Page 62 of A Mother for the Blind Duke’s Orphans

“Fairy made it.”

The duchess’s gaze flicked to him.

He ignored it.

“Perhaps,” he said.

Aurora settled again.

Jonathan opened the study door. The corridor beyond was dim and quiet. Hector adjusted his hold on the child and reached for his cane, but Her Grace took it first.

“Allow me,” she said.

For a moment, he did not answer.

To carry Aurora, he needed both arms. To refuse his wife would be pride, not independence. He had spent years telling himself the difference mattered and then ignoring it whenever obedience to the distinction cost him less than trust.

He inclined his head.

She walked beside him, holding the cane. The simplicity of it unsettled him. Their steps fell softly through the sleeping house. Jonathan followed at a respectful distance, a shadow ensuring order did not abandon tenderness altogether.

At the threshold, Hector paused and looked back once toward the study. The closet door remained open, its interior dark and empty now. In daylight, Aurora would return to it. She would likely hide there again, despite instructions, despite promises, because love in children often repeated itself until it believed in its own safety.

He would have Mrs. Patterson place a blanket there, he decided. Not to encourage sleeping in it, but because forbidding a refuge did not make a child need it less. He would also speak to the nurse and maids.

Beside him, the duchess said, “You are thinking how to make it safer.”

He turned his head toward her.

Her face was glowing, but her voice held certainty.

“That is what you do,” she continued softly.

He should have denied it. Instead, with Aurora asleep against him and Her Grace carrying his cane through the dark, Hector found he had no wish to defend himself from being known.

“Yes,” he said. “It is.”

Chapter Fourteen

Poppy woke to the softest sound in the world. For a moment she did not know where she was. Then the whisper came again beyond her door, and she sat up.

“Poppy?” She heard Annabelle’s voice in the dark.

Poppy was already reaching for her wrapper. “What is it?”

“It is Aurora. She is not in her bed again.”

Again.

Poppy tied the sash at her waist and crossed the room.

“Was the room searched?” Poppy asked.

“Yes.”

Poppy did not wait for slippers. She stepped into the corridor, feeling the chill of the boards through her stockings.

“Did she quarrel with anyone?” Poppy asked as they walked.