Page 3 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

Poppy shifted Princess carefully into the crook of one arm and lowered herself from the chair to kneel on the floor, bringing herself level with Aurora. The boards were hard beneath her knees, but she scarcely noticed.

“Aurora,” she said her name softly, but the little girl would not look at her.

“Will you help me with something very important?”

Aurora sniffed. “I’ll do it wrong.”

“No. This is something only you can do.”

That earned a glance.

Poppy held Princess, so the baby faced outward a little, her warm head resting against Poppy’s arm. “Give her your finger.”

Aurora stared. “My finger?”

“Yes. That one, if you please.” Poppy nodded toward the small hand clenched at Aurora’s side. “Offer it to her. Slowly.”

Aurora lifted her hand. Her finger approached Princess with painful caution, and Princess immediately opened her fist and closed it around Aurora’s finger.

The baby’s grip was not strong by any sensible measure, yet it possessed the authority of absolute need. Her tiny fingers curled around Aurora’s as though she had been searching for that precise anchor all along. When Aurora tried, ever so slightly, to draw back in surprise, Princess held on.

“She will not let go,” Aurora whispered and laughed.

“No,” Poppy said gently. “I do not believe she intends to.”

Aurora looked at her sister as wonder overtook misery by degrees. “Why not?”

“Because she loves you. In fact, Princess loves you so much that she would hold your finger forever, and one day, when she can talk, she will tell you herself that she loves you.”

Aurora’s eyes lit up. “How do you know?”

Poppy looked at the baby’s hand wrapped around the child’s finger, and something inside her gave a small, familiar ache. She thought of Julia again, fastening ribbons for Poppy, soothing hurts she had not caused, and standing in the place where a mother should have been. Poppy had been the youngest sister once. She knew what it was to look upward and see safety shaped like a person.

“I know,” Poppy said, “because I was the youngest sister in my own family. And I can guarantee that Princess already thinks you are her hero.”

Aurora studied her before giving her a satisfied, silent look.

Poppy’s heart broke for the children who were found abandoned. There were no parents to claim them, no letters, and no certain name beyond the ones given or gathered.

Poppy had wondered too often what had happened.

Had the girls been abandoned by someone desperate? Had their parents died nameless somewhere, leaving no one to speak for them? Had Aurora seen more than any four-year-old should see and folded the memory into that private chamber where no adult could reach? Not knowing had its own cruelty. It allowed every possibility to exist at once. Nobody knew what had happened to them, and Aurora refused to talk about it too.

Princess shifted in her arms, and Aurora leaned closer, still held prisoner by the finger and proud of the captivity. Poppy blinked and looked down before tears could gather fully.

“Aurora, I am afraid that I have to go.”

Aurora looked up at her sadly. “But you will come back tomorrow?”

Poppy touched the back of Aurora’s hand, careful not to disturb Princess’s grip. “Yes, I will come.”

“You promise?” Hope filled her eyes, and Poppy knew she would do anything for her, even if it meant traveling every day to the orphanage.

She crouched before her. She did not make promises lightly to children. They remembered with the precision of saints and creditors.

“I promise.”

She and Aurora smiled at each other as Princess continued to hold on to her sister’s finger.