Page 56 of Duke with a Deception
“Your Grace!” said the maid, dipping into a curtsy. “Forgive me for the noise.”
“Noise? It sounds as if there is a ballroom filled with wild animals in here,” he grumbled before directing his attention to the girl. “What is the matter, child?”
“My locket,” Emma cried. “I’ve lost it and can’t find it anywhere.”
It must have been the locket the girl had received from her mother, he realized, recalling Verity speaking about it when they had been searching for the child.
Something inside him felt as if it had broken open. He understood the need to hold on to an object because parting with it meant that one’s last hold on someone who was forever gone would vanish. Heaven knew that was what he had done with the nursery, first leaving Daphne’s meager belongings within because removing them had been more than he could bear. And later, leaving them there because it had made him feel close to her.
King swallowed hard against a rush of unwanted emotion and sank to his knees on the carpeted hall. “Where did you last have the locket? Do you recall where you were and what you were doing?”
Emma sniffled, trying to catch her breath. “I-it was o-on the t-table by m-my bed.”
“I’ve looked everywhere, Your Grace,” the maid offered, her expression pained. “I can’t seem to find the locket anywhere.”
The child was quite plainly not going to be mollified unless she had her locket restored to her. But that begged the question of where the piece of jewelry had gone. King had no doubt that his servants were loyal and of high moral character. None of them would have absconded with a child’s treasured locket. Which meant that the necklace was lost, likely somewhere within the nursery.
The child sniffled, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. “It’s gone forever.”
“There now,” he said, reaching into his coat and extracting a handkerchief to offer to the girl. “It isn’t gone forever. We shall find it.”
She tentatively accepted the handkerchief, using it to mop the tears from her eyes and cheeks before noisily blowingher nose. Gads. Now it was filled with snot. The memory of giving Verity his handkerchief when she had been weeping at Riverdale’s ball rose in his mind. He rubbed idly at his chest, that new, strange feeling continuing to unfurl.
It wasn’t horror.
Wasn’t disgust.
It wasn’t even annoyance.
No, it was something else entirely. Something profound and shattering. Something capable of undoing everything inside him. Something his instincts told him he must avoid at all costs. He had experienced it once. Had allowed himself to be vulnerable, to see the wonder in a child. In his child.
And then within days, he had laid that babe into the earth as if she had never existed.
He should quit the house and leave the girl in the care of the maid. This was not his problem to solve. He ought to seek out solace and quiet at the bottom of a bottle somewhere that neither tears nor a small girl with luminous blue eyes and a red, snot-shiny nose could reach him.
But for some reason, he couldn’t. He didn’t.
“Shall we look for the locket?” he inexplicably found himself asking the child instead.
Emma nodded, sniffling into his handkerchief.
“Come,” he said, rising to his full height and extending his hand for her to take. “We’ll make an adventure of it.”
And when little Emma placed her hand in his, he was rather mortified to discover that it was wet. Snot or tears, he couldn’t be sure. But he didn’t recoil. Instead, he walked the child into the nursery, and they set about looking for the missing locket.
CHAPTER 10
“Lady Vitty! Lady Vitty!”
Verity was quite shocked to discover Emma cheerfully racing toward her when she returned to Castelyn House. It was an odd mirror of Verity’s visit to Everett. She scarcely had sufficient time to hand off her hat, wrap, and gloves in the entry. But this time, there was a child bearing down on her instead of a mulish brother.
She sank down to the girl’s level. “Hullo, Emma. What is the cause for so much excitement?”
Verity rather hoped the child hadn’t caused a disruption in her absence. Heaven knew King had yet to warm to her presence. Where was Grace, she wondered, the maid who had yet been tasked with acting as the child’s nursemaid?
“I loseded my locket, and the duke ’elped me to find it,” Emma announced.
The duke?
