The Duke and His Duchess - By Grace Burrowes Page 0,26

accompanied by a little girl with red hair and a stubborn chin. He’d seen the child before somewhere, but couldn’t place her for the unease coursing through him.

The girl was not attired in a short dress as befit one of her tender years, nor was her striking hair tamed into a pair of tidy braids. She was dressed in a miniature chemise gown of gold with a burgundy underskirt, her pale little shoulders puckered with gooseflesh. Her hair was pinned up on her head in a style appropriate to a woman twenty years her senior, and—Percival’s stomach lurched to behold this—the child’s lips were rouged.

“Magdalene, make your courtesy to the gentleman.”

A perfectly—ghoulishly—graceful curtsy followed, suggesting the girl had been thoroughly grilled on even so minute a display. “Good day, kind sir.”

Percival manufactured a smile, because the child’s voice had quavered. “Good day, miss.”

And Magdalene—a singularly unkind name for a courtesan’s daughter.

Cecily grabbed the girl by the chin and pointed toward the sideboard, across the room from the fire’s heat. “Be quiet. You”—she waved a hand at the nursemaid—“out.”

Was everyone in this household terrified of the woman?

“You have three minutes, Mrs. O’Donnell, and then I shall do all in my power to ensure our paths never cross again.” He meant those words, though his gaze was drawn back to the child, who stood stock-still, staring at the carpet in all her terrible finery.

“Three minutes, Percival? I say our paths have become joined for the rest of our days on earth. Whatever else I know to be true about you—and I have kept up, you may be assured of that—I doubt your vanity would allow your only daughter to be put to work in her mother’s trade, would it?”

While the child remained motionless and mute, Percival felt his world turn on its axis. A hollow ache opened up in the pit of his stomach, a sense of regret so intense as to crowd any other emotion from his body.

The child could be his.

His dear, tired, dutiful wife would not kill him—that would be too easy a penance for a young man’s folly—but she’d likely remove herself from his household, and not a soul would blame her. The rules of marital combat in Polite Society allowed a wife to discreetly distance herself from an errant husband once heirs were in place.

Percival picked up the child, who cuddled onto his shoulder with a sigh. She weighed too little for her height, which looked to exceed Bart’s only slightly. Percival brought his burden—his daughter?—to the door and found the nursemaid, as expected, shivering in the corridor. “You will take miss back to the nursery, keep her there for the duration of my interview with your mistress, remove the damned paint from her face, and dress her appropriately to her station—and warmly. Is that understood?”

The maid cast a glance past Percival to Cecily, who nodded.

“Understood, my lord.”

Without another word, the child was taken from the room. Percival remained in the doorway, watching as she was towed by the hand toward the stairs. On the bottom step, the girl turned and met Percival’s gaze, surprising the daylights out of him by sending him a slow, careful wink.

Despite the tumult and despair rocketing through him, he winked back, recalling in that moment where he’d seen her before: in the park, peering out of a coach window. She’d struck him as a lonely little princess being dragged about on some adult’s errand, an accurate if understated assessment.

With a pointed glance at the clock, Percival turned and faced the woman who had in the last moments become the enemy of all he held dear. “What do you want?”

Her smile was the embodiment of evil, but she at least seemed to know enough not to approach him. “What I want is simple, my lord. I want you. Unless you can live with the fate of any girl born to Magdalene’s circumstances and live with the knowledge that all and sundry will become aware of her patrimony, then I suggest you accede to my wishes.”

He didn’t believe for one minute she meant he’d have to accommodate her in bed. She’d have to be daft to think him capable of such a thing. She wanted his escort, his protection, his wealth. Cecily O’Donnell was nothing if not shrewd.

She would understand shrewdness in another.

“Hear me, woman: You will ensure no harm comes to that child, lest the repercussions redound to your eternal detriment. You will produce baptismal records, a midwife’s sworn statement, and an