The image shifted, reformed. She saw him holding a different child. Smaller, with dark hair and his eyes. Their child.
The thought slammed into her with such force she had to steady herself against the table.
Children with August. A family. A real marriage, not an arrangement or a performance but something genuine and permanent and terrifying.
She wanted it. The realization was sharp and undeniable. She wanted his children, wanted to watch him be a father, wanted to build something real with him instead of this careful dance they had been performing for months.
When had this happened? When had her feelings shifted from polite tolerance to this aching want that made her chest hurt?
“Your Grace?” Mrs. Everett touched her arm. “Are you well? You have gone quite pale.”
“I am perfectly well. Only a bit warm, I think.”
“Perhaps you should sit. I shall fetch some water.”
But Eliza shook her head and returned to her task, handing out blankets and trying not to look at August, trying not to imagine things that might never come to pass.
The carriage rocked gently as they made their way back to Wildmoore Hall. Eliza sat across from August, her hands folded in her lap, her gaze fixed on some point beyond the window. She had been quiet since they left the orphanage, and August could not help but notice the way her brow furrowed, as though she were working through some complicated problem in her head.
He wanted to ask what she was thinking. Wanted to know if she had noticed the way he could not stop watching her as she moved among the children, so natural and easy with them. Wanted to tell her that seeing her like that had done something strange to his chest, made him want things he had never allowed himself to consider.
Instead, he said, “You are remarkable with them.”
She startled out of her thoughts. “What?”
“The children. You know each of their names, their preferences, their fears. That boy, Thomas, told me you once stayed up all night with him when he had a fever. Mrs. Everett said you sang to him until dawn.”
“It was nothing. Any decent person would have done the same.”
“Most decent people do not, though. That is the difference between good intentions and actual goodness.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Why are you so devoted to them? To this place?”
She was quiet for a long moment, her fingers worrying at the fabric of her glove. “It is not charity if that is what you are thinking. It is not some noble gesture to assuage my conscience or earn favor with heaven.”
“Then what is it?”
She looked at him, and something in her expression made his breath catch. “It is remembrance. Of what it felt like to be them.”
“What do you mean?”
She drew a breath, as though steeling herself. “My mother married beneath her station. Or rather, she married for love which her family considered worse than marrying beneath her. When they discovered she had eloped with my father, they disowned her completely. No dowry, no support, no acknowledgment that she had ever existed.”
August felt his jaw tighten. “That is unconscionable.”
“That is society.” She turned her attention back to the window. “My father worked as a clerk. They were not wealthy, but they were happy, I think. And then he died. An accident at the docks before I was even born. My mother tried to keep us afloat. Shetook in sewing, did laundry for the better houses, anything she could manage. But it was never enough.”
“Eliza—”
“I was eleven when she fell ill. Consumption, the doctor said though we could not afford proper treatment. So, I took over the laundry work. Hauled water, scrubbed linens, delivered them to the houses.” Her voice remained calm, almost detached, as though she were recounting someone else’s story. “We had nothing. Some days, we did not eat. Some nights, we huddled together under one thin blanket because we could not afford coal for the fire. I know what it means to be hungry and cold and afraid. To lie awake wondering if tomorrow will be the day there is simply nothing left.”
August could not speak. Could not reconcile the woman sitting across from him—composed, educated, the Duchess of Wildmoore—with the image of a child hauling laundry through London streets, starving in a cold house while her mother died slowly.
“When did your uncle find you?” he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
“After my mother died. I was fourteen. He had not even known I existed until he received notice of her death.” She smiled, but it was sad around the edges. “He was a good man. Took me in without question, gave me a home, an education, everything I had been denied. But by then, I had learned the lesson. Thatthe world is full of children like I was. Alone and frightened and invisible to everyone who might help them.”
“So, you help them instead.”
“I try. It is not much, but—” She broke off, shaking her head. “It is not much, but it is something.”