“I so admire the way this one’s mane is rippling in the breeze. Quite majestic.” Her head tilted to the side. “In the meadow, are those buttercups?”
He couldn’t hold back any longer. He laughed. It felt good to laugh in this room. It was a place he’d planned to fill with smiles and laughter, but God had taken all his careful plans and torn them to shreds.
“The ponies are ridiculous,” he admitted. “The artist who painted them specialized in portraits of Arabian racehorses. His patron owed me a gambling debt, so I engaged his services for this room. He got rather carried away.”
“And what do you do in here?” she asked.
“Not much of anything. It was never finished, as you see.” He waved toward the blank southern wall. “The decor wasn’t intended to please me. It was meant to appeal to feminine tastes.”
Her expression battened. “Oh. I see. So you planned to move a woman into your house. Into your suite. A woman who likes rainbows and ponies.”
He rather liked the obvious envy in her tone, and he might have teased it out a bit longer—had the truth been any different.
“Not a woman, Pauline. A little girl.” A knot formed in his throat, and he cleared it with an impatient cough. “My little girl.”
Pauline watched him closely for any signs of teasing. She found none.
“You have a daughter?” she asked.
“No. Yes.”
“Which is it?”
“I . . . had a daughter. She died in infancy.”
Her breath left her. She’d known something was weighing on him, but she’d never imagined this. He’d lost a child? The other day at the Foundling Hospital—of course the atmosphere had rattled him. It wasn’t any wonder he’d wanted to leave. And then to have that baby thrust in his arms . . .
The poor man. How the landslide must have flattened him. She’d been so insensitive without even realizing.
“Oh, Griff. I’m sorry. So, so sorry.”
He shrugged. “Such things happen.”
“Perhaps. But that doesn’t make them any less sad.”
She wanted to go to him. But when she took a step in his direction, he began to pace the room, evasive.
“Anyway, that’s why the room was never completed.” He walked about the perimeter of the chamber, stopping at the window. “Never got around to installing the nursery grate. There wasn’t time.”
“Your mother has no idea?”
He shook his head. “She was in the country at the time. I’ve kept this chamber locked ever since . . . Well, ever since it became unnecessary.”
“You should tell her the truth. She’s noticed there’s something going on in here. She thinks you’re sacrificing kittens, or living out perverse fantasies.”
He chuckled. “No wonder you looked so shocked at the paintings. I can’t imagine what you must have thought.”
“I don’t really care to admit to it.” She swept another glance around the room. “So your little girl’s mother was . . .”
“My mistress,” he confirmed. “Former mistress.”
Former mistress. Try as she might, Pauline couldn’t bring herself to express condolences on that part of things. “Did you love her?”
“No, no. It was purely physical.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “She was an opera singer, and we . . . It’s disgraceful, I know. But it’s far too easy for men of my station to get away with such arrangements. It’s just the done thing.”
“You don’t have to make excuses, Griff,” she said. “Not to me.”
“If I had any excuses, I would owe them to you first and foremost. But I don’t. We weren’t close. I saw her less and less, and I was on the verge of breaking it off entirely. Then she told me she’d conceived.”
“Were you happy to hear it?”
“I was furious. I’ve always been so careful, and she’d assured me she was careful, too.” He paced the room again. “But I accepted my responsibility. I set her up in a cottage a short ride into the country, where she could wait out her confinement. I arranged for a maid and a midwife, set aside funds to support the child. Because that’s what men of my station do, when they impregnate their mistresses.”
“It’s the done thing,” she supplied.
He nodded. “I visited her in the new cottage, to see that she was settled and to make my final assurances of support. And just as I was about to leave, she grabbed my hand . . .” He regarded the blank wall, as though the distant memory were painted there. “That alone was a shock. We never held hands. But anyhow, she grabbed my hand and plastered it flat to her belly.” He held his open hand outstretched in demonstration. “And the child—my child—gave me a wallop of a kick.”
He slowly brought his hand to his chest. “So strong. This little life—a life I’d helped create—declaring itself in such fierce, unspoken terms. I swear, that kick split my heart wide-open. Had me reeling for days.”
She smiled a little to herself.
“After that, I couldn’t stay away. I went back, again and again. Visited her more often than I ever had in Town, just to lay my hands on her swelling stomach. Did you know babies can get the hiccups, even in the womb?”
She shook her head no.
“I didn’t, either. But they can. I was enchanted by each little jump. I can’t even explain it. For the first time in my life I was . . .”
Falling in love, she finished in her mind. Because he wouldn’t say it aloud, but the truth was plain. He’d fallen headlong, irretrievably in love with his own child, and in love with the idea of fatherhood. The loopy joy of it was written all over his face—and frolicking all over the walls of this room.
“Her family was in Austria. With the war finally over, she wanted to go home—but she didn’t think they’d accept her with an illegitimate child. She asked me to find a family here to foster the babe. I told her no.”
“No?”
“I decided I would raise my own child. In my house, with my name.”
Pauline gazed at him in quiet admiration. For a duke to raise a bastard child in his own home, with his own family name . . . that would be extraordinary.
It was most decidedly not the done thing.
“That’s when I cleared this chamber and brought in the artist.” He stopped in the center of the room and looked to the ceiling. “I know nurseries are usually up in the dormer rooms, but I didn’t like that idea. I wanted her close.”