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His fingers closed around hers, and the contact sent a subtle tingle through his hand that was entirely unexpected. Her palm was warm, her fingers slender, and for one absurd instant James forgot there was a crying infant somewhere nearby.

He tightened his grip and pulled her up behind him, feeling her settle against his back as the horse started forward.

"Hold on," he instructed, trying to sound entirely unaffected.

They rode quickly toward the remote outskirts of the estate, following the cries until the road narrowed between a stretch of hedgerow and a cluster of ancient trees. Then James saw something lying near the roadside. He reined in sharply, his stomach dropping as the truth became clear.

A bundle had been left in the grass, wrapped in a thin blanket entirely unsuited to the cold evening.

The woman was off the horse before James could stop her. She hurried toward the bundle and fell to her knees, gathering the infant into her arms with a tenderness that struck him more deeply than he cared to admit. The baby was a boy, no more than a few weeks old, and his tiny face was marked by a deep purple-red stain stretching from his right ear down along his jaw and neck.

"Oh, poor little thing," Olivia whispered, cradling him closer. Her voice trembled as she looked around the deserted road. "His parents cannot be far. We must find them."

James stared at the child. He had known what they would find. He had seen enough of the world to understand that some people could not bear what they believed to be imperfection.

"They may not come back."

She frowned. "Of course they will."

James swallowed. "Not necessarily."

"There is an old superstition in these parts," he explained, his gaze resting upon the baby. "Some believe that when a child is born sickly or with a deformity, the fairies have taken the healthy child and left a changeling in its place."

She stared at him as though he had begun speaking complete nonsense. "Deformed?" she repeated, her eyes filling with tears. "He is just a baby." Her voice broke, and she drew the child closer. "He has done nothing wrong."

James felt something twist painfully inside his chest. He had always considered himself a practical man, but practicality seemed remarkably useless when confronted with a tiny, abandoned infant.

"We cannot leave him here," she said, wiping angrily at her cheek. "He will die alone."

James looked at the child and then at Olivia. He could not have another death on his conscience.

Yet what could I possibly do?

He was a duke who could barely tolerate the prospect of selecting a wife, and now he was standing beside a road contemplating the future of an abandoned baby with a woman who had attempted to steal his horse. It was absurd. It was reckless.

Unless ...

The thought came so suddenly that James nearly laughed. His father's impossible condition had haunted him for months. He needed an heir. He needed a wife willing to accept the arrangement. More importantly, he needed someone who would not look upon marriage to him as merely another opportunity to acquire a title. Beside him stood a woman who had just risked everything to abandon a marriage arrangement she did not want and was now prepared to fight the entire world for a child she had known for less than a minute. The solution was so outrageous that it might actually work.

James looked at her, then at the baby in her arms. "There may be another answer," he said slowly.

Her brows drew together. "What sort of answer?"

He took a breath, already wondering whether he had taken leave of his senses. "We could raise him together."

Chapter Four

Olivia stared at him. For perhaps the first time in her life, she had absolutely no idea what to say.

"What?" she managed at last, though the word came out so faintly that it scarcely seemed worthy of being called a response. She looked down at the baby in her arms, then back at the man beside her, and finally toward the empty road as though there might be another sensible person hiding behind the hedgerow who could explain what had just happened.

"You cannot mean that we should simply raise a baby together," she said, her bewilderment slowly giving way to indignation. "A man and a woman cannot merely decide to do such a thing. Society would have something to say about it, and I assure you, society has an astonishing amount to say about everything."

James regarded her with an expression that was far too calm for a man who had just suggested the most extraordinary arrangement she had ever heard. "I have no intention of compromising you," he said, and the seriousness in his voice made her pause. "So, in case it was not clear before, I am asking you to marry me."

Olivia's mouth fell open. She shut it. Then she opened it again, only to discover that her usually reliable supply of clever replies had deserted her entirely. She had spent years perfecting the art of having an answer ready before anyone else had finished speaking, yet now she had been reduced to staring at a handsome stranger while holding an abandoned baby and wondering whether she had somehow struck her head on the stable door.

She instinctively tightened her arms around the little boy instead. The baby had begun to quiet, his tiny face resting against her, and Olivia could feel his warmth through the thin blanket. Her mind, however, was racing in quite the opposite direction.