juvenile dignity.” He winked at Maggie, which always made the girl turn up bashful. “Esther, how do you fare?”
This had become a family ritual, this bringing the older siblings to see the new arrival, and what a darling new arrival she was. Louisa had Victor’s swooping brows, which on a newborn made for a startlingly dramatic little countenance.
“I am well, Percival. Childbearing is not easy, but it does improve with practice. Would you like to hold your daughter?”
They exchanged babies with the ease and precision of a parental drill team, and Esther beheld the Duke of Moreland give his heart, yet again, to a lady too small to understand the magnitude of such a gift.
Gayle also watched his father gently cradle the newborn in his arms. “If you have another baby, Mama, will you name her Cyclops?”
“Cyclops is stupid name,” Bart started in. Percival silenced his firstborn son and heir—Bart was arguably Pembroke now, though no parent in their right mind would tell the boy such a thing yet—with a glower, while Esther waited for Victor to pronounce sentence on the pudding again.
“Cyclops is not a stupid name,” Gayle replied with the gravity peculiar to him. “Sophie was named for Grandpa, and he died. Louisa is named for Uncle Peter, and he died right after Grandpa. Nobody has seen Cyclops for days, so she must be dead too, and that means we can name a baby after her.”
Percival left off nuzzling the baby long enough to smile at Gayle’s reasoning. “I think if you climbed up to the straw mow on a sunny morning and were quiet and still long enough, you’d find that Cyclops has finished her own lying-in and has better things to do than let little boys chase after her and threaten to take her prisoner.”
“Girls don’t like to be taken prisoner,” Maggie said. “May I hold the baby?”
The idea made Esther nervous, though Maggie would never intentionally harm her siblings.
“Come here,” Percival said, patting the bed. Maggie crawled across the mattress to sit beside her father. He placed the baby in Maggie’s lap and kept an arm around his oldest daughter. “I think she looks a little like you, Maggie, around the mouth. She’s very pretty.”
Characteristically, Maggie blushed but did not acknowledge the compliment. “Sophie was bald. Louisa has hair.”
Little Valentine squirmed closer and traced small fingers over the baby’s cheek. “She’s soft.”
“She’ll mess her nappies,” Gayle warned.
Bart apparently knew not to argue with that eternal verity. “Can we go now?” He looked conflicted, as if he might want to hold his baby sister and didn’t know how to ask without losing face before his brothers.
In Esther’s arms, little Sophie squirmed but did not make a sound. “Take Thomas with you if you’re going to the mews, and mind you big boys look after Victor.”
Four boys who’d needed help to get up onto the bed went sliding off it, thundering toward the door, while Valentine remained fascinated with the infant.
He stroked his sister’s dark mop of hair. “Soft baby.”
“She is soft,” Percival said. “And you, my lad, are smarter than your brothers for choosing the company of the genteel ladies over some nasty, old, shiftless cat.”
“She’s heavy,” Maggie said, passing the baby back to Percival. “I’m going to watch the boys.”
“Take Valentine.” Percival used one hand to balance the baby and the other to help Maggie and Valentine off the bed. “He’ll make enough noise that Madam Cyclops will be able to hide before her peace is utterly destroyed.”
“Come along, Valentine. We’ve a kitty to rescue.” Maggie left at a pace that accommodated Valentine churning along beside her, leaving Esther with her husband and her two baby daughters.
Percival shifted to recline against the pillows with his wife, one arm around Esther and Sophie, the other around Louisa. He leaned near enough to catch a whiff of roses, and to whisper, “Do you hear that, Your Grace?”
“I hear silence, Your Grace.”
They addressed each other by their titles as a sort of marital joke, one that helped take the newness and loss off a station they’d gained only months before.
“That is the sound of children growing up enough to leave us in privacy from time to time. Good thing we’ve more babies to fill our nursery.”
He kissed Esther’s temple, and Sophie sighed mightily, as if her father’s proximity addressed all that might ail her—would that it might always be so.
“I wish Peter and His Grace had lived to see this baby, Percival. They doted so on Sophie.”
Percival went quiet for a moment, mesmerized by the sight of yet another healthy, beautiful child to bless their marriage. A man might love his wife to distraction—and Percival did—but love was too paltry a word for what he felt for the mother of his children.
“In some ways, their last year was their best, Esther. That tincture gave Peter quite a reprieve, and His Grace perked up considerably when you presented him with a granddaughter.”
His nursemaid had perked him up, though the young lady had been Esther’s companion in the late duke’s mind, and nobody had disabused him of this idea.
“Percival, it’s Thursday.”
“It’s Louisa Windham’s birthday,” he replied, kissing Esther’s cheek. “Two months from now, if I’m a good boy, I may have some pudding.”
Esther turned to kiss his cheek. She was wearing one of his dressing gowns—the daft woman claimed the scent of him comforted her through her travail, and because she came through each lying-in with fine style, Percival didn’t argue with her wisdom.
“Today is Thursday, Percival, and your committees meet on Thursday. You never miss those meetings. The government will fall if you neglect your politics. George himself has said nobody else has your talent for brokering compromises.”
That the king admired such talent mattered little compared to Esther’s regard for it. Percival traded babies with his wife, then gently rubbed noses with Sophie, which made the infant giggle. “Am I or am not the Duke of Moreland, madam?”
Esther loved it when he used those imperious tones on her, and he loved it equally when she turned up duchess on him.
“You are Moreland, and it shall ever be my privilege to be your duchess.” His duchess had labored from two hours past midnight until dawn, and could not hide the yawn that stole up on her. Even a duchess was entitled to yawn occasionally.
“And my blessing to call you so. But, Esther, as that fellow standing approximately sixty-seventh in line for the throne, I’d like somebody to explain to me why it is, when all I need are three more votes to carry the bill on children in the foundries, I am incapable of seeing such a thing done.”
He should not be bringing his frustrations up to her now, but in the past few years, Esther had become his greatest confidante, and for the first time in months, he did not want to attend his meetings.
“When do you expect the vote to come up?”
Right to the heart of the matter, that was his duchess. “Too soon. I’m sure if I could turn Anselm to my way of thinking, then Dodd would come along, and then several others would see the light, but they won’t break ranks.”
Esther stroked her fingers over Louisa’s dark mop of hair. “Lady Dodd was recently delivered of a son.”
Percival had learned by now that Esther did not speak in non sequiturs, not even when tired. She was the soul of logic; it remained only for Percival to divine her reasoning.
“I know. Dodd was drunk for most of a week, boasting of having secured the succession within a year of marriage. The man hasn’t a spare, outside of a third cousin, and he thinks his succession ensured.”
Children died in foundries, died and were burned horribly. How could Dodd not know his own offspring were just as fragile?
“How old is Anselm’s heir?” Esther asked.
Percival raised and lowered his tiny daughter and cradled her against his chest, because Esther’s question was pertinent. He wasn’t sure how, but it was very pertinent.
“He has a daughter, and a boy in leading strings. His lady believes in spacing her confinements, which
