“Helena!” She flew to her feet and embraced her friend.
“Yes, in fact, we were,” Julian admitted, rising likewise with David on his hip. “How do you do?”
“Very well indeed. I have come to bring you a few things. We have a great many clothes the children have outgrown and a few of Lavinia’s old toys. They are so adorable. I could donate them, but I think they will look so lovely on little David.” She set a basket down on the floor. “As for your debate, I have found that whenever Gideon and I play with the children, they favor whichever one of us called their name most recently or whoever last gave them a sweetmeat.”
“David is too young for sweetmeats,” Julian said, “so I shall simply have to call his name continuously to give myself the illusion that he prefers me over Clara.”
“He has got it into his head that I am the preferred caregiver,” Clara said. “I maintain it is because I am the one who rises in the night.”
“That is probably exactly it,” Helena replied, settling herself into a chair. “Although,” she tilted her head slightly, “I do wonder if he is confused about his name.”
“What do you mean?” Clara said.
“Well, if Arabella first spoke to him as Horatio, I am sure that must be rather bewildering for him. Especially if you call him David while Mrs. Holt continues to refer to him as Horatio.”
“What do you mean, she calls him Horatio?” Neither had told Helena his real name until now.
Helena blinked, confusion plain on her face. “I only meant that I saw Mrs. Holt outside with the little girl, and she was telling her that this evening they were going to take Horatio out for a walk.”
Alarm bells rang in Clara’s head at once. “How does she know his name is Horatio? Did you tell her?”
Julian shook his head. “No. Do you think perhaps you did, when you hired her?”
Clara’s mouth opened slowly. “Hired her? I did not hire her. You did.”
“No,” he replied. “Why would you think that?”
“Because Nell told me that you had arranged for a wet nurse the morning I woke here.”
He shook his head, his face more grave than she had ever seen it. A sense of foreboding settled over her shoulders. “You did not hire her.”
“No,” he said. “I assumed that somehow you had arranged it.”
“Goodness gracious,” Helena said quietly.
“Something is not right,” Clara said. She crossed to the bell and rang it. A moment later, a footman appeared, and she asked him to summon her maid.
The time between her calling for Nell and the maid’s actual appearance seemed to warp entirely, for she knew it could not have taken more than five minutes, and yet it felt like a small eternity.
“My Lady,” Nell said as she entered. “Your Grace. Your Grace.” She curtsied deeply and then clasped her hands in front of her. Clara noticed at once how tightly she was curling them—the white showing at her knuckles—and how genuinely unsettled she looked.
“There is no need to fret,” Clara said. “I have only one question. Do you remember the morning after I first arrived when you told me that a wet nurse had already been arranged for David?”
“I do, My Lady.”
“You implied that it was my husband who had arranged it.”
“Why, yes,” Nell said. “He did.”
She glanced at Julian, who shook his head.
“I did not,” he said. “Who told you that I had done so?”
Nell hesitated for a moment. “Mrs. Holt. She arrived that very morning—it was still dark outside; it must have been five in the morning. She said that she had been summoned here by you.”
“That is not correct.” Richmond’s voice came from the doorway, and he stepped inside. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I do not mean to intrude, but I overheard the conversation and felt it my duty to clarify. It was not His Grace who summoned her. I should know, for I was the one who answered the door. Mrs. Holt quite clearly told me herself that the child’s mother had sent for her.” He paused. “I believe by the time word had passed amongst the servants, there was some misunderstanding, and the assumption was made that it was His Grace who had arranged it, but Mrs. Holt was quite specific with me. It was the child’s mother who summoned her. That is what she said.”
“When she said the child’s mother,” Clara said, a thought turning over slowly in her mind, “did she say specifically that it was me?”
