what she would have done to get her son back. She would do anything—anything—to keep him. Nicholas had stolen five weeks of her son’s life from her. Five weeks of watching him grow, of holding him— She gasped for a breath. Surely nothing was crueler than Nicholas’s wielding the law to steal her child. Nothing except, mayhap, the false hope he’d given her prior, for after setting the three of them up as a family, and doting on her and Oliver for two glorious months, he’d had a change of heart. He didn’t need her to get to his son. He’d made short work of her, then.
She’d barely survived the heartbreak of losing her baby. The unbearably long separation, the weeks of Nicholas keeping her child from her, the days and nights knowing another woman was caring for her son, that she was never to see her son again, had felt like death. She would have done anything to have him back. Even after a full day of having him with her now, she hadn’t grasped the reality of Oliver’s presence. He was hers again. Here. At last.
Gazing into his beautiful little face, she touched his soft cheek and sighed the first real sigh of contentment she’d felt since…it didn’t bear thinking about. The past was the past. Nicholas was gone. Oliver was her joy, her life.
He squirmed in her arms, then eyes as pale as her own opened. He cooed and she smiled. “Well, look at you, there,” she murmured, nuzzling his tiny nose with her own.
Her vision was blurred by welling tears. Never again. She would never allow Nicholas to take him again. Even if she must live in fear of discovery for the rest of her life, she would do whatever it took to keep her child. Steal, lie, cheat. Nothing was worth the heartbreak of being separated from Oliver.
A scratch at the nursery door preceded the entry of her upstairs maid. Nelly, a girl with curly red hair peeking from beneath a mobcap, entered. “You have a caller, ma’am.”
Elizabeth didn’t need to be told it was a he. There was no other kind of callers. “Who is he?”
“Not one of the usual, ma’am. I didn’t recognize him.”
Elizabeth frowned. “Rand ought to have given you his name. You must ask next time.”
Nelly bobbed. “Yes, ma’am, and I would have done, but the man refused to give it. I know because I took a peek over the banister when I heard all the going-on. He’s sinful good-looking. But he didn’t come in a crested carriage or nothing that might give a clue as to who he is. I did try, ma’am.” Her pretty brown eyes shone with fear of reprisal and the thrill of a handsome stranger.
Elizabeth had taken her fill of handsome strangers. The bundle in her arms was the only male in her sphere now, and if the choice was between setting her son down so that she might nip at the lure of a mysterious caller and staying right where she was, there was no question. “Inform him that I am unavailable.”
“Do I ask him to return at a more opportune time?” A hopeful note in Nelly’s voice betrayed her new allegiance to the mystery man.
Elizabeth tucked Oliver’s swaddling more tightly around him. “I’m permanently unavailable to any man who expects me to dangle after him.” She ignored her maid’s titter of amusement. The girl was very young, not at all like the jaded maids Elizabeth was accustomed to. She was one of the girls Elizabeth had hired to attend her in Devon, where Oliver had been born. A more innocent staff had been required there, for Elizabeth had foolishly thought to escape her reputation and raise Oliver as the son of a brave captain who’d had the misfortune to perish at sea. Then Finn had arrived and importuned her to come back to London. She hadn’t had the heart to let Nelly go. Nelly had no family and no prospects. Elizabeth knew all too well the fate that awaited a girl who had no family, no prospects and no employer.
Minutes after her maid departed, the unmistakable cadence of masculine footfalls vibrated outside of the nursery door. Elizabeth frowned. There wasn’t time to set Oliver down before a solid rap against the frame caused her to startle. Even if there had been time, she wouldn’t have let her son out of her arms, not for a man. Especially not a rude one. How dare he