“You want to make things right between us?”
“Yes.”
“Take Grace to Everdene Hall. Behappy, Lucien. Be the father we never had.”
He swallowed hard, reaching for a life he could never have imagined. A sweetness that humbled him. Awed him. “I will,” he vowed. “Please tell me you will stay at Everdene, too.”
“I don’t know. I have been angry for so long. What will be left of me after that is gone?”
He wanted to sooth her with a hug, but they had never been that sort…Instead, he squeezed her hand, the scrap of their childhood between them. He felt it slip through his fingers as she disappeared out his door.
Grace felta poignant sting as she settled the Nolan children in the nursery Lucien and his siblings had once shared. The four little beds lined up in military precision, the shelves of toys untouched for twenty years.
Tonight, a whirlwind of activity had transformed the room, Penelope, Cassandra and Jane joining Grace in wrestling filthy clothes off little bodies and scrubbing skin that hadn’t seen a bathtub in months—if ever.
Finished at last, maids hauled off the tub and the children’s clothes to be laundered, while her sisters-in-law retired to their own rooms.
Grace lingered, grateful for any distraction that kept her from obsessing over what was happening at the Pinchbecks’ soiree. Sibby Rose and Scrap bounced from wonder to wonder like India rubber balls, awed by dolls in exquisite dresses, a Noah’s ark and stuffed animals.
Grace could hardly blame them for having a hard time calming down after what they’d witnessed tonight. Her own nerves were stretched just as tight.
“Perhaps you could choose something from the shelf to help you sleep,” Grace suggested, and Sibby Rose raced to pick up a doll, while Scrap hugged a stuffed dog.
She looked at Robert, but the boy scowled with affronted dignity.
“Don’t need some baby toy t’ go t’ sleep,” he declared and Grace felt a sudden wave of loneliness. He reminded her of Avery.
“Well, if you change your mind later…” She let her voice trail off.
“Only thingIneed,” Robert grumbled, “is one night free from bein’ poked by pointy elbows an’ daft buggers puttin’ cold feet on me.”
“Aren’t you in luck, then?” Grace suppressed a smile as she tucked each little Nolan into their own bed and watched them fling their arms and legs wide. “Now I must go check to see if there is any word from Lord Everdene,” she said, her heartracing. “I promise to come back as soon as I can,” she said, gently untangling Scrap’s fingers.
“Don’t go,” Sibby pleaded, and Scrap grabbed a handful of Grace’s skirt.
“Better stay,” Robert said, his voice wavering just a little. “For the wee’uns.”
Grace hesitated, feeling torn. “Shall I leave the lamp burning? My brothers always liked that best.”
Robert rose up on his elbow, looking at her with interest. “You have brothers?”
“Four. And I miss them terribly,” she confessed, wondering when she’d see them again. She wanted nothing more than to go downstairs, wait for Lucien’s return. But she took a deep breath and turned back to the children. “Shall I tell you the story of when they put a toad in my stepmother’s sugar bowl?” she asked Robert.
He nodded, and the other two scurried from their beds into his, Sibby saying, “It’s how our ma tells us stories.” They snuggled in on either side of their big brother, all three watching her as she began.
“Once upon a time there was a toad named Trevor…” She didn’t even make it to the ladies’ shrieks, when all three Nolan children drifted off to sleep.
Grace tiptoedout of the room, thinking of Lucien, Simon, Jane and Cassandra, innocent and vulnerable as her own brothers, but at the mercy of the cruel Earl of Ravenscroft.
They’d survived so much—the Harcourt siblings—yet there was so much healing to be done. Especially between Cassandra and Lucien.
“Please God, give them the chance…,” she whispered, picturing Lucien in Pinchbeck’s townhouse. Simon is with him, she told herself. Other men were as well. But Pinchbeck and Freyne had shown themselves ruthless enough to stoop to any evil.
Just one well-aimed pistol shot…She bit her lip, aware just how fragile life was.
She pressed her fingertips to her lips, tears trickling from her eyes when she heard the low rumble of a voice behind her. “Grace.”
She stifled a cry with her hand, spun and saw Lucien hastening toward her. In a heartbeat she was in his arms. “You’re back…safe. Oh, thank God!” she whispered. “I kept imagining the most awful things. Those men would stop at nothing to silence you.”
