“I suppose you might as well keep the child you’re carrying,” the lady said graciously to the duke.
Hugo’s face darkened, but before he could respond, Lady Knowe bawled, “Little boys with me in the last sleigh!” as loudlyas any constable calling the midnight hour. Leonidas and Alexander ran toward the sleigh.
Ophelia had never allowed herself to be separated from Viola before. But all she could see was her daughter’s snub nose anda white ruff of rabbit fur, like a spent dandelion, cozily sheltered in the duke’s greatcoat.
“I’ll take good care of her,” Hugo said, his eyes steady on hers.
He was broad-shouldered and sturdy. His strong embrace when her carriage turned over flitted through her mind. If anythinghappened, she’d rather Viola was in his arms than hers.
Plus, she certainly didn’t wish to join Lady Woolhastings in the first carriage. She’d had all the condescension she couldstomach for one day.
She nodded jerkily, then turned and took a groom’s hand to clamber into the sleigh.
The duke followed her and looked up. “Are you certain that you don’t wish to join me in the first carriage? I promise I willkeep your daughter safe.”
“No, she doesn’t,” Lady Knowe said, pushing her brother to the side so she could climb into the sleigh after Ophelia. “Yourun off and sit with your fiancée, Hugo. We’ll be fine here.”
She sat down beside Ophelia with a grunt. “My stays are entirely too rigid for climbing. Betsy, you’re supposed to travelin the first sleigh with your father. Lady Woolhastings explicitly requested your presence.”
The little girl didn’t bother to reply; she simply hopped up after her two brothers and crowded herself onto the seat oppositeOphelia and Lady Knowe.
“You’re Betsy,” Ophelia said.
She nodded.
“And you are Leonidas?” she asked a very naughty-looking boy.
“He’s the plague of my life after Parth,” Lady Knowe said.
“I’m Alexander,” piped up the third child. He had sweet eyes and a lock of hair that fell over his eyes just as the duke’shair had done in the middle of the night.
“These three are, obviously, children of the second duchess,” Lady Knowe said briskly. “Including baby Joan at home.”
“Do you have three?” the duke bellowed from the second carriage.
“Yes!” roared back his sister. “We always double-check,” she said to Ophelia.
“Did you ever leave a child behind?” Ophelia asked, telling herself that she was deeply happy not to be stepmother to so manychildren, especially Leonidas, who had clambered up on his knees and was precariously leaning over the rear of the sleigh.
“Get down, Leo!” Lady Knowe ordered.
Rather to Ophelia’s surprise, he obeyed.
A groom came by to slip hot bricks under their feet. He draped heavy furs over Lady Knowe and Ophelia, and tucked a largeone around the three children.
The sleighs jolted into motion, runners squeaking on the ice.
“Did we leave a child behind?” Lady Knowe laughed. “We started having trouble keeping track of them as soon as there weremore than six. I hope your daughter doesn’t sleep through the entire sleigh ride.”
Their sleigh was following a path pounded smooth that ran along the side of the Thames, passing the pleasure gardens of palatialhouses.
“It’s probably best that she does,” Ophelia said. “I don’t care to think about her reaction if she wakes up in the arms ofa stranger and I’m not there.”
“Will she scream?” Betsy asked with interest. “’Cause my sister Joan screams all the time.”
“Very likely,” Ophelia said, liking her open face. “I suspect you screamed a great deal when you were that age as well.”
“A reasonable amount,” Lady Knowe said. “Leonidas, if you fall out of the sleigh, you’ll have to eat dinner in bed for a week.”
“But look!” Leonidas cried, pointing out the back.
Ophelia leaned forward. A boy had caught a rope behind their sleigh and was flying on the ice behind them, his skates throwingup plumes of shaved ice.
“I want to try!” Leonidas cried.
“That’s dangerous,” she said.
“But so much fun! Don’t you see?” He looked at her, his little-boy face screwed up with earnestness.
“Yes, I do,” Ophelia said. “We don’t want him to be hurt, though, do we?”
Lady Knowe had already tapped the sleigh driver on the shoulder and he was slowing to a halt. Ophelia stood up and lookedover the back of the sleigh.
“His coat isn’t very nice,” Betsy said. “Do you have any money?”
Ophelia thrust her hand down into the pockets that hung under her skirts and fished out a guinea. “Here you are.”
“Boy!” Betsy called, leaning over the back of the coach, her ringlets blowing around her head as her hood fell back. “We thinkyou should be in the circus. Come closer.”
He obeyed, which likely had something to do with the fact that young though she was, Betsy already looked and sounded likea duchess.
“Here,” she said, dropping the coin into his hands.
“Thanks!” he called up, touching his cap.
“Nicely done,” Lady Knowe said to Betsy. “I applaud you for not throwing it at the boy.”
“He wouldn’t have liked that,” Betsy said, sitting back in her seat.
When the sleigh set into motion again, Betsy leaned forward. “We have questions,” she said.
Ophelia blinked at her. “What?”
“Questions,” Alexander explained. “Like when Aunt Knowe interviewed the upstairs maid. So we can help Father make a very largedecision.”
Lady Knowe coughed and looked at the children, eyes brimming with laughter. “The questions are for Lady Woolhastings, my dears.Not for Lady Astley.”
“She’s not married, so we can ask her too,” Betsy said. She folded her arms across her chest, and the two boys followed.
“But I’m not—”
“Please let them practice on you,” Lady Knowe interrupted. “I have a strong feeling that Lady Woolhastings will not entertainany questions, and they talked all the way to London about which questions were the most important.”
Ophelia looked back at the three determined faces opposite her and realized exactly what Lady Knowe wasn’t saying. These three had never had a mother. The boys in the first carriage—except for Parth, about whose parenting she knewnothing—had had Marie, and from what the duke said, she had been a loving mother.
But these three?
Everything she knew
