He nodded and took the baby. David felt heavier than he had just a week ago, and the clothes he had arrived in were already beginning to strain at the seams.
“We shall have to get you bigger clothes,” Julian told him in the conversational tone he had, without quite noticing, begun to usewith the child. David considered this information and gripped Julian’s finger.
Julian looked at him properly then—at the dark lashes and the dimpled cheeks and the expression of complete and trusting contentment.
“When your mama returns,” he said quietly, “she will not recognize you. You will be so big already. She will wonder what on earth we have been feeding you.”
He did not look up. He did not want Clara to see his expression just at that moment, for he suspected it might give rather too much away—not about Arabella but about the small, inconvenient, and entirely unexpected feeling that had been growing in him steadily since a certain afternoon in a carriage when a woman he had barely known had sat beside him and made him feel, for the first time in a very long time, that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.
CHAPTER 18
“Ido not think she really wants the egg,” Julian said, while David attempted to push a piece of egg he had picked up from the plate into Clara’s face.
“No, truly, I would rather not,” she said and turned her face away. David smashed his hand on the plate again and grabbed some more egg, attempting to feed it to her with great determination.
“Do you think he is perhaps trying to eat it himself but cannot quite find his mouth yet?” Julian asked.
“I think not. I think he is making a game of it.” Clara remarked. “Though he seems a little young for such things.”
“Well, I made some enquiries with Nathaniel, and it appears that at his age, he ought to be able to crawl on his own. Shall we try it?”
“Make him crawl?” Clara asked, her eyebrows raised. “I suppose we could.”
She got up from the table, David in her arms, and together, they walked into the drawing room which had a good wide carpet. She placed him down, and for a moment he lay there flat on his stomach, apparently considering his options.
Julian walked to the other end of the room, snapping his fingers and waving while calling to him.
“Come here, David!” At the sound of his voice, the little boy turned his head. Then, to Clara’s considerable surprise, he managed to flip onto his stomach, lift himself up onto his knees and elbows, and crawl.
“Would you look at that!” she said. “He knows how to do it!” He turned back upon hearing Clara’s voice and crawled in her direction instead.
“Well, now I am morally offended,” Julian said. “It is quite plain that he prefers you over me.”
“I am the one who changes his nappies and who sits with him in the night when he cries.”
“Is that a challenge?” he asked. “For I am perfectly happy to have his crib moved into my chamber and look after him myself.”
“If you are offering,” she said, “he has been crying two or three times a night these last few nights, and I have not had very much rest.”
“You haven’t?” he asked, and he sounded genuinely surprised. “You do not look at all like someone who is terribly sleep deprived.”
“Well,” she said, “many of my friends have children, as do yours, and I have learned how to make myself look refreshed. Although most of my friends also have a governess to tend to their children in the night, should they wish it.”
“Is that a demand?” he asked.
She laughed and shook her head. “No, not at all. I am only speaking in jest. But if this were a real marriage—” she paused, “—that is something I would be demanding.” He looked at her for a moment, and she found she could not take her eyes from him. Had she said too much by implying that she had given thought to what this might look like if it were it a real marriage? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she had grown too comfortable in his company.
To her great relief, David solved the tension entirely by turning around and crawling swiftly back to Julian.
He reached out one hand, and Julian scooped him up. David grabbed his finger in his little fist and let out a gurgling laugh.
“Now tell me again how he likes you better than me,” Julian teased with a look of some satisfaction.
“I confess the evidence does not presently support my case,” she admitted.
“No, I suppose it does not.”
“Are you debating who the child favors?” A familiar voice came from the doorway, and she turned around.
