Richard looked down at Tommy, now properly settled against his chest. The baby blinked up at him, calm and curious, his fist finding the collar of Richard’s shirt and gripping it.
“He does that,” Evander said. “The gripping. Mrs. Bridwell calls him the dock worker.”
Richard laughed. The sound was wet and unsteady, and his eyes glistened, and Evander watched his brother hold a baby who was not his son.
“He’s beautiful,” Richard said.
CHAPTER 24
“He is.” Evander looked at Mary, still standing beside the rocking chair with her hands clasped and her eyes bright. “He has been in good hands.”
The words reached Mary from across the nursery, and her stomach clenched.
Evander stood beside Richard, who still held Tommy against his chest with the awkward tenderness of a man cradling something breakable.
But Mary’s eyes were on Evander.
On the way, he had repositioned his brother’s arms without hesitation, the sureness in his hands, the instinct that had come from weeks of watching from doorways and corridors and one unforgettable night with a fox story in the dark.
He would make a good father.
The thought arrived unbidden, sharp and clear, and Mary felt it settle into a place inside her that she had not known was empty until this moment filled it.
Evander, who had told her he did not want children. Evander, who had built walls against every form of love his life had offered him. That same man had just scolded his brother for holding a baby like a sack of potatoes and instructed him to let Tommy hear his heartbeat. The competence of it, the ease of it, the way his hands had known exactly where to go…
It broke something open inside Mary’s chest. Something that she could not close again.
Her eyes burned. She blinked and felt the heat rise, and she turned her face toward the window before anyone could see.
She could not lose this. She could not lose Tommy, and she could not lose the man who had learned to hold him because she had taught him without knowing it. The thought of Charlotte returning, of Tommy being handed back to parents who had not been here, of the house emptying and the nursery going dark, and Evander retreating behind his walls because the arrangement that had forced them together no longer existed, pressed against her ribs with a weight that stole her breath.
“Excuse me.”
Both men looked at her. Mary kept her face turned toward the window.
“I need a moment. Mrs. Bridwell can take Tommy.”
She crossed the nursery without waiting for a response, her steps quick and controlled, and she passed through the doorway and into the corridor and walked to her room at the end of the east corridor.
There, she closed the door and pressed her back against it and pressed her hands over her face.
The tears came. Not many. She would not allow many. But enough to blur the room and make her draw one long, shuddering breath before she forced them back.
Footsteps in the corridor followed by a knock.
“Mary.”
She dropped her hands and wiped her cheeks with the heels of her palms. “I am fine, Evander. Go back to the nursery.”
“Mrs. Bridwell has Tommy. Open the door.”
Mary closed her eyes. She could ignore him. She could stand against this door and wait for his footsteps to retreat, the way they always retreated, and she could swallow what she felt and go on swallowing it until the taste became familiar.
She opened the door.
Evander stood in the corridor, his coat off, his cravat loosened from a morning that had already lasted longer than most men’s entire days. His eyes moved over her face, reading the redness around her eyes, the damp streaks on her cheeks.
“Tell me,” he said.