Page 85 of A Baby for the Duke

“Yes?”

“Thank you,” Colin rasped.

Leonora waited all the way past Hounslow for him to say something else, but he never did.

Katherine crawled across the drawing room carpet on Tuesday.

She had been threatening it since Sunday. She had gotten on her hands and knees, rocked, and hitched. Once, she had tumbled backward under a table and been furious about it. And then, on Tuesday morning, without warning, she put out one hand and then the other, and crawled across four feet of Turkish carpet in pursuit of an orange cat, and everybody in the room lost their minds.

“She’s off!”

“Mind the fire poker, Bess.”

“Oh, look at her crawl! Look at her, the wicked thing.”

Mercutio, who had spent nine years being a menace to the county, took one look at what was coming toward him and leapt up onto the sofa’s back, where he sat with his tail wrapped round his hind legs in an attitude of profound betrayal.

Katherine sat down on the carpet and squealed.

“He’ll come back,” Leonora said, scooping her up. “He always comes back; he cannot help himself. It is the great tragedy of his life. Again. Go on. From the beginning.”

They did it nine more times before luncheon.

“You are the ruin of that cat,” Mrs. Pike said from the doorway, holding a pile of mending in her arms.

“He adores it.”

“That animal has bitten every soul in this house at least once, and he is sitting on the back of that sofa at this moment waiting for her to come at him again. He will let her get within a foot, and then he will move ten inches and no further.” Mrs. Pike sat down. “He’s doing it on purpose. He is teaching her to crawl.”

“He is not.”

“Watch him.”

Leonora watched him. Mercutio waited until the baby was within a foot, then moved away ten inches and sat down again.

“Oh,” she murmured.

“There’s a great deal of that in this house if you know where to look for it,” Mrs. Pike said, threading her needle.

By Wednesday, the baby could cross the room. By Thursday, she had discovered the door.

Later in the afternoon, coming in from the garden with grass on her hem and the baby under one arm, Leonora glanced up at the house and saw her husband standing at the gallery window. He did not move away.

That was new.

He stood there without moving and let her see him.

Leonora stopped on the grass and watched him, and after a moment, she went indoors.

“You should be out there,” Mrs. Pike urged.

“So you have said.”

“I shall go on saying it.” She put the tray down. “She’s been on the lawn for three hours, Your Grace. The child has crawled the length of it twice, and you have stood at this window for the better part of both.”

Colin did not answer.

“You could go down.”