“He is a healthy child, Your Grace,” Dr. Hargrove said, raising his voice above the screaming. “Whoever cared for him before he arrived here did a creditable job. He is well-nourished and shows no signs of illness or neglect.”
Mary lifted Tommy from the table and held him against her chest. His cries softened to shuddering gasps, then to hiccups, then to the wet, snuffling silence of a baby who had forgiven. She wrapped him in his blanket and rocked him.
“Whoever cared for him,” she repeated. “You mean his mother.”
Dr. Hargrove snapped his bag shut. He was a careful man, and his expression gave nothing away. “I mean, whoever had charge of him, Your Grace. The child has been well looked after. That is all I can say with certainty.”
Mary pressed her lips to the top of Tommy’s head. He smelled of milk and the lavender soap Mrs. Bridwell used for his baths. Charlotte had cared for this baby. Charlotte had fed him and kept him warm and healthy, and then Charlotte had left him in a basket on a doorstep and vanished. The two facts sat side by side in Mary’s mind, and she could not make them fit.
Dr. Hargrove bowed and departed. Mrs. Bridwell took Tommy for his afternoon nap, and Mary stood in the corridor with nowhere to go and no one to go to.
She walked through the house. She had taken to doing this in the afternoons, learning its shape the way one learns a new language, room by room. The drawing room with its silkwallpaper and cold hearth. The morning room where she took her solitary meals. The library, which smelled of leather and dust and held more books than she could read in a lifetime.
She ran her fingers along the spines and pulled one free at random. A volume of poetry. She opened it and found an inscription on the flyleaf in a woman’s hand:
For my boys. Read to each other when I cannot. — Mother
Mary closed the book and replaced it on the shelf.
“Your Grace, is something wrong with the bell in your room?”
The cook stood at the kitchen worktable with flour on her apron and concern on her face. Behind her, a scullery maid paused mid-scrub. The kitchen was warm and bright at this hour, the banked fire casting a copper glow across the flagstones, and it felt more alive than any room Mary had entered all day.
“The bell is perfectly fine,” Mary said. “I only wanted a cup of chamomile tea, and I thought I might come down for it myself. I’ve been hoping to explore the house a bit more.”
The cook exchanged a glance with the scullery maid. Duchesses did not wander into kitchens at eleven o’clock at night. The glance said as much.
“Please, Your Grace, sit wherever you’d like, and we’ll bring it to you. The small parlor is warm this time of night. Or the morning room, if you prefer.”
Mary thanked them and turned toward the corridor. The house was different at this hour. The lamps had been dimmed to a low amber glow, and the shadows gathered in the corners like guests who had overstayed their welcome. Her slippers made no sound on the runner.
She heard him before she saw him. The rustle of heavy wool, the particular rhythm of his stride. Mary stepped back into the alcove beside the kitchen door and watched as Evander crossed the entrance hall. He shrugged into his greatcoat, checked his pocket watch, and nodded to Harding, who held the front door open. The night air pushed into the hall, cold and sharp, and then he was through the door, and the latch clicked behind him, and the house swallowed the silence he left.
Mary stepped out of the alcove. Harding stood at the door with his hands clasped, his face composed into the blank efficiency of a man who had performed this duty before.
“Harding.”
The butler turned. If he was surprised to find the Duchess standing in the corridor at this hour, he did not show it. “Your Grace.”
“Where has His Grace gone?”
“I could not say, Your Grace.”
Mary studied the butler’s face. He was not lying. He was choosing not to know, which was a different skill entirely, and one the staff of this house had clearly perfected.
“Thank you, Harding.”
She took her tea in the small parlor, as the cook had suggested. The fire had burned low, and the room was warm and close, and Mary sat in an armchair with her hands wrapped around the cup and her thoughts wrapped around questions she could not answer.
Where did a man go at eleven o’clock at night?
A man who did not drink. A man who did not want his wife. A man who left his house in a greatcoat and returned at hours she could only guess at, because she was always asleep by the time his footsteps passed her door.
She knew where men went. She was not naive. She was twenty-one years old, and the daughter of a viscount, and she had grown up hearing the whispers that followed certain husbands through the ballrooms of the ton.
Mistresses. Kept women. Discreet houses where discreet arrangements were made and no one spoke of it in daylight.
The Duke did not want her. He had made that plain. He did not want children. He did not want a wife. He wanted a duchess to manage his household and care for his nephew, and beyond that, Mary’s existence was a matter of polite inconvenience.