Page 138 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

Honora’s hand caught lightly at the front of his coat. He kissed her again, more slowly this time.

For one moment, the nursery disappeared, along with the papers, the scandal, and every secret and falsehood that had ever passed through that house. There was only the two of them, sharing the most honest affection and passion the walls of Belgrave had likely ever seen.

A knock at the door broke them apart far too soon.

They stepped back from each other at once, and both of them turned toward the sound.

“Your Grace.” Wilfred’s voice reached them clearly from the corridor. “The physician has arrived to see Miss Cecily again.”

“Of course he has.” Leopold closed his eyes briefly at the timing of it.

“We should allow him in without further delay.” Honora lowered her gaze, her cheeks visibly warm.

“Yes, we should.”

Honora folded the letter carefully, and Leopold took it gently from her hands.

“We ought to put this somewhere safe,” he said.

“Yes, we ought.”

They walked together back to the study before the physician could be shown upstairs. Leopold unlocked the bureau once more, laid his father’s letter beside the birth record, and set Barnaby’s collected documents down on top of both.

He closed the drawer slowly and rested one hand flat against the wood for a moment.

Thirty years of secrets had accumulated inside that single drawer. Now, finally, the truth had joined them, as well.

“This drawer is getting rather full,” Leopold said, resting his hand there a moment longer.

“The house, however, is finally getting lighter.” Honora looked at him steadily as she said it.

“Is that meant to console me?”

“It is a fact. Whether it consoles you is your own affair.”

Leopold met her eyes, and she held his gaze without flinching or looking away. He found himself thinking, quite suddenly, about the question he intended to ask her before very much more time had passed, and about exactly when he might finally find the courage to ask it properly.

Chapter 28

Honora lay awake long after the candle had burned down to almost nothing. She had checked on Cecily twice already, though the child had not stirred either time. There was no real reason to be awake at all, and yet sleep would not come. She suspected she knew exactly why.

She touched her own lips without meaning to, then lowered her hand quickly, as though someone might have seen her do it.

Leopold had kissed her. Somewhere beneath the surface of things, she had known it might happen eventually. What she had not known was that it would happen like that, with thirty years of secrets pressed into that small room. She also had not known that a kiss could feel so natural, as if they had been kissing for years, and simultaneously somehow feel entirely new.

“He kissed me,” she whispered to the dark, testing the words aloud. She had spent some time bracing herself against exactly this sort of feeling, certain that wanting anything from Leopold Harcourt would only end in another loss to carry.

Instead, it had ended in a kiss she had not expected, and a warmth in her blood that refused to settle no matter how many times she turned onto her side and closed her eyes.

What he had said before it stayed with her too, about admiring her for understanding his father instead of condemning him outright. So did the way he had looked at her afterward, as though the interruption at the door had cost him something he intended to finish collecting later.

Honora sat up and reached for the small cup of water on the table beside her bed, more to give her hands something to do than because she was thirsty.

So much had changed since the morning she arrived at the servants’ entrance under a name that was not hers, and Belgrave no longer felt like the house she had walked into that day. Cecily slept safely in the next room, loved by people who loved her by choice, rather than obligation. And there was Leopold, who had stood at that window with his father’s letter in his hand, admitting he did not know how to forgive a dead man and had stopped expecting himself to figure it all out right then. She had understood him completely in that moment.

Lying awake right then, with her heart behaving in a manner she could not control, she understood something else, as well. Understanding a man and wanting him were not nearly as separate as she had once believed.

Honora set the cup down and lay back against the pillow. She would see him again the following day, and she had no idea what either of them would say about what had happened, or whether anything needed to be said about it at all. But for that night, she decided she would simply allow herself to have felt it and let it offer comfort to weeks of fear, sadness, and unrequited affection.