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“You will promise me,” Piers said sternly—and just a little hypocritically—“to keep your breeches buttoned until you can afford the luxury of a wife and child. For now, should Emma be certain, I’ll try and find you work as a couple, but it won’t be the sort of career you’re hoping for.

Just set her mind at rest so that she does nothing silly. ”

“Yes, my lord. I do promise! Thank you...”

Piers picked up his glass. “Don’t thank me yet. You’ll make a rotten farmer.”

***

“I F FRANCIS DOES HAVE a child,” Piers said to April when they were finally alone in his bedchamber, “it is not yet born. He and Mrs. Renton’s maid appear to be at the stage of crossing their fingers and praying.”

“Oh dear,” April said. Her blue eyes were almost navy blue in the candlelight and as ancient as the sky. “We can’t...” She broke off.

“I know,” Piers said, sitting down on the chair by his dressing table which was scattered now with her things—hairbrushes and pins and perfume bottles and mysterious little jars which she delighted in because they were pretty and she had never had such fripperies before.

“I made it clear we were the alternative to the girl’s last resort. ”

April peered at him curiously, distracted from the matter in hand. “How do you know?”

“About supposed wise-women and so-called doctors in back streets? I don’t recall.

Hearsay.” He knew she would have seen the result from much closer.

Loosening his cravat, he said, “I tried to scare Francis into some responsibility—despite having avoiding all such at his age—but it is hardly my forte.”

Her lip twitched. “More than you know. Your disfavour is terrifying.”

“Is it?” he asked, startled.

She came and sat on his knee in a flurry of skirts, looping her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek—by way of answer, presumably. “So, we can rule out Francis and his sweetheart.”

“And from what Gussie said over dinner, there have been no servant crises or recent changes of any kind at my aunt’s house.” He put one arm around her waist, while he dropped his cravat on the table.

She began to unfasten his sleeve buttons. “I spoke to Smithy the maid as well. She confirms it.”

He mentioned his idea for looking further into Darcy, and she nodded agreement.

“Maybe I should speak to Annie as well, see what she has heard.”

Annie was her old friend from urchin days, who had risen from street prostitution to a home of her own and an aristocratic protector—who had, sadly, been murdered. Annie still had possession of the house, though, and a new protector who lavished gifts upon her.

“By all means.” A spurt of frustration made him scowl. “But of all the hundreds of unwanted or impossible-to-care-for babies in London, why did this one end up on our doorstep?”

“There doesn’t have to be a connection, Piers. Some things just happen from chance, without reason.”

She was right, of course. And that meant they might never trace the baby’s origins. Which would leave them with a whole new set of problems.

With his sleeve buttons removed, she rested her head on his shoulder, and he held her in silence.

He had the feeling they were both thinking of the baby who slept so close to them, of what life could possibly have in store for him now.

Dangerous thoughts. But so curiously warm and woolly that he wanted to go and say goodnight to “Georgie”.

To stand by his makeshift cradle and watch him sleep.

***

I N THE QUIET OF THE night, Piers lay beside April and heard the distant cry of the hungry baby. It was only for a moment. Presumably, Mrs. Robb gathered him up at once. The image confused him, muddled as it was with April.

Was it not women who were meant to turn broody at times?

Beside him, April breathed with the evenness of sleep. He rather thought she was broody too. Which was hard and would get harder if they were not blessed with children. But that too would pass.

It was a long time since he had lain awake for so long.

But the blackness no longer smothered his mind—or at least it was never more than a passing cloud.

It was the mystery of the baby that kept his mind active.

Something bothered him about what they knew, or didn’t know.

He just couldn’t quite isolate what it was.

Used to dealing with insomnia, he slipped out of bed, found slippers and his dressing gown and felt his way to the door, grabbing a stump of candle as he went. He did not light it until he had closed the bedroom door behind him and found the flint and tinder box in his sitting room.

Then he crept into the passage and downstairs to the kitchen, where, with a familiarity that might have surprised his servants, especially by the tiny glimmer of his candle, he proceeded to make himself a cup of hot chocolate and to hunt out one of Mrs. Gale’s delicious butter biscuits.

Eventually, he sat at the kitchen table, munching his biscuit and sipping his chocolate, and remembering the night he had done so with April, when she was still his servant, and had scared him witless by vanishing alone into her old haunts in an effort to solve a very different sort of crime.

No one but he had ever looked after her.

But then, she looked after him.

He smiled into his hot chocolate, letting the happiness that still astonished him wrap around his heart and mind. He wouldn’t let the current mystery into his thoughts just yet. It was waiting its turn, to be considered afresh.

The quiet sound did not even startle him. At first, he even thought it was part of his memory of that night when he had waited for April to come home.

But she was home, and no one should be trying to unlock the area door at this time of night.

He sprang up, his heart lurching. Again, he seized his single candle, carrying it with him to the narrow passage that led to the area door.

Leaving the light just inside the kitchen, he crept his way to the door, from where a surreptitious, metallic scraping sounded.

Like April picking a lock with one of the tools she had never got around to throwing out.

Whoever was on the other side of the door was less skilled than April. For Piers, curiosity had often overcome wariness—and sense—so he did not think twice about giving the would-be housebreaker a helping hand.

On the off-chance that the burglar ever managed to turn the lock, Piers obligingly slid back the bolts. He could hear the breathed curses of the would-be intruder.

It could be a long wait, Piers decided. Since his eyes were used to the dark—more so than the burglar’s would be in the glow of the streetlamps outside—he found the shape of the key on the hook without difficulty.

He held it poised before the keyhole for a second, while using his other hand to pick up the folded umbrella that was always kept in the corner by the door.

Then he slipped the key into the lock. He shoved hard, pushing out whatever flimsy tools were in there, turned the key and wrenched open the door. Instantly, he jabbed the umbrella point outward, apparently into the neck of the dark figure still kneeling there.

The man—at least it sounded like a man—made a horrible gurgling noise and fell over.

Piers, who had not expected his exploratory jab to be quite so effective, had already adopted a defensive position with the umbrella held horizontally before him.

It wasted a precious moment which the would-be intruder used to leap to his feet and, instead of attacking, he fled ignominiously. His feet pounded up the area steps.

Piers hared after him, umbrella at the ready, dressing gown flapping about him, reminding him that beneath it he was stark naked.

Fortunately, since it was so early in the year, the streets were quiet, but still, the sight of Lord Petteril’s bare legs flying down the street after a fleeing man was not one he cared to leave in people’s minds.

Though it was probably exquisitely funny. Too eccentric by far, my dear...

Fighting laughter now, he tried to tighten the dressing gown belt while continuing to run, and lost even more ground to his quarry, who swerved suddenly into the lane that led to the mews.

Piers charged after him, but by the time he reached the mews itself, he heard the sound of galloping hooves and the jingling of a carriage harness.

Although he ran after it, he knew both carriage and housebreaker were lost to him, disappearing at high speed into the night.

Annoyed by what he knew was his own clumsiness, Piers marched briskly back to the front of his house before a more enterprising burglar took advantage of the open door.

At the foot of the area steps, April stood in the doorway, looking beautiful and angelically concerned in the golden glow of the lamp she held.

“Piers?” she hissed.

“Alone and defeated,” he murmured, descending the steps.

She stepped back, clearly impatient to know what had occurred, but as her lamp moved, so did Piers’s perception and he caught sight of something small and pale on the ground beside the dust bin.

He stooped to pick it up and by the light of April’s lamp recognized a slightly wilted and crushed Christmas rose.

“Tucker,” he said, pleased.