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“I am not certain I think of you as staff any longer,” said Phillipa. “I hope that does not offend you.”

“It does not offend me in the least.” Martha sniffed once, decisively, and reclaimed her composure with the brisk efficiency she brought to everything else. “Though I shall have to insist you continue paying my wages regardless, friend or no friend. I have grown rather fond of eating.”

Phillipa laughed, surprised into it, and the baby, delighted by the sound, banged both fists against his tray and produced a stream of enthusiastic, entirely unintelligible commentary that made them both laugh harder, and for a while the small nursery was filled with nothing more complicated than the ordinary, unremarkable warmth of two young women and a baby who had, between them, without either of them quite planning it, become something very like a family of their own.

“I think he said a word today,” Phillipa announced this to the empty breakfast room with triumph.

It was as though she was unable to keep the news to herself alone. Someone needed to know.

It had happened the evening before, in the nursery, with only Martha as witness. The baby had been propped against a cushion, and fussing over his food. Martha was trying her level-best to feed him whatever baby-food mush that had been prepared for him specially.

It was nothing out of the ordinary, and this was a standard routine for them. Phillipa had come to really like the routine, as well. But this time, there was something different that happened.

The baby looked right at her, and with unmistakable if somewhat garbled clarity, something that both women had agreed, after some debate, he let out the words “Ma.”

Ma!

“Surely this is not just baby blabber?” she had asked Martha with her eyes wide. Immediately, she had been jolted with excitement.

“It is often the first words that a baby utter,” Martha had confirmed.

“But who does he mean?” she asked. For a second, she thought that he referred to Martha and a streak of annoyance shot through her.

But then the baby pointed at her, and uttered the word again. Her cheeks turned red, and Martha smiled at her.

“I suppose he has learned how to address you, Your Grace,” she said.

Of all things that involved taking care of a small baby, this was not something that Phillipa was expected. Though in retrospect, it was one of the obvious ones.

She had entered this marriage prepared to do her duty by a child who was not hers, competently and with real affection, because that had been the bargain. In earnest, she had meant to honor it fully. But the one thing that she had not expected to happen was.. exactly this. Her duty towards the baby was beginning to morph into something that she very much looked forward to, and enjoyed.

It had blossomed into real affection.

She thought of her own mother, and the particular love that had come, in her own childhood, bundled so tightly with expectation and performance that she had spent years unable to separate the two, and then about sitting alone in the breakfast room with her tea gone cold and a footman politely pretending not to notice her damp eyes, that whatever else came of this strange marriage of hers, she intended that the baby should never once wonder whether the love given him came with conditions attached.

She was still turning this over when Gregory appeared in the doorway. Heaven knows how long he had been standing there, observing her. He cast her a curious and assessing glance, and then over to her.

“Am I missing something?” she asked, noticing the look on his face.

He gave her a faint shrug of his shoulders. “I could ask you the same question here. You look as though you have had important news,” he observed, settling into his chair.

“Oh. Right.”

The duke was a lot more perceptive than what she sometimes gave him credit for. For someone who didn’t like to speak excessively, he seemed to notice everything.

He gave her a look to say go on then.

“He said a word yesterday evening. Or something very near one.” She could not keep the pride from her voice, however she tried. “Martha and I have agreed it was ‘Ma,’ though I confess we are perhaps not the most impartial judges.”

Something crossed Gregory’s face, quick and complicated. “That is very early for a proper word. He is not yet a year old.”

“Martha says her youngest brother did not manage a single word until he was nearly two, and spent the whole of the intervening period shouting rather effectively in an invented language of his own devising. I believe we are permitted to be somewhat smug about it.”

“Smug?”

“Why...yes...” she said, giving a small shrug of the shoulder. “I think I am allowed.”

“You seem to think you’re allowed to do a number of things,” he said, looking at her intently. “Somehow, you never run them by me first.”