“Wewere extraordinary.” She lifted her head enough to meet his eyes. “I could not have done this without you.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “And that terrifies me almost as much as watching her suffer.”
She understood. Because she felt it too—this unexpected, growing certainty that they had become more than two people sharing a house and a marriage of convenience. They had become partners. A team. Something that defied all their careful rules about distance and detachment.
Rose stirred between them, making a small sound of contentment before settling deeper into sleep. The normalcy of it—the beautiful, ordinary proof of her health—made Penelope’s eyes burn with gratitude.
“We should put her in the cradle,” she managed. “Let her rest properly.”
Alastair rose with surprising grace considering he still held both Rose and Penelope. He set the baby down with care, tucking the blankets around her tiny form. Rose’s fingers curled near her face, relaxed now instead of clenched in discomfort.
When Alastair turned back, Penelope was still standing beside the cradle, unable to tear her gaze away from the sleeping child.
“You need sleep,” he said.
“So do you.”
“Then perhaps we should both collapse somewhere that is not a nursery floor.”
The suggestion was reasonable. Practical. Yet neither of them moved.
Because moving meant acknowledging what had happened here tonight. Not just Rose’s illness and recovery, but the way they had worked together—wordless, seamless, united. The way he had held her without asking permission. The way she had let him.
“Alastair,” she started, then faltered. What could she possibly say? That she no longer knew where their arrangement ended and something real began? That she had spent the entire night acutely aware of him—his presence, his steadiness, the way he had looked at Rose with such unguarded tenderness?
There was nothing.
So she let him leave without a word.
CHAPTER 13
“The stitching is remarkably fine.”
Alastair stood in the morning room, the baby’s blanket draped across his palms like evidence at trial. Sunlight filtered through the windows, catching on the delicate embroidery—a pattern of roses intertwined with what might have been forget-me-nots.
He’d noticed it before, of course. One did not spend three weeks living with an infant without becoming intimately acquainted with every scrap of fabric in the nursery. But this morning, watching Rose sleep peacefully after her fever had finally broken, something had shifted in his perception.
The blanket was expensive. Not ostentatiously so, but quality nonetheless. The sort of thing a gentlewoman might commission for her own child, or perhaps receive as a gift from someone who cared enough to choose well.
It had to be someone who knew both of them. Someone who trusted them.
Alastair’s fingers traced the embroidered roses. Who could it have been?
The letter sat in his study drawer, locked away but never forgotten.The only people I can trust with my baby are Penelope Hartwell and Alastair Reed. Signed with a single initial: M.
M for...
No. He was constructing theories from nothing. Wishful thinking, perhaps, or the exhaustion of too many sleepless nights. Thomas would have told him. Wouldn’t he?
Yet the timing aligned with utter precision. Thomas had spoken of his mysterious woman six months ago—glowing, secretive, utterly transformed. And Rose appeared to be approximately three months old, which meant...
Alastair folded the blanket with unnecessary care, a deep frown between his brows. If his suspicions proved correct, then finding the parents would not be the relief he’d imagined. It would tear apart everything—Thomas’s life, some unnamed woman’s reputation, and this strange, fragile household that had somehow become more real than any home Alastair had ever known.
He should tell Penelope. Share his theories, his growing certainty that the child in their nursery connected to his oldest friend.
But what if he was wrong? What if his exhausted mind had invented connections where none existed?
And what if he was right, but the truth would only cause more pain?