When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,91
taken on new and besotted dimensions.
“I’ll take that baby,” Duncan said, plucking the child from her father’s arms. “You’ll get crumbs in her hair.”
The infant waved a fist and smacked Duncan on the shoulder.
“She’s pleased to see me.” Duncan was more than pleased to see that the baby was in the pink of health.
Quinn regarded Duncan with the blue-eyed acumen that had made many a bank customer squirm. “You’ve no pin in your cravat.”
“Quinn,” Jane said. “Duncan hasn’t been in the room five minutes and you’re interrogating him.”
“He always wears a cravat pin.”
Stephen, who’d been steadily ingesting tea cakes, paused. “So lovely, to be discussed in the third person by one’s nearest and dearest, isn’t it? These cakes are wonderful.”
“Don’t be a hog, Uncle Stephen.” Bitty bounded from Duncan’s side. “You should save one for Hester. Nurse had to take her upstairs to finish her nap because Hester is little.”
Hester was Bitty’s younger sister, and as quiet as Bitty was exuberant. Hester had picked her first lock at the age of two and a half. Jane worried that the child had inherited her uncle Stephen’s mind for mechanical devices.
Duncan looked forward to teaching Hester to play chess.
Though if he and Matilda emigrated to some far-flung clime, he’d likely never see Hester, Bitty, or Artemis again. That thought disagreed with him almost as much as not knowing where Matilda was.
“I will leave defense of the tea tray to mine host,” Jane said. “Bitty, you may take three tea cakes, one for you, one for Hester, and one for Nurse, then you will join me in locating the nursery.”
Bitty snatched up three cakes. “I don’t have to take a nap, do I?”
“No,” Duncan said, nuzzling the baby’s head before passing the infant to Jane, “but you will have to choose your bed, re-organize the toys, and decide where to stable your dragon.”
“Come along, Mama. George is a very particular dragon. He must have the best cave in the house and the best storybooks to read.”
Peace settled over the room when Jane and the children departed.
“So where is Matilda?” Stephen asked, his mouth full of tea cake.
“She should be joining us shortly.” Duncan hadn’t thought to look for her in the nursery. Perhaps she’d crossed paths with little Hester and her nurse, and been charmed into joining them abovestairs.
“His Grumpy Grace scared her away,” Stephen said, gesturing at Quinn with his teacup. “She heard the dread Duke of Walden had come to call with his Vandal horde. She’ll hide in a closet until you’re gone.”
“Don’t joke about a missing child,” Quinn said. “Bitty would still be locked in that cupboard unless we’d kept searching for her.”
Stephen and Quinn bickered when other brothers merely shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.
“Duncan kept searching for her,” Stephen said, hobbling to the sofa. “You were still muttering about ‘the child must learn’ and ‘she can’t be frightening her mother like this.’”
Bitty had gone missing one fine morning last spring, and her parents had decided she was making a bid for attention in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. Duncan had not agreed with that hypothesis, and he’d begun a systematic search of the ducal residence. His diligence had been rewarded an hour later when a tearful Bitty had been found in a cupboard in the linen closet, where the housekeeper had inadvertently locked her.
His search had not been the result of a logical conclusion, but rather, of a nagging question: What if Quinn and Jane were wrong about their own daughter?
“So tell me about the woman who has moved Stephen to raptures,” Quinn said, taking the reading chair near the sofa. “And don’t pretty it up. Jane is certain you have trouble afoot here at Brightwell.”
Stephen had doubtless dropped epistolary hints for Their Graces’ delectation. Duncan decided to start with facts.
“Matilda is the daughter of a well-to-do art dealer named Thomas Wakefield. He might well be a traitor to the Crown, and Matilda has been inadvertently caught up in his schemes.”
Quinn turned on Duncan an expression the duke usually reserved for his younger brother. “When you set out to create a muddle, you create a spectacular muddle.”
“I’ve also proposed to the woman,” Duncan said, “or asked leave to pay her my addresses.”
“Beyond spectacular,” Quinn said, sounding impressed. “For the first time, I must admonish Stephen not to follow your example. What do you need from me? Shall I play the duke, threaten a few Cabinet ministers, have a word with King George?”