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The door to the breakfast parlour was open and he caught sight of April for once before she saw him. She sat at the table, a plate of food in front of her, but both hands hugging her cup of coffee as though for warmth while she gazed straight ahead.

Over the months of knowing her, he had learned to decipher her more enigmatic expressions.

By nature, she was sunny and open, and she rarely dwelled upon the difficulties of her past, but just occasionally, he glimpsed them there.

If one looked, her eyes were too old for her face.

There was a knowledge, a cynicism there, that no one should have cause to possess.

She had always had room for understanding and compassion, and she showed it in practical ways, while embracing her new life with him.

And she did, despite occasional nerves that amounted to fear of letting him down.

Most worries now, he could read and solve.

But the expression she wore now was one he had never seen before.

It belonged to that tiny part of herself she kept locked away, even from him.

Everyone had one of those, so hers did not trouble him beyond the fact that right now he could not tell if it was sadness. She looked...dreamy.

It lasted a mere instant before she realized his presence and her face lit up instantly. “Piers! What have you discovered?”

“Very little,” he said ruefully, going to the sideboard to help himself to some smoked fish and eggs, while she poured him a cup of coffee. “I couldn’t find anyone who saw a woman with a baby coming from the direction of the park, though I have recruited an assistant in the pie man at the corner.”

“Mr. Newly,” April said.

“Is that his name?” Of course she would know. She had run tame around these streets while employed as his tiger.

“Jack Newly. Friendly man but I wouldn’t like to be on the wrong side of him.”

“I got that impression. But he offered to ask the other sellers in that little patch if they noticed our woman and child.”

“Do you think he bullies the flower girl?”

Piers blinked. “I hope not.”

“So do I,” April said vaguely. “One of the maids at the house directly opposite saw a hackney stopped at our house around the right time.”

“A hackney?” Piers repeated in surprise, setting down his plate and sitting beside her. “Janey never noticed that. And we had no visitors.”

“Which is what makes me think it could be important. What if the person who left our baby is not penniless and desperate?”

“The nightgown is homemade, cut down and sewn from another,” Piers said. “Likewise the bedding and other rags that kept him warm.”

“But they had no holes,” April pointed out. “And they did keep him warm.”

Piers bowed to her greater knowledge there. “It is an interesting line of inquiry,” he allowed.

April swallowed her toast. “Also,” she said eagerly, “maybe no one saw our woman because there wasn’t one.

What if it was a man who left the baby? No one would notice a man carrying a box—they would think he was delivering vegetables or just carrying something else if he was better off.

The baby was barely visible beneath all those coverings. ”

Piers groaned. “You are quite right, of course, and have just doubled our already huge pool of suspects. We are now looking for a very, very small pin in our huge haystack.”

“We need to know who was in that hackney.”

“We do. And fortunately, hackney drivers can be traced. It might, however, take a lot of time since we can’t know which stand he came from. Unless your maid noticed the number.”

“Only that it had one. But one of the other, closer neighbours might have seen.”

“The Rentons are in residence, aren’t they?”

“I could call on their servants,” April said.

Piers regarded her carefully. “Lady Petteril does not call on servants, sadly.”

“Well, I doubt Mrs. Renton will be at home to me,” April said wryly. “And the maid across the road did not recognize me as Lady Petteril.”

“Only because you were huddled in a wet cloak with a hood hiding most of your face. I suggest we call on the Rentons. And on that fellow on the other side... Darcy? Strikes me he’s likely to have come home from his revels in a hackney at that time of the morning.”

“Then why was he dropped off at our door rather than his own?” April argued. “It’s not as if his parents are there to scold him for staying out all night.”

“No, but he might have been rolling home somewhat disguised and seen the hackney passenger,” Piers said. “If he was in any state to recall it, of course. At any rate, I think we should make calls on the residents and question the servants casually on the way out.”

“We can try,” April said, doubtfully. “This afternoon? That would give us time to call on Aunt Prudence this morning.”

Aunt Prudence was his eccentric great aunt, recently home from extensive travels, and recovering from a bout of illness that she regarded as a personal insult. She liked April.

Piers paused, with his hand halfway to his coffee cup. “She has an odd collection of servants.”

April only looked baffled for an instant.

“Who think we are kind,” she said. “Kind enough to look after an inconvenient baby? But by that reasoning, lots of people might have done the same thing. Your Aunt Hortensia’s servants.

Sir Peter Haggard’s. Even Dr. Laine’s. Come to that, any of your acquaintances could have tried to palm their offspring off on you. ”

“I’m not a private orphanage,” Piers said mildly. “And none of my friends would do such a thing.”

“Your acquaintances might. Some of them might even think it funny, or a punishment, since you married me.”

“No,” Piers said firmly, though her words made him uneasy. “If someone left the baby in the hope of our charity, it must be closer to home.”

“Like our own servants,” April said with a sigh. “Well, none of our maids have given birth in the last couple of months. Mrs. Park would have noticed!”

“She wouldn’t necessarily know anything about the relationships of the male members of staff. Neither, for that matter, would Park.”

