Page 52 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

He had not expected the strength of her grip. She was warm, trembling, and alive with the last remnants of terror. Slowly, he shifted the cane to one hand and lowered the other.

For an instant, his palm hovered above her head. He listened to the small sobs, judged the angle of her face, and set his hand gently upon her hair.

“There,” he said. “There, Aurora.”

She cried harder for a moment.

He patted her head, awkwardly at first, then with a steadier rhythm. Comfort was not one of the arts in which he had been schooled.

“You were very brave,” he told her.

She shook her head at him.

“Yes,” he said. “You were. The maze tried to frighten you, and you fought back. That is courage.”

Aurora tipped her face upward.

He could see the pale oval of it. Her eyes were only darkness and shine to him, and her voice, when she spoke, was clear.

“Thank you, Uncle Hector.”

She is not nervous.

The thought came bright and sudden, a private triumph he would have been embarrassed to confess.

“You are welcome,” he said, and hoped his tone gave away less than he felt.

The maze carried the duchess’s steps to him before it carried her voice. Lighter than a servant’s and quicker now with no attempt at composure in the pace.

She is close.

Hector heard the brush of skirts against the hedge, the faint catch of breath as she turned into the enclosed garden.

“Aurora!”

Aurora released him at once. He felt the loss of her arms immediately, and it felt oddly cold.

She turned from him, the small shape of her body angling toward Her Grace. “Poppy!”

The duchess came forward. Hector did not need clear sight to know the moment she reached the child; the air changed with the swift kneel, the gathered fabric, and Aurora’s eager movement into a different embrace.

“Oh, my darling,” she said, and though she kept her voice low, relief made it unsteady. “There you are. There you are.”

“I found Uncle Hector,” Aurora said, with the pride of one who had accomplished the finding entirely on her own.

“So you did.” The duchess’s answer was warm, but Hector heard what lay beneath it: the remnants of fear, carefully folded away where Aurora would not see. “You gave us quite a fright.”

Hector inclined his head. “The maze and I were discussing terms of surrender when she arrived.”

“That was very wise,” Her Grace said.

Her attention shifted to him. He felt it before she spoke, as he often felt a gaze first. He hoped she would not notice the paint and wood surrounding him.

“Your Grace.” She smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing,” he said.

Her Grace did not answer quickly, and he suspected she disliked false modesty as much as he did. At last she said, “It was not nothing to her.”