It was battered and stained, but the script was unmistakable even from a distance. He saw the name signed at the end: Julia.
Lady Rose laid it on the desk, fingers resting on it for a moment before sliding it forward. Felix snatched it up greedily, scanning the contents. All he could see were the last lines, going on about kindness and shadow and the wish that Lizzie might sometimes smile.
He dropped the letter as if burned. “This changes nothing.”
Lady Rose lifted her chin. “Doesn’t it?”
Felix forced composure. “The baby needs more than a nurse. If she is to have any chance in this world, she needs a title, a house, and a family name. Her chance lies with me.” He paused to breathe, surprised that he had become so worked up. “If you cared for her, you’d realize that. She’ll be eaten alive otherwise.”
Lady Rose laughed harshly. “You think Mayfair will embrace a bastard?”
“You underestimate the strings I can pull, the influence I have,” Felix replied. “This child will have a place in society. A future.”
“A future?” Lady Rose leveled her gaze at him. “A future with a rake who does nothing but entertain dozens of women.”
At that, Felix let out a genuine, barking laugh. “You have more faith in my prowess than I do, Lady Rose.”
Her cheeks colored, but her eyes remained steady. “I only have faith in what I observe. You parade your mistresses like medals.”
His jaw tensed. “I have never once abandoned my responsibilities.”
Lady Rose looked down at the baby. “You most certainly abandoned Julia.”
His jaw worked, chewing her words.
Felix focused on Lizzie’s face, on her long lashes, on the dimple in her chin. He found nothing of himself in there, but something in the way her hand curled into a fist seemed familiar. Perhaps it was stubbornness, distilled and passed down.
He leaned in, his voice a whisper meant only for Lady Rose. “A proper house is better than a nunnery any day. She is my responsibility, my lady, and I won’t have her growing up in an orphanage.”
“No. You haven’t heard a word I’ve said,” she started, hair falling in pale wisps around her face. The words froze him in his tracks. “You cannot take her. Not today. Not like this.”
“I am not leaving without her,” Felix said, every syllable an iron link. “She is my family.”
Lady Rose closed the distance between them, fully intent. She was so close he could see the faint arch of her freckles and the breath shivering in her nostrils.
“Then you will have to walk over me,” she said, her chin tilting upward.
For a moment, the corridor shrank to that one point, as if there was no space between the duke and his opposition, both sides unwilling to surrender.
The baby began to cry in a thin, insistent wail, filling every crevice of the ancient stonework.
Lady Rose slid the baby into her arms with a deft motion, lifted Lizzie against her shoulder, and rocked her in a counterpoint to the infant’s distress. She hummed, low and tuneless, and within seconds the baby’s wails dissolved into hiccups, then to a cautious, gurgling peace.
Looking down at Lizzie, Lady Rose’s expression softened, and the tension left her spine. Felix cataloged every detail, standing with his arms empty, unsure of what to do with himself.
At last, he straightened his jacket, forcing his voice out in deliberate syllables. “Very well, then. You will come with me as well.”
CHAPTER 3
“What?” Lady Rose’s head snapped up.
“You and the child. Both.”
Her countenance fractured into uncertainty. “Where?”
“To Carden Hall,” Felix answered. “We’ll sort the rest from there.”
She looked at him as if he had offered her a noose and a crown at the same time. “What? Why? Why would I come with you to your home, Your Grace?”
