Page 100 of A Baby for the Duke

Everybody within twenty feet stopped moving.

“At home,” Leonora answered. “With Katherine.”

“Why?”

“Because somebody must be.”

“Mrs. Pike could have watched her,” Augusta reasoned. “And then he could have come and played. He is the only person who has ever beaten Evan, and I have been waiting since May to see it done twice.”

“Augusta,” their mother called from the terrace, in a voice that could have stopped a horse.

Augusta, who was twelve and not stupid, looked from her to Leonora and worked out in the space of a breath that she had gone somewhere she was not meant to go. Face scarlet, she declared, “I shall fetch the balls.” And then she fled.

Leonora was left standing on the lawn with her mallet.

There. One of them managed it. It took a child until four o’clock, and now they all know that I have no answer.

Marina looked at her across the grass with her mallet slung over her shoulder and said nothing at all, and waited until the light started to dim.

They ended up in the orchard, on the wall, the way they had since they were nine.

“Right,” Marina said.

“Don’t.”

“I have said one word.”

“You have said one word in a particular voice, and I know precisely what is behind it.”

Marina swung her boots against the brick. “How long has it been since he touched you?”

“Marina.”

“I am your twin, and there is nobody within a hundred yards. Either you tell me, or I shall guess out loud, and my guessing is famously worse than the truth.”

Leonora covered her face with her hands.

“Nineteen days,” she muttered.

“Nineteen.”

“I have counted. I have counted every one of them, and I am not proud of it.” She dropped her hands. “And before you say it, he has not been cruel. He has been kind every day. He is at breakfast four mornings out of six now. He lies on the floor and lets Katherine climb over him. He dug a field because I wrote him a note about it. He passes me the salt with the manners of a man handing a lady down from a coach in the rain, and every night he goes to his room and shuts the door, and I lie there and listen for his movements.”

“Nora.”

“I bought him a painting,” Leonora continued. “I paid sixteen guineas for it. I stood in a room full of candles and gave it to him, and he looked at it and told me exactly what it was, which nobody else in England would have seen. Then he came toward me, and I stopped him.”

Marina’s head snapped around. “You stopped him?”

“I told him I would not take a kiss from a man who was grateful.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing,” Leonora uttered. “I asked him for one true sentence. One. I told him it needn’t be a promise or love. And he opened his mouth, only to say nothing. Then I kissed his cheek and went upstairs and sat on the floor until four in the morning.”

The orchard was very quiet. Somewhere in the house, somebody was calling Augusta in.

“There is something else,” Leonora admitted. “You will not like it.”