The cook’s eyebrows climbed. A maid exchanged a glance with the scullery girl. Harding’s expression did not change, which meant he had already deduced as much from the three sets of footsteps he had heard at three in the morning.
“If I discover that word of Richard’s presence has reached anyone beyond this kitchen,” Evander continued, “I will identify the source, and I will dismiss them without a reference. There will be no second chances and no appeals. Am I understood?”
A chorus of “Yes, Your Grace” rippled through the room.
“Good. Mrs. Cahill, prepare the blue guest room for Lord Richard. Clean linens, fresh water, a breakfast tray by seven.” He turned to the housekeeper. “And send James and Tobias to me in the entrance hall. Immediately.”
Mrs. Cahill curtsied. Evander walked to the entrance hall and waited. The two footmen arrived within minutes, young and reliable, the same men who had helped carry his father to bed in years past. Evander had chosen them for a reason.
“You will take the carriage to this address.” He handed James the folded directions Richard had given them. “You will find a midwife’s cottage. A young woman named Charlotte Gillies is staying there. You will tell her that the Duke of Blackholm has sent for her, and that Lord Richard is in London and has told us everything.”
James took the paper. Tobias stood straight and silent beside him.
Evander reached into his coat and withdrew two items. Richard’s handkerchief, the embroideredR.B.faded at the corner. And the engagement ring, the one that had been tied to Tommy’s basket with a strip of blue ribbon.
He placed both in James’s palm.
“If she doubts that I sent you, show her these. She will recognize them.” Evander held the footman’s gaze. “Leave now. Do not stop. Bring her to Blackholm House as quickly as the roads allow.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
The footmen bowed and disappeared through the front door.
Evander listened to the carriage pull away and stood in the empty entrance hall with his hands at his sides and the ring’s absence from his pocket registering as a physical loss.
He had carried that ring since the morning it arrived on his doorstep. Letting it go felt like releasing a thread he had been gripping for weeks.
He turned and walked to the study.
“You look terrible,” Evander said.
Richard sat in the desk chair with his shirt untucked and his hair standing in several directions. The makeshift bed Harding had assembled from sofa cushions and spare blankets lay in a rumpled pile beside the bookshelf. Richard’s eyes were red-rimmed, and the remains of a brandy bottle sat on the desk beside an empty glass.
“I didn’t sleep,” Richard said.
“Neither did I.”
“Evander. About everything. I need you to know?—”
“Not now.” Evander held up a hand. “There will be time. When Charlotte arrives, when the full picture is clear, we will sit in this room, and you will answer every question I have, and you will answer them honestly. But not now.”
Richard closed his mouth. His hands gripped the armrests, and his knuckles whitened, and Evander recognized the posture. The same way he himself gripped the arms of a chair when a conversation was taken from him before he was ready to let it go.
“Come with me,” Evander said.
“Where?”
“Upstairs.”
Richard stood and followed him out of the study, up the staircase, and down the east corridor. Their footsteps fell into rhythm, the way they had when they were boys walking to lessons or climbing the stairs after their father had been put to bed: side by side, the elder leading, the younger following.
The nursery door was open. Evander stopped on the threshold.
Mary sat in the rocking chair with Tommy on her lap, his small hand wrapped around her thumb, his eyes open and alert. The morning light from the window fell across them both, and Mary was murmuring something to the baby, her lips moving close tohis forehead. Tommy’s gaze tracked her face as though she were the center of his world.
Richard drew a breath beside him. Evander glanced at his brother and saw the same expression he had worn the first time he watched Mary hold Tommy in the parlor weeks ago.
Awe.
