Page 21 of The Duke's Secret Baby
Andrew handed him the letter. The butler read only enough to understand its substance, then looked up. If he felt surprise, he concealed it well.
“It is settled, then, Your Grace?”
“It is.”
Carter inclined his head. “Very good, Your Grace.”
“The wedding will be held as soon as possible,” Andrew informed him. “Quietly. Small and simple. I want no spectacle made of it.”
“Of course.”
“Only immediate family, a handful of witnesses, and the necessary clergyman. No crowd, no delay, and no opportunity for society to turn it into entertainment.”
“I understand.”
Andrew rose from his chair and moved toward the hearth, with one hand resting briefly on the mantel as he considered the practicalities. “See that the house is prepared. The blue drawing room at the London house will do for breakfast afterward, if something modest is arranged. Nothing elaborate.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And instruct the housekeeper that rooms are to be made ready.”
Carter waited a fraction of a moment before asking. “For Her Grace?”
The title landed strangely.
Andrew’s expression did not alter, though he felt the shift of it somewhere inwardly, like the turning of a lock. “Yes.”
“Very good, Your Grace.”
He gave further orders after that regarding notices, carriages, calls to be avoided, tailors to be summoned, licenses to be procured and through it all, Carter moved with efficient calm, receiving each instruction as though rushed marriages to strong-minded ladies in the midst of scandal were an ordinary inconvenience of aristocratic life.
At last, the butler withdrew and the study fell silent again.
Andrew stood quite still for a moment, then reached for Lord Keswick’s letter and folded it once more. He did not put it away. Instead, he left it on the writing table in plain view, as if some part of him still required the evidence of it.
My daughter has agreed.
The words remained improbable.
He left the study and went upstairs. The nursery was warm and dim, with the curtains half drawn against the afternoon light. The faint scent of milk and lavender hung in the air. Everything in the room was small: the cradle near the fire, the folded blankets, the tiny garments laid ready by patient hands. Such things still possessed the power to arrest him, to call up memories he had long ago taught himself to master.
Yet he entered without hesitation. The nurse, seeing him, rose at once and curtsied.
“Your Grace.”
“Leave us a moment.”
She obeyed, placing the child carefully in his arms before she went.
Andrew looked down. The baby was awake, though drowsy. Her small face appeared soft with that solemn, unknowing expression infants wore when they had not yet learned the world could be cruel. One of her fists pressed against his coat.
She was so little. Always, each time he held her, he was struck anew by the weight and lightness of her together, how something could be so slight and yet seem to alter the whole balance of a man’s life.
He adjusted her more securely against him and sat in the chair by the hearth. For a while, he said nothing. He only watched the rise and fall of her breathing, the tiny movements of her mouth and the way her fingers opened and closed as though grasping at dreams.
“All this chaos,” he murmured at last, “and you know nothing of it.”
Her eyes blinked open, looking dark and unfocused. He kept his gaze focused on her.
