Page 5 of Stolen By the Duke of Stone

He left the room at a brisk stride, and the two ladies bent over the basket, staring down at the tiny sleeping baby.

He looked so innocent, lying there. So fragile.

Jessamine’s heart swelled, both with Rebecca’s last words and her own newfound love for the babe.

No matter what happened, she would protect him.

One week later

Jessamine sat by the window, a crochety William in her arms. The nursemaid had fed him not half an hour ago; he was perfectly clean, and he ought to be sleeping. The lateness of the hour told Jessamine that. She rocked him slowly, singing a lullaby under her breath. She remembered only a few from her mother, and she cycled through those few until she was sick of them.

William’s tiny face creased as he screamed.

The funeral had gone smoothly, as far as such things could. Jessamine had left William with the nursemaid just for the duration, attending in a hooded cloak to see Rebecca’s coffin lowered into the ground.

Even now, her heart ached at the thought of it.

She rocked William gently in her arms, attempting to soothe him into something approaching sleep.

A knock sounded on the door. “Excuse me, miss,” her maid. “The Duchess of Setton is here to see you.”

“Irene?” Jessamine slipped off the window seat. “Show her in.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs, and then Irene appeared, out of breath and with flyaway hair. She looked flustered.

“What has happened?” Jessamine asked, starting forward.

“I’m so sorry,” Irene said. “I did my best to stop him, but he insisted on coming.”

“Who insisted on coming?”

More footsteps sounded on the stairs, heavier and slower than Irene’s had been, and before Irene could answer, two gentlemen entered the room.

One was Henry in all his blond-haired glory, and the other was a man who appeared even taller.

The stranger stood tall and broad, his clothes surely having been tailored to fit him so perfectly, and his sharp, hard face was turned directly to Jessamine. She had a shock of blue eyes so filled with ice, she thought of long, cold winters, and the candlelight playing across his hair revealed red tints.

A handsome man. A terrifying man. One look into his face told Jessamine that he almost always got his own way.

The stranger’s eyes moved from William in Jessamine’s arms to her face.

“I am here for my second cousin,” he said.

Chapter Two

“Who are you?”

Andrew stared at the woman before him, who clutched the baby even more tightly against her chest, as though she alone were defending it against a pack of ravenous wolves. Her mahogany hair tumbled loose down her back in messy curls, and her eyes were an odd shade of brown, almost orange. Like amber.

“Andrew Kinley. Duke of Knightford,” he said, the new title sounding sour in his mouth.

This was one of the first times he had had occasion to use it. He had only been in possession of the title a few days, and he cared little for its associations.

“You?” the woman demanded, and stepped back. “But the Duke of Knightford is…”

She glanced from him to the babe as though trying to piece everything together.

“The former Duke of Knightford died, Jessie,” the Duchess of Setton said quietly.