Felix wondered, briefly, if this was the beginning of some great circle: a mother, a child, a man at the periphery, unable to cross the border between observer and participant.
He wondered if this was all he was meant to be. An onlooker, a curio, the final station for the mislaid affections of others.
Rose’s voice broke through his thoughts, sharp with panic. “Felix. Please.”
He was across the room before he’d decided to move. The baby was limp in Rose’s arms, her breath gone shallow, her little body curled in on itself like a leaf about to crumble.
For a terrible moment, Felix thought she had gone—just slipped away, as easy as a sigh. Rose’s hands trembled so hard he had to steady them, closing his own around hers to keep Lizzie from falling.
The contact sent a spark up his arm, electric and immediate. He met Rose’s gaze and saw the frantic, wide-eyed stare of a creature driven to exhaustion, with animal terror left in its place.
He took the child from her.
Rose did not resist, but her arms floated upwards as if by habit, unwilling to relinquish the weight even after it was gone.
She looked at him as if he were a stranger—a man who had walked in from another world, not the husband who had slept beside her or the father of their strange, cobbled-together family. Her lips parted, and she made a sound, not a sob but so close that Felix felt something buckle inside him.
He tucked Lizzie against his chest, one hand supporting the delicate curve of her skull, the other braced beneath her back. She was so light, barely more than a bundle of warmth and the stubborn flicker of life. He breathed in her scent—sour milk, soap, the faint tang of sweat from the fever—and was surprised to find his own heart beating so hard it shook the child in his arms.
He said, “You’re not to go, you hear me?” His voice was thick, unfamiliar to himself. “Not yet. Not ever, if I have anything to say about it.”
Lizzie’s eyelids fluttered; for an instant, he thought she was listening.
He kept talking. “This isn’t finished. You have a dozen gardens to ransack and every tree on the estate to climb. I’m going to teach you to ride, and you’re destined to terrorize every maid within a hundred miles. I’ll be damned if I let you bow out before you’ve learned to fence or blackmail a bishop or?—”
He stopped, suddenly aware that he was babbling, but unable to stop himself. “There’s more, you little imp. You’re supposed to grow up. You’re supposed to outwit every man who tries to court you, and make your mother proud, and make a monster of me for loving you so much.”
The words shocked him. He’d meant to be clever, but what came out was too raw. He thought of the old duke again, the way he had always refused to say the word “love” unless it was to curse it.
Felix pressed Lizzie closer, the heat of her burning through the thin front of his shirt. He bent his head and, without thinking, began to sing the tune Rose had used the night before.
He did not know the words, but the melody was easy, the sort of nonsense song that stuck to the ribs even when the mind was gone. His voice was not beautiful, but it was low and steady, and after a moment, Lizzie’s breathing stuttered, then resumed, a little less frantic.
He glanced at Rose. She was standing very still, one hand at her mouth, her eyes streaming. There was awe on her face, and something else: an emotion so sharp he almost turned away from it, unable to look.
He sang until he ran out of tune, then rocked the baby gently, as if she were a ship and he could ferry her safely to the next shore. He did not remember being held like this as a child. He tried to imagine his own father in this position, the man who had always used his hands for conquest, never comfort.
I will not be him. Not ever. Not for her.
He said, softer now, “You’re safe. You’re not alone. I promise.”
And he meant it. For the first time, Felix realized he meant it not as an oath, a challenge, or a bluff, but as something holy. He looked at Rose and saw that she understood. She was crying openly now, not bothering to hide it. When he reached for her, she crossed the room and sank beside him on the window seat, her head bowing, her hair falling like a curtain.
He placed Lizzie in the crook of his left arm and used his right to gather Rose in, holding the two of them as if he could fuse them together by the strength of his will. Lizzie’s breathing slowed, her body relaxing against his.
The fever was still there, but the panic had ebbed. For the first time in days, the baby slept soundly.
Felix looked down at the two of them—one woman hollowed out by worry, the other just starting her life—and he understood, with a force that left him breathless, that this was it. The thing he’d spent years running from, the thing he’d believed himself incapable of.
It was not fear. It was not weakness. It was love.
It would undo him, he knew. It would take him apart, one piece at a time, until there was nothing left but a man remade in their image.
He was ready.
He pressed his lips to Rose’s temple, then to Lizzie’s downy crown. He whispered to them both, words too soft for the air.
In the hush, he felt the shift, the moment the Carden legacy bent, just a little, away from the old ruin and toward something new. They sat like that, the three of them, until the moon set and the nursery fire burned low. Even then, Felix did not let go.
