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V iscount Petteril, emerging onto the front steps of his London house on a wintry January morning, became aware of a hubbub below.

The disturbance was unusual enough to draw his erratic attention downwards, to where another set of steps led to the tradesmen’s entrance.

What appeared to be his entire staff, apart from Joshua the first footman who had opened the front door for him, were huddled around something on the lowest step.

At least, he assumed they were his staff. When confronted by a sea of faces, he had great difficulty distinguishing between them. In this case, he recognized the Petteril livery that clothed a young footman and the general shape of his housekeeper, Mrs. Park. And her husband, Park the butler.

There was an air of shock and doom about them. They spoke in the urgent, hushed voices of inveterate gossips, so engrossed that they had not noticed his egress from the house or his approach toward them. They only looked up, all at once, when he set foot on the area steps.

“You look as if you’re breaking the combination laws,” he remarked flippantly. “What, Park, is to do?”

“You tell me, my lord,” Park said with unusual grimness. His underlings fell back, making way for the master of the house.

Intrigued, Piers descended the steps to discover the source of the disturbance.

It appeared to be a shallow wooden box containing rags, though what there was in that to cause such consternation was beyond him.

He groped for the correct quizzing glass hanging on its black ribbon around his neck and peered more closely.

A tiny patch of creamy pink was visible among the rags, and...it moved.

Startled, Piers dropped his quizzing glass. “What is it?”

“It’s a baby, my lord,” Mrs. Park said, gazing at him with what looked like disappointment.

Being used to such looks from others, he thought nothing of it. The box of baby concerned him more. “What is it doing here?”

“Sleeping, my lord,” said Janey the scullery maid, whom he was teaching to read with some success.

Piers scratched his chin. “Whose is it?”

They all looked at him again.

“We don’t know, my lord,” Mrs. Park said. “Janey found the mite there when she was putting out the rubbish.”

Piers picked up his quizzing glass again, with more than a little unease. “It did move, didn’t it?”

“Oh, it’s alive, sir,” Mrs. Park said, much to his relief.

“Then shouldn’t you take it indoors to keep it that way?

” he asked, in a genuine quest for information.

The little creature certainly seemed to be well wrapped up, but he had an idea that infant humans were even more susceptible to cold, damp weather than adult ones.

“And you had better inform her ladyship.”

Once again, they all looked at him.

“Are you sure you want to do that, my lord?” Park asked cautiously.

Piers blinked. “Of course.”

“What if its mother comes by to fetch it?” Francis the footman asked, with the air of one being helpful.

“It’s not a bird,” Piers said.

“Oh, my lady,” came Mrs. Gale the cook’s voice from inside the kitchen, flustered to the point of panic. “You’ll catch cold out there—I’ve got the menus over here...”

“What’s going on?” asked April, his viscountess, from the open doorway.

Bizarrely, there was a general movement to block her view, but she dealt with that in her usual way, not by the haughty lift of an eyebrow as most ladies might meet such a situation, but by scowling. The sea of servants parted for her, too, though with more reluctance than it had for Piers.

April walked forward and bent over the box. She blinked. “What is it?”

“It’s a baby,” Piers said.

She looked up at him. “What on earth is it doing here?”

“Sleeping, so I’m told. Though I can’t help feeling it should do so inside the house.”

“Of course it should,” April said, picking up the box and marching inside.

Piers followed her, aware of the servants all exchanging meaningful glances behind him.

April set the box on the kitchen table.

“Mrs. Park!” she exclaimed in sudden fright. “It’s moving!”

“Isn’t it meant to?” Piers asked.

“Of course it is,” Mrs. Park exclaimed, bustling through to stand beside April.

The baby had untangled its head from the covering rags and was breathing quickly and audibly. Its small, pinched face was dominated by a pair of large, intense blue eyes, which seemed to be searching for something. Its lips formed an “O” and the tiniest tongue thrust out between them.

“He’s hungry,” Mrs. Park said.

April wrinkled her nose. “He smells.”

“I’ll fetch some milk,” Janey said, heading for the larder.

But April was frowning. “Wait, you can’t give it cow’s milk. It’s too small.”

“How do you know that?” Piers asked in surprise.

“Oh, I have friends with babies,” April said with such studied carelessness that Piers understood. Having babies was an occupational hazard among the prostitutes who had once been casually kind to her. “I don’t know any more than that, though. Its mother should feed it. Where is its mother?”

