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“Yes,” said the Duke of Brawnhite. “This is my child. Lady Phillipa and I are engaged to be married soon.”

CHAPTER 3

The room exploded. There was no other word for it.

“Engaged? To Lady Phillipa?”

“But what of Ravenhill…”

“Your Grace, when did you?”

“Is it a boy? Might we see…”

A young lady near the back began, quite audibly, to weep with excitement. A gentleman by the door started to applaud and was hastily hushed. Someone pushed forward to peer over Phillipa’s shoulder at the baby, who took one look at the unfamiliar face and produced a wail of truly formidable proportions.

Phillipa stood in the midst of it with a stranger’s child on her shoulder and her heart hammering so hard she was certain it must show through her bodice, and did the only thing she could think of. She smiled a pleasant smile.

She was her mother’s daughter to the last.

The Duke did not raise his voice but crossed the library in four long strides and planted himself between Phillipa and the crowd, then he spread his hands and smiled, and Phillipa watched something remarkable happen.

“My friends,” said the Duke, “you have caught me out, and I can only beg your pardon. This was not how I meant to announce it. I had planned something with a great deal more champagne and planning.”

A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd.

“But the child is tired, my betrothed is quite overcome, and neither will be improved by an audience. You shall have every particular, I promise you, in good time. Lady Whitcombe, I would be forever in your debt if you would lead the way for everyone to head to the dance floor. Sir Roger! You have not danced all night, I saw you. Come, come.”

He did not push, instead simply collected the crowd, a hand on a shoulder here, a murmured word there. Within minutes the library had emptied, and he was the last to go.

On the threshold he stopped, one hand on the frame, and looked back over the departing heads. His eyes found hers, and they were not amiable now.

Wait here.

Then he stepped through, and the door clicked shut, and the roar of the ballroom dropped to a distant hum.

So Phillipa waited.

She had very little else to do. The baby was still crying, thin and shaken, so she did the only useful thing available: she walked him slowly back and forth before the dying fire, patting his back in small circles and murmuring nonsense.

“There, now. All that dreadful noise. Nobody could blame you. I felt much the same.” He had seemed larger in the basket. Held against her shoulder, he was scarcely more than a warm weight of blanket and breath, barely a year old. It took him a while to fall asleep.

Only then did Phillipa sit, all at once, on the edge of the sofa, and stare at the fire.

Engaged.

She had barely spoken to the Duke of Brawnhite in her life, and he had just informed three hundred of London’s most dedicated gossips that she was to be his wife.

She ought to have said something or spoken up on the spot, in front of all of them. But she had stood there mute, smiling like a doll.

The clock on the mantel ticked, and it was a long while till the door opened again.

She expected to find the Duke, and finally pester him for some answer but it wasn’t who she was expecting.

Rather, it was her mother.

Lady Creighton stepped inside and shut the door behind her and stood with her back against it, one hand pressed to her bosom, breathing as though she had come at a run.

“Well?”