April speared the last of the fish on her plate. “Well, we are not short of things to investigate. I suppose we should start with the Parks and see what they know.”

Piers glanced at his fob watch. “It’s almost time for reading class.”

Looking back, he had begun to teach reading and writing to those of his household who wished to learn, as much for his own sake as theirs.

With his vocation to teach at university shattered by his inheritance of the title, he had hung on to this much more basic teaching as an anchor to his sense of worth.

And because he believed everyone should have the basic chance.

A certain Ape had been his best pupil.

Now, as he sauntered off to the library, he thought about young Francis, the under-footman who had been among his first students.

Of them all, Francis was the one with the most obvious eye for the female of the species.

He was also ambitious—and who could blame him for that?

—so in domestic service, he would not wish to marry.

Still, when Francis arrived first in the library with an eager smile and a respectful bow, Piers could not quite imagine him just expecting his master to look after his illegitimate child.

Francis must know the orphanage was an option, or the child being sent far away to be brought up on some distant farm.

How much did any of them trust their lord and master?

How much cause had he given any of them to do so?

Come to that, what would—or should—he do with a servant who played him such a trick?

He would think that one through if and when it became an issue.

He focused, as he always could, on the day’s lessons and the progress of his pupils. Though he found himself watching for any signs that any of them were paying him too much attention. Francis and Bernie the stable boy did nudge each other and cast him a quick glance, but that could mean anything.

At the end of the lesson, he made a decision, and instead of sending them immediately back to their duties, he said, “One moment more of your time. I know you are all well aware of the baby left on the area steps yesterday. Did any of you see anything that might help us find out how he got there? Do you know, or suspect, anything about his origins?”

They would not speak in public if they did, but still he hoped to learn from their expressions and reactions. He didn’t, beyond the under-the-table kicks between Francis and Bernie who presumably persisted in thinking Piers the father and the devil of a fellow because of it.

Distaste curled in his stomach as they filed out and went back to their normal duties. Mechanically, Piers walked around the large table, collecting books which he shut away in their usual place.

The door opened and he glanced up to find Park hovering.

“My lord. Might I have a word?”

“Of course.”

Park closed the door, looking ominous enough to cause Piers a pang of unease.

The man walked a few paces further into the room and took a deep breath. “It’s about the baby.”

“Then, cough,” Piers said cheerfully, before he recognized it as one of his wife’s less respectable phrases for confess or just tell me .

Park did not appear to notice. “There is a possibility that Mrs. Park and I feel you should be made aware of.”

“Well?”

“It’s unlikely,” Park assured him, “but the child might be our grandson.”

Piers’s eyebrows flew up of their own volition. “I didn’t know you had children.”

Park shifted his weight to the other foot. “We didn’t tell you, my lord. Both because he is a grown man and because we were ashamed.”

“Ashamed?” Piers repeated, startled.

Park stared straight ahead. “Of Simon. Our son. You see, he went to prison.”

“I’m sorry,” Piers said slowly.

“He admitted to assaulting a man and was sent to prison for it. Everyone knew he was our boy and we were dismissed from our last position. Although at least with a character. That’s why we came south to London.”

Piers had never questioned their reasons. They had always been amiable, efficient, and not without humour. And they ran his household without intruding. Most of all, they had been kind to April.

“If you require our resignations, we will—”

“I don’t,” Piers interrupted. “But I don’t see the connection to the baby.”

“The reason for the assault,” Park said, “which Simon never gave in court, though it might have earned him a lighter sentence, was a Woman.”

The last word was spoken as though with a capital letter.

“She was married to the victim of the assault. Simon, I regret to say, had been...involved with her.” Park met his gaze steadily. “To the extent that this child could be his.”

Piers frowned. “So you think this baby was left by its mother? Or by her husband?”

“More likely by my son. He wouldn’t leave his child with a man who beat his wife. But he couldn’t begin to look after it either.”

“But your son is in prison.”

“Only for six months. He knows we’re here. His mother wrote to him though I wouldn’t. He is our only child.”

There was pain and crushing disappointment in Park that Piers had never guessed at. The apple of his eye, his only son, led astray into tragedy by an adulterous woman... Only nothing was ever as simple as that.

“Where is Simon now?” Piers asked evenly.

“We don’t know. No one of our acquaintance has seen him since he was released from prison.”

“Would he not come and see you if he was in London?”

“His mother, perhaps. But he knows we are here together.”

Piers sank onto the nearest chair. “Yet you think he might have stolen this child from its mother and put it on your doorstep, knowing you would do right by his offspring? And then vanished again?”

“It is an unlikely possibility,” Park allowed. “But I cannot rule it out.”

“Any more than you could rule me out as the father,” Piers said thoughtfully.

A rare hint of colour bloomed along Park’s cheekbones. “I regret that it crossed my mind. I don’t believe such a thing.”

Piers gestured to the chair next to his. “Tell me about Simon. What does he do? Where would he go in London? Does he have any money of his own?”