“So am I.”
The second attempt held… for nearly three minutes. Frances counted that as progress.
In the afternoons, when the household receded into its own rhythms and Andrew vanished into whatever duties occupied men who did not explain themselves, Frances often found herself in the nursery again. Sometimes she did no more than sit beside the cradle while the baby slept. She brought correspondence once, then found herself reading the same line five times because the baby’s tiny expressions kept changing in sleep: one brow twitching, mouth pursing, lashes fluttering against her cheeks.
“Do all babies look so busy when sleeping?” Frances asked.
Nurse Ellis, mending by the fire, looked up. “Busy, Your Grace?”
“As though they are conducting important business in dreams.”
“I could not say.”
“I suspect she is judging us.”
“That I could believe,” the woman laughed amusedly.
Frances smiled down at the cradle. “Quite severely.”
Still, for all these visits, the feeling ofunbelongingdid not leave her. It followed her everywhere. Into the breakfast room, where she sat opposite Andrew and counted the pauses between polite remarks. Into the blue drawing room, where she sorted letters addressed to the Duchess of Sinclair and felt like a fraud opening them. Into Mrs. Carter’s little sitting room, where menus andhousehold lists were discussed while Frances tried very hard not to reveal when she did not know what ought to be obvious.
She learned, she asked, she listened… yet, she still did not belong.
Chapter Fourteen
Andrew had not meant to pass the nursery.
There was no need for it. The shortest route from the library to his study ran along the west corridor and down the back stair. He knew that perfectly well. Sinclair House was his own house, and a man did not misplace himself beneath his own roof.
Yet somehow, he had taken the east passage.
He told himself he had been thinking of estate matters. There were letters waiting on his writing table, a tenant dispute requiring attention, and an account from the steward that would not improve merely because he delayed reading it.
His thoughts had been elsewhere. That was all.
Then he heard Frances’ voice. It came through the nursery door, which stood slightly ajar. It was threaded with that dryamusement she never quite abandoned even when speaking tenderly.
“And I must tell you frankly, madam, that a heroine who faints twice in one chapter cannot be relied upon in a crisis. One may forgive the first collapse, perhaps, if there is a storm, a mysterious stranger, or an inconveniently placed skeleton. But the second shows a want of discipline.”
Andrew stopped. He ought to have moved on at once.
Instead, he looked.
The nursery was warm with firelight. Its glow lay honey-gold upon the cream curtains, the polished cradle, the little table where a book lay open upon its face. Frances sat in the chair near the hearth with the baby in her arms, the child tucked securely against her. One tiny fist had caught in the loose ribbon at Frances’s sleeve. Frances had not tried to free it.
Her hair had been dressed for the day, but a few dark strands had escaped and softened the line of her cheek. She looked down at the child with an expression Andrew had never seen upon her face before.
The baby stared up at her in solemn fascination, as though Frances were a marvel sent for her private examination. Frances bent her head closer, and her voice dropped.
“You agree, I see. Sensible girl.”
The child made a small sound. Frances smiled. And Andrew’s breath caught before he could stop it. For one unguarded instant, the scene arranged itself into something so simple and complete that it was almost painful: a woman beside the fire and a child in her arms.
A mother and child.
The thought struck him with such force that his hand closed around the handle of the letter he carried.
No. Not mother and child. Not hers, not his, not theirs… never theirs.
