He hesitated, confidence flickering. “Sometimes it is about demanding better.”
“Some people don’t get to demand.”
He leaned in, his voice pitched only for her. “You do.”
Rose could feel the scrutiny of his gaze, hot and unyielding, and she longed to retreat, but something rooted her in place.
Her lips parted. “I hope to give Lizzie a world where someone always comes when she cries.”
His face softened, just for a second. “You are making that world.” Then, he spoke so softly the sound could hardly be called a whisper at all. “If I had known about Julia’s condition…about the baby, I would have?—”
Rose shook her head. “It’s too late for that.”
“It isn’t too late for you. Or for Lizzie.” His mouth tightened as he reached out. His hand hovered for a moment before closing gently around her wrist.
Rose felt the heat of his skin radiating up her arm, settling somewhere beneath her ribs. Their eyes met in the half-darkness, and when the duke traced his gaze down her face, she pulled away.
“I—I must go,” she whispered, her voice betraying her. “It is late, and I need to sleep. Goodnight, Your Grace.”
She slipped past him through the doorway, feeling his gaze following her long after she had disappeared into the shadows of the corridor.
CHAPTER 6
“Your Grace,” said Lady Whiteridge, inclining her head from her seat at the table, both acknowledging his presence and looking down her nose at him. “Will you care to join us?”
Since they had traveled such a long way to Carden Hall, Felix had taken the liberty of inviting the Whiteridges to stay overnight, though he noted the awkward silence in the dining room as soon as he trailed in. His boots landed in time with the ancient clock’s chime, and he wondered whether the chill in his chest was the weather or something of his own design. He cleared his throat, bowing to the countess a hair too much for the occasion, but the woman seemed to enjoy his flattery.
“I hope the accommodations are to your satisfaction, my lady.”
Lord Whiteridge grunted. “They are palatial. One imagines one could be lost in here for days and not be found.”
“Only if onewishedto be lost,” said Lady Whiteridge, with a sliver of a smile. “But then, people do turn up in the oddest places.”
Rose hummed from the table’s far end, cradling Lizzie with the kind of determined, unsleeping focus that mothers in paintings always seemed to have, but which Felix previously doubted existed in nature. Her hair, loosed from its usual braid, fell about her shoulders in a way that made her look both younger and immeasurably tired. Her eyes, already fixed on him as he entered, carried no warmth.
To Rose’s left sat her parents, the Earl and Countess Whiteridge. He had not met them in person until last night’s frosty greeting, and now he knew they matched the rumors around the ton: the countess, upright and pinched, eyes always hunting for social missteps, and the earl, already half-gone to liver spots, but still game for a political quarrel even at the breakfast table.
Between them, an array of dishes, from everything to eggs to a bowl of chocolates gleaming in the morning light, testified to the staff’s over-preparedness. The butler stood in his customary post near the door, unreadable as always.
Felix slid into the seat at Lady Rose’s right. He did not look at her directly, but the heat of her proximity made his pulse quicken.
“Mother and Father, let me introduce you to Elizabeth Greycliff. We call her Lizzie.”
Lizzie, perhaps sensing the arrival of a new player, gave a soft grunt and balled her fist into the tablecloth. Lady Rose shushed her with a whispered song, something wordless but aching. Her voice was just as beautiful as the night before.
“She’s a beautiful child,” Lady Whiteridge said, “but you must not mollycoddle her at the breakfast table. Hand her over to the staff. You don’t want to spoil her at such a young age. She will become fussy.”
“Do you think children do not deserve comfort?” Rose retorted angrily. “With all due respect, Mother, you are not the first person from whom I would seek parental advice.”
The words were out of her mouth before she had considered them, and a brief glance at her father’s puce coloring told her she should have exercised greater restraint.
“How dare you address your mother in such a manner!” The earl looked as if he were about to implode.
Felix then intervened. “I do not think Lady Rose intended to cause upset to either of you. It has been quite a shock for her to learn of the loss of her friend Julia, then to become a guardian to my niece at no notice. She takes her role very seriously. I’m certain she did not mean to offend.”
Lady Rose set her cup down with careful precision.
Felix let the silence sharpen, then turned to the baby, reaching for a morsel of ham with his fork while minding Lizzie’s searching gaze.
