Lizzie blinked up at her, gaze unfocused but searching, as if she recognized something essential in Rose’s face.
“You are a marvel,” Rose whispered, tracing the curve of Lizzie’s brow. The baby snuffled, then yawned, her tiny fists waving. “I wish Julia could see you,” Rose said, and for a moment her voice caught.
She settled in the window seat, cradling Lizzie and watching as the rest of the world woke: a gardener in the rose beds, a pair of footmen squabbling over who would fetch the mail, a flock of sparrows dancing on the terrace stones. There was peace here, a pocket of quiet Rose had never known in all her years in Whiteridge House or St. Clement’s.
After a time, Lizzie began to squirm. Rose reached for a battered volume of poetry she’d brought up from the duke’s library and began to read aloud.
She got as far as, “I am half sick of shadows—” when the baby burbled, a sound suspiciously like a giggle, and Rose laughed outright.
“Of course you are. You have never known a single one,” she said, kissing the downy fuzz atop Lizzie’s head.
“We’ll make a poet of you, yet,” Rose said, even as she felt a prick of sadness for the girl’s mother, for all the futures Julia would never see. She brushed away the thought. “No more sadness. That’s a rule in this house.”
She pressed the book shut and held Lizzie closer. “You will always have someone to hold you, do you understand? Always.”
“You shouldn’t lie to her,” said a voice from the door.
Rose startled, nearly dropping the book. The duke leaned against the doorframe, arms folded, his face half in shadow and half illuminated by a shaft of sun that made his hair look golden.
“How long have you been standing there?” she hissed.
He shrugged, crossing the room at his usual, unhurried pace. “Long enough to see you reciting poetry to an infant.”
She looked away, fussing with the blanket. “It helps her sleep.”
Felix smirked and perched on the window seat beside her. “Does it help you sleep?”
Rose said nothing.
Felix glanced down at Lizzie, who stared back with open, wet curiosity. “I think she knows you’re lying,” he said.
“About what?”
“About thealways. Children outgrow their caretakers. You can’t keep them forever.”
Rose’s chest tightened. “You say that as if from experience.”
He gave a humorless laugh. “When I was twelve, I stole my father’s best horse and rode it to the village. Spent the entire day eating currant buns and teaching the baker’s boys how to box. When the old duke found out, he didn’t speak to me for three days.”
Rose stared at him, genuinely startled. “Youran off to play with the village boys?”
He arched a brow. “Did you think I was always this well-mannered?”
Rose looked down at Lizzie, her thumb stroking the infant’s velvet cheek. The story of the baker’s boys sat strangely in her mind, a rare crack in Felix’s polished armor.
“Why did you have to run off?” she asked softly. “To the village, I mean.”
Felix shrugged, his gaze drifting to the window. “My father had a distinct aversion to anything he deemed ‘low.’ He didn’t want me to associate with peasants. Naturally, that made the baker’s sons the most fascinating people in the county.”
Rose felt a sudden, sharp pang of sympathy for the twelve-year-old boy who had been forced to steal a horse just to find a bit of warmth.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled.
“Don’t. I only told you that as an example. Parents, guardians… they can guard all they like, but children will inevitably do things their elders find distasteful.”
Rose adjusted the blanket around the baby, her chin lifting. “I doubt Lizzie will be a reckless girl. She has Julia’s steadier temperament.”
“Being reckless once in a while isn’t a bad thing,” Felix countered, a ghost of a smirk returning to his face.
