Of course, her husband had a mistress. He was a man of thirty-one with a man’s needs, and he would not come to Mary’s bed because her bed came with consequences he had no intention of accepting. So, he went elsewhere.
Somewhere warm. Somewhere he was wanted.
Mary set the teacup down. Her hand was steady, although the rest of her was not.
She climbed the stairs and went to the nursery. Mrs. Bridwell was dozing in the rocking chair, and Tommy slept on his back with his arms flung wide, the way babies slept when they trusted the world to hold them.
Mary stood over the crib and watched him breathe.
She had married a ghost. A man who haunted his own house, appearing in corridors and vanishing through doors, sending servants where he should have sent himself. She had given her name and her future to a man who did not want either, and now she stood in a nursery at midnight, and the only person in this house who needed her was twelve days old.
She reached down and adjusted Tommy’s blanket. His fingers curled in his sleep, gripping at nothing.
“I’m here,” she whispered.
CHAPTER 7
“Careful with the cloth, Your Grace. Small circles. If you go too fast, he fusses. Gentle. There you are.”
Evander stood in the corridor outside the nursery with his back against the wall and his arms folded.
The door was open a hand’s width. Enough to hear. Enough to see.
Mary sat in the rocking chair with Tommy propped against her shoulder, her palm flat between his shoulder blades. Mrs. Bridwell kneeled beside her, adjusting the angle of Mary’s arm. Tommy’s face was scrunched and red, his mouth working, and then he burped with a violence that startled a laugh out of Mary.
“There it is,” Mrs. Bridwell said. “Like clockwork.”
“That cannot be normal.” Mary wiped Tommy’s chin with the cloth over her shoulder. “It sounded like a man in a public house.”
“All babies are indelicate, Your Grace. The trick is not to take it personally.”
Mary laughed again. It was a quiet sound, unguarded, and Evander realized he had never heard her laugh before. He had heard her argue. He had heard her voice go sharp with anger and thin with hurt. He had heard the controlled steadiness she wore like armor when she refused to let him see what his words had done.
But he had not heard this. Unguarded. Free. For a moment, nothing existed beyond the baby in her arms, the friend beside her, and the sound of it caught Evander off guard.
She shifted Tommy to the crook of her arm and looked down at him. The afternoon light fell through the nursery window and caught the loose strands of hair at her temple. She murmured something Evander could not hear, and Tommy’s fist closed around the lace at her collar, and Mary smiled with a tenderness that made Evander’s chest tighten in a way he did not welcome.
He pushed off the wall and walked away before she could turn and find him there.
“The nursery is well supplied, Your Grace. Her Grace asks if you might visit Lord Thomas this afternoon. He is awake more during the day now, and she thought you might enjoy seeing him alert.”
Mrs. Cahill stood in the study doorway with her hands clasped, delivering the morning report Evander had made part of her routine. Same question every day. Same forty feet of corridor he refused to walk himself to ask her himself.
“And?” Evander asked without looking up from the estate ledger.
“That was all, Your Grace.”
Evander turned a page. The Dorset tenants had paid half the overdue rent. The east wing roof could wait another month. The Bow Street runner’s second report was due tomorrow and would contain nothing like the first.
“Inform Her Grace that I have business this afternoon.”
“Of course, Your Grace.” Mrs. Cahill paused. “Shall I convey anything else?”
“No.”
The housekeeper curtsied and withdrew. Evander stared at the column of figures before him and saw none of them.
He could walk down the corridor. He could stand in the nursery doorway and look at Tommy’s face and let himself feel whatever pressed against his ribs every time he heard the baby cry or laugh or breathe. He could sit in the chair beside the crib and hold his brother’s son and allow the child’s warmth to settle into his arms, and he could let Mary see him do it.
