Page 20 of A Baby for the Duke

She hit the tray with the flat of her hand twice, which he chose to take as agreement.

Bess came in with the post, set it at his elbow, and backed out of the room, which the maids had started doing lately.

Colin turned the letters over. The third one had no address on it and no seal.

He knew what it was before he opened it. He was aware of his hands slowing down, of the baby beside him kicking her heels against the chair, and of the ticking of the clock in the hall.

Your Grace,

You must have her by now. I am told you are a hard man, but I have decided not to believe it, because a hard man would have put her out on the parish by Tuesday, and I do not think you have.

I will not tell you my name. If you knew it, you would be obliged to do something with it, and there is nothing to be done. She cannot be mine. My husband was sixty-one and had been ill for two years, and there is not a person in England who would count the months and be kind about it.

She would be a bastard, and I would be the woman who made her one, and neither of us would be forgiven for it. I have watched what this world does to women who are not forgiven.

She is not fond of being passed around. She has been fed by a good woman at Ludd’s Cross since the week she was born and is very nearly weaned, and you must find her another or she will not thrive; she will take pap from a boat if somebody sings while she has it, and not otherwise. She loves to be sung to, which I hope is a thing you can manage.

I have no right to ask you for anything, but I am asking you for everything. Give her a name and a life and let her be somebody’s daughter, and I will not write again. I will not come, and you need never be afraid of me appearing on your doorstep.

Be kind to her. She is very serious, but she is not unhappy.

Colin read it twice. Then he folded it and put it in the breast pocket of his coat, next to the note that said Katherine, and sat for a while looking at the window without seeing anything beyond it.

Somewhere out there, there was a woman in black having breakfast and being told that she looked tired.

“Well,” he muttered.

The baby had got hold of the hem of his sleeve and was pulling it.

“I suppose you’re mine, then.”

He read the direction at the head of the letter twice, and then rang.

“Ludd’s Cross,” he said, when Mrs. Pike came. “There is a woman there who has been feeding her since she was born, and I want her name by tonight and her in this house by Friday, on whatever terms she likes.”

“She’ll not leave a village for a house like this one, Your Grace.”

“Then find me one who will, and pay her double, and if there is nobody within twenty miles you will tell me so this evening and not on Saturday.” He folded the letter into his coat. “She has had one woman taken away from her already. She is not losing the other one because I did not think to ask.”

Mrs. Pike stood in the doorway a moment longer than the instruction required.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she said.

With that, Colin got up and told her that he was going to town.

He bought too much, and he knew it.

A wooden horse on a stand, which was absurd, because he was making one. A coral and silver rattle. A picture book of animals with the letters underneath, which Katherine would not be able to read for four years. A ball. Two dolls, because the seller pointed out that the second one was for when the first was in the wash, and Colin had never in his life considered that a doll would need washing and found himself unable to argue with any of it.

He stepped out of the toy shop in Holborn with three parcels and a promise to have the rest sent. He stood on the pavement and realized that the child had almost nothing to wear. Which was how he found himself standing outside a modiste’s window on Bruton Street at two in the afternoon.

He got as far as the door.

Through the glass, he saw a good deal of green silk on a stand and a woman with a tape measure round her neck. Behind them, in the middle of the shop, stood the Marchioness of Huntington with her back to the window. Lady Marina in a riding habit stood beside her, and beyond both of them, there was a screen.

Behind the screen, lit by a window on the far side of it, was a shadow.

He should have walked on. He should have walked twenty yards up the street to the next shop and asked for a child’s linen and gone home. Instead, he stood at the door of the modiste’s shop and watched the shadow lift its arms above its head.