Page 87

“I wish to hear everything, if you are willing to tell me,” she said gently. “All of it, if you are able.”

In earnest, she had been nervous about it. Dornet was a cunning man, clearly. A small part of her had worried that the trial would not go as planned, and that he would find a way to get himself free. If that were to happen, then she would have spent all of her days worried that he would try and get to Thedore again.

So now that her husband had confirmed he got a sentence, the relief she felt was immense.

“He did not deny the knife, nor the nursery. His counsel tried, at the start, to make something of his own hard circumstances. It was a made up story about his trade lost. Can you imaginet that he alleged that his prospects were ruined by my sister’s family connections, as though that excused what came after. The judge did not care for it in the slightest.” Gregory rubbed a hand over his face, exhausted but steady.

“I am so, so, so glad,” Phillipa couldn’t help but interject.

“I was made to stand and speak of Theodosia.”

Phillipa squeezed his hand.

“How was that for you?” She knew that he had gotten better at speaking about her, but she knew that it was still not the easiest thing for him. That, too, to do it in front of other people.

“Oh, I don’t know how I managed. It was.. Well, it was odd to

say her name aloud in a room full of strangers who had never known her. They wrote things down, it was rather mechanical and I couldn’t… well I suppose I cannot expect them to understand my grief. The magistrate didn’t show any emotion, but that is his job. I was… I was able to say what I needed.”

“You did it beautifully, I am certain.”

“I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to, and that it might end up costing us the case win. But its done now,” he managed a tired smile. “The magistrate called it as clear a case as he had seen in some years. Dornet will go to the prison at Millbank.

“Is that… I hope that place is not kind to him. He doesn’t deserve it in the least.”

A dark expression formed on his face, and he looked into the distance before speaking again.

“From what Pell tells me of the place, I do not imagine he will trouble anyone’s son again, his own least of all.”

“It is finished, then. Truly finished.”

Gregory reached out and tousled Theodore’s hair, and the baby, delighted by the attention, grabbed at his father’s fingers with both small fists and refused tolet go.

Then Gregory rose, drawing both of them, wife and child, into his arms at once, and held them there, pressed close against him, his face buried in Phillipa’s hair.

“Truly finished,” he murmured, for her ears only, “this time.”

“Truly finished,” she agreed.

Ronan cleared his throat rather loudly, and when they looked up he had already produced, from somewhere, a decanter and four glasses, Augusta rolling her eyes fondly at her husband’s perfect timing.

“I believe this calls for a toast,” Ronan said. “To justice, however late it arrives.”

“To justice,” Gregory agreed, taking the glass offered to him, though his other arm did not once let go of Phillipa’s waist. “And to my solicitor, who has earned every guinea of his fee this month twice over.”

“And to Theodore,” Augusta added, lifting her own glass toward the baby, who regarded the whole proceeding with the grave suspicion he reserved for anything that was not directly edible. “Who is, officially, as of this very morning, a Welby in every sense the law allows.”

Gregory’s hand tightened on Phillipa’s waist at that. The adoption papers, drawn up weeks ago and only finally cleared of every last legal obstacle this same morning, had made Theodore his son in name as well as in every way that had mattered since the night she had refused to hand him back.

“Your Grace.” Mr. Pell himself called that same afternoon, hat in hand, looking, for the first time since Gregory had engaged him, like a man who had slept properly in some while. “I only wished to say, now that the matter is concluded, that I am glad of how it ended. I have seen a great many such searches finish a good deal worse.”

“You did excellent work, Mr. Pell, even if we found him ourselves in the end, by accident.”

“I would not call it entirely accident, Your Grace.” Pell allowed himself the shadow of a smile. “Her Grace has a sharper eye than she is given credit for in most drawing rooms. I should be glad to work for either of you again, should the need ever arise, though I hope most sincerely that it does not.”

“As do I.” Gregory shook his hand properly, man to man, and saw him out himself, something in his chest finally, fully, unclenching for what felt like the first time in a long, long while.

“There is one more thing,” Gregory said, when the toasts had quieted. He looked down at Phillipa, something hopeful and uncertain in his face that she had come, these past weeks, to recognize as entirely his own particular way of asking a question he was afraid to ask aloud. “Is there not.”