Page 69 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

The thought sat in her like a stone.

She had been telling herself that leaving would be protection. That it would be simpler to take the baby to her aunt, to a smaller house, to a life that could be explained. Safer, perhaps. More private. Less full of rumors and dukes and impossible futures.

But standing there watching Leopold on the nursery floor, she could no longer say with confidence that Belgrave was worse than the alternative.

Not without lying.

And Honora was very tired of lies.

She glanced down at her hands and then back at Cecily.

What did she owe the child, her sister’s memory, or herself?

She did not know.

The morning passed on in ordinary pieces. Leopold stayed longer than he usually did. Cecily crawled across the rug with renewed enthusiasm. Honora fetched the cloths and the basin and helped with the baby’s breakfast.

No one said anything else about the garden beds, though Honora could not quite stop thinking about the way Leopold had spoken of them as if they were part of his ordinary life and not a topic for a nursery conversation.

When at last she left the room, she found she was carrying the thought with her.

Not peace, not certainty,

Only the very uncomfortable sense that her plan no longer felt as clean as it had before.

That night, after Cecily was asleep and the house had gone still, Honora sat at the small table in her room with a sheet of paper and a pen.

She had not written to Celestine since the accident.

That in itself was not quite true. She had written many times and kept the letters folded away. None had ever been read, of course. They had just become a way for Honora to talk about her most private feelings; to pretend as though her sister was simply a letter away.

This one came more slowly.

She began with the simplest truth.

Dear Celestine,

I am still here.

The words sat on the page like a confession.

She paused, then wrote on.

There is a duke here who sits on the floor with a baby who is not his and listens to her as though what she says matters. He does not speak to her as if she is an inconvenience. He speaks to her as though she is a person. I did not expect that.

Honora stopped and stared at the line for a moment. Then, she wrote again.

There is a woman in the kitchen named Martha who pours tea without asking and asks hard questions without pushing. She made me laugh this morning.

That made her stop once more.

Laugh.

The word looked strange and fragile on the paper.

She pressed her lips together and went on.

I told her I am not running from something, but running toward something I already lost. That, I think, is true, though I do not know what to do with it.