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“And I think you’ll be pleased to know that the event was a success, as well,” she continued on. “A lot of guests have pledged to donate a lot of money. I’m surprised by their generosity.”

Phillipa nodded. It was all good news. What a turn around to the night.

“Thank you for taking care of things,” Phillipa said to her friend.

“Oh, hush.”

Both ladies dissolved into laughter.

It was very late, long after the last carriage had rolled away down the drive, that Phillipa finally climbed the stairs toward the nursery. She was unable to settle until she had seen Theodore for herself, sleeping.

But when she entered his nursery, she found that Gregory was already there.

“I keep coming back to look at him,” he admitted, without turning. “It’s hard to stop.”

“I feel the same way,” She came to stand beside him, slipping her hand into his uninjured one. “He will never know how close it came. I think that is a mercy.”

“I will know it, though. For the rest of my life, I expect, whenever I look at that crib.”

“Then we shall simply have to fill his life with so much ordinary happiness that the frightening nights are crowded out entirely by all the good ones.” She leaned her head against his shoulder, and together they stood watch a while longer over the sleeping child, two people who had, in a single terrible and wonderful night, finally become exactly the family they had once only pretended, for the sake of convenience, to be.

CHAPTER 26

“They are saying it was footpads,” said Duncan, settling into the chair across from Gregory’s desk. “A gang of them, apparently, grown bold enough to try their luck even at a duke’s own ball.”

“I have heard it was three,” said Gregory, dryly, setting down his pen. “And that I fought them off single handedly.”

“I heard five, and a riding crop.” Duncan grinned. “You ought to let the story grow a little further before you correct anyone. By Christmas you shall have fought off a dozen. Phillipa will have swooned into your arms at the conclusion of it.”

Gregory gave his friend a wry smile.

“I would thank you not to spread a version of events in which she is reduced to fainting prettily. I really don’t think she will appreciate that.”

In earnest, it was true. Phillipa was anything but a damsel in distress. She had stood her ground, and done exactly what was needed of her in the situation. “You know, I had told her to remain downstairs, but she came up with me.”

Duncan nodded. “I guess you’ve found a brave one.”

“Yes, so please,” Gregory laughed. “Don’t make her sound helpless in whatever version of the story that you will be propagating.”

“Noted. I shall correct it at the first opportunity. Charity will be glad to hear it. She has already told three separate ladies that your wife is the bravest woman in London.”

Gregory smiled properly at that.

The quiet campaign of careful rumor he and Ronan had set in motion the very morning after the ball. The story had the following elements: footpads, a scuffle, nothing more. It had held remarkably well, helped along by the fact that no one in good society had the smallest wish to believe anything stranger than that of so successful and well attended an evening.

Michael Dornet’s name had not once, as far as Gregory could discover, left the walls of the magistrate’s office.

“How is the boy?” Duncan asked, more gently now. “Theodore. I know it was his own nursery that bore the worst of it.”

“He does not remember it, thank God,” Gregory said with a sigh of relied. “Children of that age forget a great deal very quickly.”

“Yes, he’s far too small for it,” Duncan nodded. “If you never bring it up, he will never know either.”

Gregory wondered if he would like for him to know when he grows older, but then thought against it.

It was something that he was learning to do more of. Not think and worry about things beforehand. He could simply make the decision when the time for it came.

Gregory looked, for a moment, out the window toward the garden, where he could just make out Martha pushing Theodore along the gravel path in his small wheeled cart, “I confess I have had rather more trouble forgetting it myself.”