Page 90 of The Captive Duke
Six steps in the direction of the nursery suite, Gilly stopped again abruptly.
“What?”
She put a finger to her lips, and Christian fell silent. A sound drifted down the corridor, one he hadn’t heard for some time: a child singing.
“That’s Lucy,” Gilly said, steps quickening. “Oh, thank God, that’s our Lucy, and if she can sing, she can…”
Our Lucy.And she was his Gilly, whether she knew it or not. Christian gently hauled her back by the wrist. “The child will fall silent as soon as she senses we’re here.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Gilly said, wrenching from his grasp.
“She talks in her sleep.”
They conducted this exchange in fierce whispers. “How do you know that?”
Gilly had her routine for the end of the day, and he had his. A patrol of the garrison, so to speak. Before she could argue with him further, Christian addressed her again, loudly enough to be heard in all directions.
“You may not embroider my handkerchiefs with flowers, Countess. Anything other than the family crest or my initials would be unfitting to the dignity of a duke.”
The singing stopped, and Gilly’s eyes, so full of hope, filled with tears.
“None of that,” he said softly. “She can’t know we were eavesdropping. Argue with me, Gilly. You excel at it.”
She blinked back the tears and stood inches taller. “I will decorate where I please, as I please, Your Grace. Even my own papa allowed embroidery on his handkerchiefs, and he was every bit as high in the instep as you.”
“I’m not high in the instep, I’m a duke. You will note the difference.”
“And being a duke is somehow the better of the two?”
He winked at her and let the question go unanswered as they reached the nursery door.
“Good day, Harris,” he said. “Is Lucy free to entertain callers?”
“She finished her sums early today, Your Grace. You should have passed her. She’s down the corridor, in the small playroom with the dogs.”
“Countess, you’ll join me?” He winged his arm at Gilly, and she took it. When they were alone, she hissed and arched her back, and spat and carried on verbally, but she never under any circumstances denied him the opportunity to touch her, and for that, among many other traits, he treasured her.
“Good day, Lucy.” Christian bowed to his daughter to make her smile and saw the countess suck in a breath. Gilly wanted to force the issue of the singing, and he didn’t blame her. “Shall you stroll with us in the garden, Lucy, and bring those two reprobates whom you have ensorcelled here in your tower?”
Her brows twitched down.
Gillian took Lucy’s hand. “He means you charm those dogs into doing your bidding when they ignore everybody else.”
Lucy’s smile grew broader.
“I know,” Christian said, taking her other hand. “Youplay with them, and thus are endeared to them. I donate my favorite pair of slippers to their evil ends, and yet they ignore me unless I threaten them with death by rolled-up newspaper.”
He went on in that fashion, teasing, grousing, being more papa than duke, because the gruffness was needed to keep Gilly from bawling, and the teasing was needed to charm his daughter.
And both—Gilly and Lucy—were somehow becoming necessary to him if his life was to have any meaning at all. That he would have to leave them for a time to dispatch Girard did not sit well, particularly not with Gilly having so nearly come to harm.
And yet, Girard—canny bastard—was likely the author of that harm, intending that it force a reckoning between them.
He and Gilly played with Lucy and the dogs, visited the stables, and returned the child to her nursery. The afternoon stretched before them long and lazy, and Christian spun mental strategies about how he’d put the hours to their best use with his countess.
“I am a trifle fatigued,” she said, and Christian’s mood improved to hear it.
“You haven’t been sleeping well of late. I delight in comforting you in your restless slumbers.”
