Page 78 of A Baby to Seal the Duke’s Fate

Neither of them said anything more.

***

Evening settled gently over Belgrave. After Cecily had finally surrendered to sleep, Honora remained in the nursery to straighten the room. The toys went back into their basket, the blankets were folded, and the little chair was returned to its place beside the window.

She reached for the wicker basket that had carried Cecily to Belgrave. It remained where it always had, tucked into the corner of the nursery. Inside lay the pale wool shawl. No one had touched it since the morning the baby arrived.

Honora lifted it carefully. The wool felt impossibly soft beneath her fingers despite its age. She shook it out gently, intending only to fold it properly before placing it back.

She heard nothing, yet she knew someone had entered the nursery. Honora turned.

The dowager stood in the nursery doorway. Honora had never seen her there before.

For a moment, neither woman spoke. The dowager’s eyes had fixed on the shawl. Nothing else. Not on Honora, not the room, only the fabric.

The expression that crossed her face confused Honora. It wasn’t surprise. It was recognition. The color seemed to drain from the older woman’s features.

Very slowly, she stepped forward. Honora instinctively lowered the shawl slightly.

The dowager stopped within arm’s reach. Without looking at Honora, she reached out. Her fingertips touched the embroidered corner, the Belgrave emblem stitched into the wool. Then her hand trembled, only once, but Honora saw it.

“Have you come to take her?” Honora asked before she could stop herself.

For a moment, she did not think the dowager had heard her, as she continued staring at the shawl in a trance-like state. She took a deep breath and scrambled to find her bravery.

“If you have come to…”

“I heard you,” the dowager snapped, interrupting. “Nosey servants are not something we tolerate in this house.”

She closed her eyes for the briefest moment and took a long, deep breath. Then, she withdrew her hand as though the wool had burned her. She turned immediately without another word and left the nursery as quietly as she had entered.

Honora stood frozen, the shawl still open across her hands. What had she just witnessed?

Footsteps approached again almost immediately. Wilfred appeared in the corridor carrying a ledger beneath one arm. He slowed when he noticed Honora standing in the doorway. Then his eyes found the shawl, and he stopped.

His face revealed far less than the dowager’s had. But not nothing. Something passed over his expression. Recognition. Old recognition, gone almost before Honora could identify it.

His gaze lingered on the embroidered emblem, then on the fabric itself.

When he finally spoke, his voice remained perfectly even. “You should put that back in the nursery.” Nothing more. He inclined his head politely and continued down the corridor.

Honora watched him disappear. The shawl suddenly felt heavier than wool ought to feel.

Long after the household had gone to bed, Honora lit the lamp in her room. She unfolded the shawl across her lap. The light caught every careful stitch, the wool worn smooth with age, not damaged. Used. Loved.

She ran her fingertips over the embroidered Belgrave crest. Thirty years, perhaps more, old enough that the threads had softened without losing their shape.

Someone had preserved this shawl, someone had valued it. The dowager had recognized it the instant she saw it, and Wilfred had done the same. Neither had looked surprised. They had looked haunted, as though the shawl belonged not to a child but to a memory.

Honora folded one corner over another.

Her father had possessed this. She knew that now. He had wrapped Cecily in it himself before sending her away. Which meant that for years, perhaps decades, a thirty-year-old Belgrave shawl had been sitting somewhere inside the Bellamy house. She had never seen it, never heard it mentioned, never questioned whether such a thing existed.

Her father had kept it hidden. Why?

She folded the shawl carefully once more. The question refused to leave her. What connection had Gideon Bellamy ever had to the Belgrave family? Why had he kept a Belgrave infant’s shawl hidden in his own house for thirty years? And why had he never spoken a single word about it?

Honora returned the shawl to Cecily’s basket exactly as she had found it. Then she climbed into bed.