“That’s what we’d all like to know,” Mrs. Park said, glaring at Piers, who blinked in surprise.

“Wet nurse,” he said, dredging up his own distant knowledge from somewhere. “Does anyone know a wet nurse?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gale said doubtfully, “but you might not like her.”

“Better fetch her anyway,” Piers said. “Just in case. Hopefully, the mother will return for it before then. I’m off for my ride.”

***

W HEN PIERS HAD GONE , and Mrs. Park had sent everyone else about their neglected duties, April trailed after her into the housekeeper’s sitting room.

Mrs. Park removed the baby from its box and set it on a clean apron on the rug before the fire. As if she knew what she was doing, she unwrapped it from its shawl and its tiny nightgown to reveal the nastily stained napkin pinned around its bottom.

“I’ve lived too long in luxury,” April said, backing off with flaring nostrils.

“Rich babies and poor babies all make the same mess,” Mrs. Park said. “Would you send Janey in with a bowl of water and some clean rags?”

For speed, April fetched the water herself, then went upstairs to find a couple of clean shawls. When she returned to the housekeeper’s sitting room, the baby was naked and kicking its little legs in a happy kind of way.

“It’s a boy,” April remarked, unsure of the cause of the pang wriggling through her.

“It is.” Mrs. Park whisked a cloth under the child’s bottom, pulled it up between his legs and knotted it at either side.

Just as if she knew what she was doing. As far as April knew, the Parks had never been blessed with children, yet the housekeeper picked him up and sat holding the baby as if she was his mother.

“What’s the matter with his arm?” April said, catching sight of a purplish mark on the otherwise perfect skin of the baby’s forearm. “Is it a birth mark?”

“I wondered that, but I think it’s a bruise. He must have bumped it on the edge of the box.” She regarded April. “He is a little thin, but he has clearly been cared for.”

“Until he was abandoned on our doorstep,” April said. “You don’t just forget your baby like a shopping basket, do you?”

“No,” Mrs. Park said. “You don’t.”

“Unless she was drunk and won’t remember until she sobers up.”

“Oh hush, my lady, that’s not the sort of idea you should be coming up with.”

“It happens,” April insisted.

“Not around here it doesn’t.”

That was a fair point. April regarded the baby with a mixture of doubt and awe. Such a tiny, helpless little human...

“My lady, I’d hoped to keep this from you,” Mrs. Park said bluntly.

“But since you’ve seen the little mite, you had better consider the possibilities.

If the mother was too poor to care for the child, or even if she just wanted better for him, where else would she leave it but at his rich father’s door? ”

Uncomprehending, April waited for more.

Mrs. Park snatched a breath. “His aristocratic father’s door.”

April blinked, then let out a peel of genuine laughter. “You think it’s his lordship’s child? Don’t be silly, Mrs. P.” The pity in Mrs. Park’s face disconcerted her.

“The mite was clearly conceived before you were married,” the housekeeper said consolingly.

April frowned at her. But to her own annoyance, she found herself counting. “How old is the baby?”

“A month? Two at a pinch.”

“Well, his lordship was in Oxford until...” She trailed off.

“Until March,” Mrs. Park said flatly.

April stared at her. “You’re wrong. He would never abandon his child, or its mother, with nothing.

Besides...” She closed her lips, for in fact, she knew little of her husband’s life before March last year.

And it was true he had not been at his best when they had first met. “He wouldn’t,” she finished.

“He might, for your sake.”

And damn everything, that might just be true too. On the other hand, she couldn’t believe he knew anything about the child, and quite clearly he still didn’t associate it with himself.

“Either way, it doesn’t hurt me,” April said grandly. “And the viscount will always do the right thing.”

***

T HE VISCOUNT, IN FACT , was already galloping across Hyde Park before the reason for all those accusing and disappointed stares of his household struck him.

They think the brat is mine.

No wonder they had tried to keep April away from it.

He almost laughed, only it stuck in his throat.

He did not want his wife imagining such a thing.

For himself, he had been so used to the poor opinion of his family that it came as a surprise to realize he had grown used to the approval of his staff as well as his wife.

Slowing his horse, he urged it off the path, turning it back the way he had come, and galloped back toward the gate.

Hoping devoutly that the baby would have been claimed by its mother before he reached home, he walked his horse along Park Lane, then paused at the corner of his own street to buy flowers from the girl who usually had her barrow there.