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“You’re suffering from melancholy,” she said. “But that won’t last forever. You’ve been dealt a blow, Your Grace, and I want to help. Will you at least consider it?”
“The blow I have been dealt has been suffered by many others before me. I’m not special or in need of care and nor am I...melancholy.” He spat the word as if it was stuck in his throat. Maybe it was stuck deep inside him—all evidence did indeed point to melancholy, and there was nothing he could do to hide it.
“You were heartbroken after Lady Wexham, and then...well.”
Joshua looked at her, appalled, and a little terrified that someone would bring that up to him now. “I see.” He didn’t see anything at all. “Excuse me.” He walked off, but he had no place to go except home. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself by stalking off across the meadow, bound for Hollyfield without his horse, so he took a seat at the table, his back to all the frivolity, while servants readied it for afternoon tea.
He had no idea how long he must have been sitting there like a stewing gargoyle. Perhaps he drifted away a little, because he was startled by a tug of his arm. He sat up and looked to his right. The smallest Iddesleigh girl had her chubby hand on his knee. She looked up at him with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. “What?”
She put her foot on top of his and began to haul herself up into his lap without a word.
“I beg your pardon? What are you doing?” he demanded, and held his arms away from his body so that he didn’t touch the lass. “I did not invite you to sit here.”
But the girl, who was no more than two or three years old, ignored him and single-mindedly carried on with her mission. She exerted herself until she’d settled on his lap, her back against his chest, and plugged her mouth with her thumb.
Joshua sat very still. Surely someone would come and fetch the interloper. Surely someone would call her, or demand he set her on her feet. But no one came. And her body, a warm, solid weight against his, sank into him. Her head lolled to one side as she nodded off.
“What in bloody hell am I to do now?” he muttered beneath his breath. He was a tiny bit frantic. The child moved, and he feared her sliding off his lap onto her head, so he draped his arm loosely around her middle to prevent that from happening.
How long must he hold another man’s child when his own child lay in a grave somewhere? Did no one notice a child missing? Was this the sort of supervision the children in this country could expect?
“Oh, look, you’ve made a friend. Thankgoodness. I was beginning to fret for you.” The princess plopped into the chair next to him in a cloud of gold.
He stared. He would have stood, but he had a baby in his lap who was softly snoring.
“Little Birdie,” she said, and leaned forward to stroke the baby’s cheek. She lifted her gaze to Joshua, and he was struck with the way the sunlight danced in her eyes. “You do forgive me, don’t you?”
“For...?”
“For not believing you were the duke. You really don’t look like one.”
“I beg your pardon? I look as much like a duke as you look like a princess.”
She smiled at him in that way women had of smiling when they thought men were incapable of being anything other than an idiot. “You don’t really believe that.”
He didn’t really.
“I was surprised, I will admit. I’m not the best with surprises. I tend to say the first thing I think. My mother—that’s Queen Agnes—she says it is the worst thing about me, the way I blurt things out.” She shrugged. “But there is worse,” she confessed in a low, conspiratorial voice.
He didn’t know what to say. Was he supposed to ask what? The child settled deeper into his lap.
“You know what I mean,” she said.
“I don’t know that I do.”
“Just that we all have a side to us we hope no one ever sees. Don’t you have a side like that?”
“Even if I did, I don’t think I would discuss it with someone I’ve only just met.”
“Really?” She seemed genuinely surprised. “Then what do you talk about? Everything else seems so...superficial.”
“Marley, you’ve taken to our Birdie. Everyone does.”
Iddesleigh’s voice boomed so closely that Joshua very nearly dropped the girl. The earl clapped a hand onto Joshua’s shoulder.
“I wasn’t given a choice,” Joshua said.
Iddesleigh laughed. “Words I speak every day.” He bent over and scooped up his daughter from Joshua’s lap. The space she had occupied filled instantly with the cool, empty wind of nothingness. Iddesleigh draped her over his shoulder. “We’re going to have tea,” he announced.
