“Did you paint all these?” she asked, holding the candlestick aloft. “They’re, uh . . . they’re lovely.”

“No, I didn’t paint them.”

“Oh. Good. I mean, not that there’s something wrong with a grown man painting a room with rainbows and ponies. They are quite nice rainbows and ponies.”

“Do you truly think so?” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

“Oh. Yes. How could I not? They’re . . . why, on this wall they’re frolicking, aren’t they? Just look at them, frolicking and—” She swallowed hard. “—prancing.”

Good Lord. She was utterly flummoxed, trying to find some way not to give offense. For no particular reason, she was valiantly striving to spare his feelings. Making a hash of it, but the thought was sweet.

“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.”

He stared at the room’s lone blank wall for several moments. “I never had the chance to bring her here. She caught a fever that first week. It’s been months now. I should repaint, but I haven’t found the will to do it.”

“And no one knows of your loss? Not your friends, either?”

He shook his head.

Her heart ached for him. Naturally he’d been withdrawn these past months. He’d been grieving. And what was worse, grieving all alone. The duchess thought him reluctant to have children, and the truth was just the opposite. He’d been ready to welcome his daughter with an open heart—and then all his hopes were crushed.

She wanted to take him to bed and just hold him, for days and days.

“So you see,” he said, “I truly don’t need a fresh-faced young thing to teach me the meaning of love, make me want to be a better man. I already found that girl. She was about so big”—he held his hands just a foot apart—“with very little hair and no teeth. She taught me exactly what would give me true happiness in this life. And that I can never have it.”

“But that’s not true. In time you’ll—”

“No. I can’t. You don’t understand. My father was an only child. My mother bore three other children after me. None of them survived a week. I was young, but I remember the whole house in mourning. That’s why I delayed even attempting a family until the issue was forced—precisely because I’m the last of the line. All those generations of difficult childbearing didn’t bode well for my chances. But then that fierce little kick . . . It gave me hope that things could be different.”

She went to his side and touched his arm.

He steeled his jaw. “I can’t go through that again. The Halford line ends with me.”

“You sound very resolved.”

“I am.” He looked around at the room. “I trust you won’t tell anyone about this.”

She knew he wasn’t concerned about her telling just “anyone.” He didn’t want his mother to know.

“You have my word, I won’t tell her. But I think you should.”

“No,” he said firmly. “She can’t know this. Ever. I’m serious, Pauline. That’s the whole reason I—”

“The whole reason you brought me here. I know. I see it now.”

She understood, at last. It wasn’t simply that he was a rakish libertine, reluctant to marry. He’d decided he couldn’t marry, and he didn’t know how to break the news. The duchess wanted grandchildren so desperately. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her she had one grandchild she’d already lost, and now there’d never be another.

He knew it would break his mother’s heart.

So he’d kept his grief a secret, determined to manfully shoulder all the heartbreak himself.

“Griff, you needn’t go through this alone. If you won’t tell the duchess, I’m here for a few more days. At least talk to me.”

“Isn’t that what I just did? Talk to you?”

Not really.

Throughout their conversation, his tone had been so calm. Almost eerily matter-of-fact. She knew it was a façade. He hadn’t been able to fully grieve. It wasn’t possible to do so in a cold, secret room. He needed to talk, to rage, to cry, to remember.

He needed a friend.

“You’ve been locking all your grief away. Months and months of it now. You can try to keep it secret, pretend it’s not there. But until you open your heart, give it a good airing out—no sunlight can come in.”

She reached for his hand. “Won’t you tell me more about her? Did she favor you or her mother’s side? Did she smile and coo? What was her name?”

He remained silent.

“You must have loved her very much.”

He cleared his throat and pulled away. “You’d better go. The servants will be coming around soon to lay fires.”

So that was that. As close as they’d come today, as much as they’d shared . . . it still wasn’t enough.

She nodded, then moved to quit the room. “If that’s what you want.”

Chapter Twenty

“Good heavens. This is the worst yet.”

In the morning room the following day, her grace was most displeased.

“Let me see.” Pauline leaned forward on her yellow-striped chair.

The older woman held up her knitting needles. From one of them dangled a grayish, shapeless lump with no conceivable function. It resembled nothing so much as a dead rat.