He answered letters.Badly.
He reviewed accounts.Twice.
He summoned Carter, then dismissed him after asking a question whose answer he already knew. He walked to the window and looked out at the grey morning, where rain trembled on the bare branches and the lawns shone dull silver beneath the clouds.
At midday, a tray appeared. He had not ordered luncheon.
“Her Grace?” he asked before he could stop himself.
The footman hesitated. “I believe Her Grace remains upstairs, Your Grace.”
“In the nursery?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Andrew nodded once. “That will be all.”
The door closed. He looked at the untouched food upon the tray and understood, with a bitter twist of amusement, that he had become ridiculous.
He had wanted distance. He had demanded it, arranged it, defended it as the only honorable course. He had told her she was not expected to care for the child, not required to involve herself, not invited into the truth. Now she had gone where tenderness called her, and he sat alone in his study resenting the absence he had created.
No, actually it was not resenting. That was too small a word. He wasfearingit. He feared what Frances might become to the child. He feared what the child might become to her.
Most of all, he feared the sight of them together, because it made something treacherous in him imagine a life he had sworn never to want.
That evening, Andrew went to the nursery.
He had not intended to do so. In fact, the whole day had been a long exercise in not doing so. He had remained in his study until the lines of his ledgers blurred, answered correspondence with such cold efficiency that one poor solicitor would likely believe himself dismissed from the kingdom, and refused, withincreasing difficulty, to ask Carter again whether Her Grace had come downstairs.
At last, when the lamps had been lit and the house had settled into its evening hush, Andrew found himself standing before the nursery door.
This time, he knocked. No answer came, only the low, broken sound of a baby’s cry. So, he opened the door.
The nursery was dim and warm, though the fire had sunk low in the grate. Frances sat there with the baby in her arms. She looked exhausted. She was not charmingly disordered in the manner poets claimed to admire, but truly worn. Her hair had loosened from its pins, with dark strands slipping against her neck. Her gown was creased at the sleeve where the child had gripped it. One shoulder sagged beneath the baby’s weight, though she still held the little girl carefully, with one hand supporting her head, and the other moving in a slow, repetitive stroke along the blanket.
“Hush,” she whispered, her voice roughened with fatigue. “I know. I know. It is very unfair. Everything is unfair when one is tired.”
The baby gave a small, protesting cry.
Frances shifted her higher, with more care than ease. “Yes, I quite agree. I should complain, too.”
Andrew stepped farther inside. Frances looked up. Shock moved across her face first. Then, she straightened as if she might assemble herself by will alone.
“Andrew.”
His name from her mouth struck him, as it always did, but tonight irritation and concern were stronger.
“Have you been here all day?”
She hesitated. That was answer enough.
“Frances.”
“Yes,” she said, lifting her chin, though the effect was somewhat ruined by the baby’s fist tugging weakly at her bodice. “Most of it.”
“Most of it,” he repeated.
“She was unsettled.”
