“Even when there’s nothing I can do?” he murmured against the honey-colored hair tickling his nose.
“Even when,” she agreed, and reluctantly detached herself from his embrace. “But I must go upstairs to the nursery and get Willie into bed. Will you come with me?”
“You just try and stop me,” he said, and together they climbed the two flights of stairs to the nursery.
The children spent most of their time in Lancashire, but one of the rooms below the eaves had been fitted out as a nursery for those occasions when their parents chose to bring them to Town. The girl who had been pressed into service as a temporary nursery maid had done her job well, for a fire already burned in the grate, and a lump beneath the sheets of Willie’s narrow bed suggested the presence of a hot brick. Nor had Matthew, the footman, been idle since their arrival, for Willie’s bag had been brought up to the nursery, and the maid had unpacked his clothes and spread his nightshirt across the back of a chair positioned before the fire.
“I know I should have laid it out on the bed, your ladyship,” the nursery maid offered apologetically, seeing her mistress’s gaze falling upon this last. “But I thought as how it might best be warmed, it being so cold and wet outside, and Matthew telling us all downstairs as how sick the poor mite was.”
“No, you did very well,” Lady Helen assured her warmly. “It was clever of you to think of it.”
The girl, fairly beaming at this praise, was all eagerness to earn more. “Shall I fetch up some broth? There’ll be some in the kitchen, I know, for Cook was boiling a chicken for a fricassee.”
Lady Helen glanced at her son. Willie’s head now drooped upon his father’s shoulder, and he knuckled his eyes with one small fist. “Not yet,” she said. “He must sleep for now, but he will certainly want broth when he awakens. You need not stay; I shall put him to bed myself.”
“Yes ma’am,” said the maid, bobbing a curtsey before betaking herself from the room.
Lady Helen sat on the edge of the bed and soon had young Master William stripped, gowned, and tucked between warm sheets. “Sleep well, my pet,” she whispered, and bent to kiss the dark curls that were so like his father’s.
Once they had left the nursery and closed the door softly behind them, Sir Ethan bent a critical eye on his wife. “And now, love, I think it’s your turn.”
“My turn for what?”
“Your turn to be coddled. It’s plain as a pikestaff you’ve worn yourself out caring for Willie—and don’t tell me the others ’aven’t demanded their share of your attention, for I won’t believe you.”
“Well, no,” she admitted. “I won’t.”
“So now it’s time someone took care of you,” he continued. “I’m going to put you to bed and see that you sleep ’til next Tuesday.”
She gave a half-hearted laugh. “Don’t tempt me! But it was to help with your Parliamentary bid that I promised to join you in London. I daresay we shall be obliged to attend a great many dinners, and I have no objection to hosting a few, but if you expect me to offer kisses in exchange for votes, as the Duchess of Devonshire did—”
“If that’s what it takes to win, I’d just as soon lose,” put in Sir Ethan, steering her into the bedchamber.
“Then too, I should like to look in on Teddy,” she continued. “I daresay he is going on well enough—at least, I haven’t heard anything to the contrary—but I should rest a great deal easier after seeing for myself.”
“Oh, er, as to that,” Sir Ethan hedged, seeing the hour of reckoning was at hand, “ ’e’s—’e’s not in Town anymore.”
“Has he taken up residence at Reddington Hall?” she asked in some surprise. “I trust nothing is wrong there?”
He hastened to reassure her. “Oh, no! Everything is fine”—the slightest pause—“there.”
Alas, she was far too quick for his peace of mind. “And by that cryptic utterance, am I to understand that everything is not fine here?”
“It’s not as bad as all that,” was his not very reassuring reply. “ ’e’s just gone to Lancashire for awhile.”
“To—oh, and I missed him! I daresay we must have passed one another upon the road. Still, I suppose the housekeeper will know what bedroom to give him, and I shall write with instructions for—”
“ ’old up, ’elen,” he said, raising a hand to forestall her. “There’s no need for you to write the ’ousekeeper, for ’e’ll not be staying at our ’ouse.”
“Not—then where, pray, is he staying? He has no other acquaintances in the area, at least not to my knowledge.”
“ ’e’ll ’ave plenty of acquaintances by now,” he predicted grimly.
“Ethan,” she said, regarding her spouse with a kindling eye, “what have you done?”
“Me?” He gave her a look of wounded innocence. “What makes you think I’ve done anything?”
“If you haven’t done anything, you certainly know something,” she said with all the certainty of four years of marriage. “What, pray, is Teddy doing in Lancashire?”
“If you must know, ’e’s working at the mill.”
“He’s what?”
“Shhh!” He put a finger to his lips. “We don’t want to wake Willie.”
“At the moment, Willie is the least of my concerns! Ethan, what has been happening here, and what have you done to my brother?”
“I just told you—”
Lady Helen took a deep breath. “Tell me the whole story from the beginning! Why is my brother working at the mill?”
“That’s not the beginning. It’s what you might call the middle.”
Lady Helen strove with herself. “I have a feeling that is the very last of all the things I might call it! From the beginning, if you will be so kind!”
Now it was Sir Ethan’s turn to take a deep breath. “Well, by the time your father’s solicitor, and steward, and everyone else was done telling ’im
