William looked at the window, then at the thin blankets in the crib, then at the room in general—the methodical, sweeping assessment he gave to estate accounts and parliamentary arguments and everything else he intended to understand properly—and Cecily watched understanding dawn on him.
“Mrs. Peel,” he asked, “what do you need most urgently? Not what you have submitted for, but what you need.”
Mrs. Peel looked at him for a moment with the expression of a woman recalibrating. Then she said, “Coal, Your Grace. We are nearly out. And blankets. Proper wool ones, not… The children are cold at night, particularly the young ones. And the window in this room, and the two upper windows. Those are the most urgent.”
“You’ll have coal by Thursday,” William assured her. “Blankets before the end of the week. The windows I’ll have assessed tomorrow.” He looked at the nursemaid, who had been standingthrough all of this with the wide-eyed attention of someone watching events far above her station unfold in her immediate vicinity. “Is there anything else the nursery specifically requires?”
The nursemaid looked at Mrs. Peel, who gave the smallest nod.
“A second nursemaid would help, Your Grace,” the nursemaid said carefully. “At night, especially. For the little ones.”
“Arrange it,” William instructed Mrs. Peel. “Through the household. I’ll ensure you have the funds.”
Mrs. Peel curtseyed. “Yes, Your Grace. Thank you.”
The baby in William’s arms stirred, resettled, and did not wake.
Cecily looked at Mrs. Peel. “The small one. This baby. I would like to be informed of her progress personally. If her condition changes—if she improves, or if she does not—I want word sent directly to Blackmoor House. To me, not through general correspondence.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“I will visit again next week.” It was not a request.
“We would be very glad of it, Your Grace.”
William passed the baby back to the nursemaid with the same careful, practiced hands, supporting her until the nursemaid had her properly settled, and then he stepped back and looked around the room once more—at the gaps and the thin blankets and the three small sleeping faces—with the expression of a man adding things to a list he intended to work through.
