Page 7

“Yes.”

She looked down at the sleeping infant, and then up. “He has only just gone to sleep. If I hand him to you, he will wake.”

The Duke regarded her. One eyebrow rose, very slightly. His hands, which had begun to lift, dropped back to his sides. “I see,” he said gravely. “You have grown attached.”

“I have done nothing of the kind.” She did not look at the baby as she said it. She was fairly sure that was a mistake. “I am merely being practical. You may have him when he wakes. In the meantime, perhaps you would be good enough to explain what you meant by telling three hundred people we are engaged.”

“Ah.”

“And,” she continued, gathering momentum, “if this is your nephew, why did you tell them he is your child? What is going on?”

The Duke exhaled, long and slow, and pushed a hand through his hair, dislodging the leaf, which drifted unnoticed to the carpet. “He is my nephew,” he said. “My sister’s boy. And I mean to raise him as my own, especially if I cannot find her, and so far I cannot. I am aware that is not much of an answer.”

“Where is your sister?”

“I have no idea.” He said it lightly, in the flat, dry tone of a man reciting the weather, and it took her a moment to understand how much the lightness cost him. “She eloped with a gentleman two years ago. And then this very evening a woman I have never seen in my life arrives at my door with a baby in her arms and tells me he is my sister’s. I showed her into the library and told her to wait. I went to fetch…” He stopped, and shook his head. “It does not matter. When I came back, she was gone. I chased her through my own ballroom, and half my shrubbery, and lost her in the crowd. And I returned to find a scandal, and my nephew in the arms of a lady to whom I have never been properly introduced, being accused of maternity by a woman in lavender.” His mouth twitched and then he added, “Eventful evening.”

Phillipa stared at him.

She had expected evasion but he had told her everything. The plain truth.

“Why,” she said slowly, “are you telling me all this?”

He came a step nearer.

He was tall enough that when he stopped, directly before her, she had to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

“Because,” said the Duke, “I cannot raise this child alone and it seems to me that your needs and mine align.” His mouth curved, “And I would not care to keep secrets from my wife, now would I? Duchess.”

Phillipa considered several responses. Then she bent, with great care and greater dignity, and laid the sleeping baby back in his basket, and tucked the blanket around him, and straightened, and turned upon the Duke of Brawnhite with a fury that surprised them both.

“What,” she said, very low, so as not to wake the child, “makes you think I would accept?”

He did not look remotely alarmed. If anything, he looked interested.

“Nothing at all,” he said. “You may refuse. You have every right. I shall go back out to that ballroom and tell them it was all a misunderstanding, and take every ounce of the blame. I shall be the reckless fool who blurted an engagement to a lady who had never agreed to it, and the ton will be delighted, and in a month it will be someone else’s turn. You would come out of it whole. I would see to that.” He tilted his head. “But I had to do something in the moment, and this seemed an elegant enough solution. Would you not agree?”

“I would not.”

“No?” he said mildly. “You have a charity, I understand. St. Anthony’s, is it? Augusta has spoken of it. And I could not help noticing, before I was called away, that you spent the evening pleading its cause to every man in my ballroom. With, I gather, little success.”

Heat flooded her face. “You were watching me?”

“I was hosting,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Your mother, if I am any judge of the last quarter hour, seemed quite excited by the match. Would it really be such an affront?”

The wretched man was being reasonable, which was the most infuriating thing about it. He had laid the whole matter out as calmly as a solicitor: her cause, her family, her circumstances, all of it accurate.

“And the child’s father?” she demanded, “You say your sister eloped. Where is the gentleman she eloped with?”

The change was instant. The Duke’s face, so easy and warm a moment ago, went dark and hard.

“I do not know,” he said, “I do not even know his name. But if my nephew is here and my sister is not, it does not bode well, for her or for the bastard’s intentions. I mean to find out. But I will need time, and I would like the boy safe while I do.” He drew a breath, and the steel went out of his voice. “And I would very much like to find her.”

“What would you expect of me?” she heard herself ask. “If I were to… If I were to consider it?”

“Ah. She is considering it.”

“I am asking.”