Page 9 of A Baby for the Duke

“Then how could you possibly know it was mine?”

“The crest.”

“My father has never used that seal in his life. He thinks it’s pompous.”

“I was at Westminster the day he was given it,” the Duke pointed out. “A bird with the wing raised and half a wheel. I don’t forget things I’ve been made to sit through.”

Leonora looked down at the other paper, the one with Katherine on it, and her chest tightened.

“That’s her name,” she said.

“So I’m told.”

“But the letter says nothing about a child,” she said. “Not one word. I have it in my hand and there is nothing in it but a great deal of foolishness about a man laughing across a room.”

“No. It does not.”

“Then how in heaven’s name did you arrive at⁠—”

“A woman left a child on my step before dawn with one word written on a sheet of paper,” the Duke said, “and no direction, no date, and no name. That hand was all I had of her. So I went through every letter my brother has been sent by a woman in four years and looked for it, and one of them was near enough to stop me, and it had half your father’s crest on the seal.” He did not look away. “It was six months old. So is the child. I am aware that is arithmetic and not proof. I had nothing else in the world to go on and a baby asleep in my drawing room, and I would do the same again tomorrow.”

“And you thought…” She raised her eyes to his. “You thought that I had written a letter to your brother while I was carrying his child and then left her on your doorstep. And instead of turning us away at the door, you invited my family to dinner and fed them turbot.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to see your face when I asked about last spring.”

Leonora did not know what to say to that.

Down the corridor, Mrs. Pike had stopped walking and was studying a painting with tremendous concentration.

“Well,” Leonora said, “you have seen it, and I hope it has told you what you wanted to know. I am sorry for the letter and sorrier still for the child, and I hope with all my heart that you find her mother so that your brother can do right by her.”

“My brother is in Italy and cannot be found.”

“When is he coming back?”

“He isn’t coming back,” the Duke said blandly. “I’ll claim the girl as my own.”

Leonora stared at him. “As your own daughter?”

“There’s no one else.”

“That is—” She stopped, because the word she wanted to say was not one she could say to a duke in a corridor. “That is a very good thing to do.”

“It’s the arithmetic. Don’t make it into a virtue.” He turned toward the window, and the candle showed the scar peeking from under the silk. “But a daughter needs more than a name, and the ton will not accept a girl out of nowhere from a man they call the Beast of Thorton. She needs a mother. A respectable one. Married in a church, in daylight, with her family in the pews.”

“I’m sure you will charm one in no time, Your Grace.”

“I’ve never charmed anything in my life.”

“Then you had better begin, because there are six weeks of the Season left, and then everyone goes home.”

“I don’t need charm,” he declared. “I need somebody who wants something from me as badly as I want something from them.”

He turned around and came away from the window, and Leonora took a step back before she could stop herself and put her shoulders against the paneling. The suit of armor stood at her right hand. There was nowhere else to go.