Page 74 of The Scottish Duke
Lorna only smiled at him, placed her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to half lift, half carry her to the ground.
When the chair arrived, she looked at him quizzically.
“If you’ll sit,” he said, having been informed that stairs were a difficult feat for a new mother, “the footmen will carry you to the second floor.”
His mother nodded approvingly, then ignored them all as she carried Robbie into Blackhall.
They climbed the steps slowly in deference to Lorna’s condition. The baby gave out a wail, summoning all their attention. Alex had not yet gotten used to his son’s cry. It tore the skin off his back and alerted all his senses. He immediately wanted it to stop. Either Robbie was hungry or wet or was frightened. Someone had to fix the situation now.
His mother began to bounce the baby in her arms, a curious rocking motion that evidently soothed Robbie. The baby still wanted his mother, since he turned his head and began beating on his grandmother’s chest.
“Look here, son,” Alex said, going to his mother’s side. “There’s time enough for petulance, but this isn’t it.”
Before his mother could stop him, he scooped Robbie up in his arms and resumed his journey up the grand staircase, all the while addressing his son.
“When we get your mother settled, there will be time enough to make your needs known. Only ten minutes, that’s all I ask.”
Robbie stared up at him, one fist inserted firmly in his mouth.
It was strange seeing his features melded in this perfect little boy. Something creaked open inside Alex, a gate he hadn’t known was closed, a door that had never been unstuck. Something new and novel flooded through him. Gratitude, perhaps, or something else. Joy, pure, sweet, and elemental, nearly swamped him.
They watched each other, father and son, as he entered his suite. Robbie was reclaimed by his grandmother and Alex was banished as Lorna was settled into the bed.
He stood in the sitting room glancing around at the chamber he’d occupied since he was sixteen. Everything was the same, from the oil painting of Blackhall above the fireplace to the escritoire crafted in Edinburgh on the far wall. The scarlet curtains were exactly as they had been for a dozen years, hemmed with gold fringe and held back with braided gold ties.
Nothing was out of place yet everything had changed.
The carpet was scarlet, with the same blue leaves found in the family crest. As he walked over it he remembered all those occasions when the maids had been on their hands and knees with a brush and a pail of spent tea leaves. Had Lorna been one of them?
In his mind he saw her all those times when he’d deliberately ignored the staff. She nodded to him in the hall. She smiled at him when he was entering his library as she left it. She was here, dusting the Chinese urn on the hearth or the potpourri pot on the bookshelf. She diligently brushed away nonexistent dust from the sofa and the wing chairs arranged in front of the fireplace. Or maybe she even emptied the ashes, getting soot on her cheek.
The curtains on the three tall windows had been opened, the view the approach to Blackhall. He knew that just beyond the copse of trees to his right, hidden from his view, was the cottage.
How many times had he stood there in the last month wondering if Lorna was well, if she needed anything, if she was happy with her decision to return?
Now she was in his bedchamber, being settled into the tall and wide bed that had belonged to Russells for generations. His son would rest beside the bed in his cradle, an heirloom that Lorna had seen fit to alter. Where before it had been utilitarian and almost ugly, now it was beautiful.
What else would she change at Blackhall?
Even now he could feel the wall thinning between him and other people until he could almost see through it. He was going to be weakened. He could almost feel the target on his back, the stuttering of his heart as it readied for the moment it was shredded.
He had to do something, anything, to protect himself.
Chapter 20
Lorna didn’t sleep well that first night, since Robbie insisted on eating every two hours.
The first time she got up, she sat on the edge of the giant bed and fed him, then tried to find the nappies. She finally located all of Robbie’s clothing in an armoire in the dressing room where she’d also found Alex, sleeping on a cot that didn’t accommodate his height or breadth easily. His feet were hanging off his impromptu bed, uncovered. She stopped herself from rearranging his blanket. He might be her husband, but they were little more than strangers.
She got what she needed and crept back into the bedroom. Once Robbie was changed and dry, she put him into the cradle again, dozing until he woke once more. That was the tenor of her night: sleep, feed him, change him, sleep, repeat.
She was in no mood for Matthews’s rudeness just past dawn.
Lorna knew Alex’s valet, but she didn’t like the man. Matthews was too officious, too conscious of his position as the duke’s personal servant, a role he bragged about endlessly.
Now the valet was staring at her as if she’d committed a sin worse than spilling wine on a priceless carpet. Perhaps she had; she’d married the duke.
“Where’s His Grace?” Matthews asked, taking in the cradle and Lorna’s disheveled appearance in one glance.
