Page 81 of What a Lord Wants

So she told everyone that he’d been called away on urgent business, business that had been taking up a great deal of his time of late. Thankfully, everyone had been too wrapped up in the new baby to realize she’d lied.

“Of course she’s feisty.” Pride filled Mariah’s voice as she lifted the baby and turned her over, to place her on her tummy. Genevieve never opened an eye. “Sheisa Winslow female, after all.”

“And a Carlisle,” Robert reminded them, just as proudly.

The room froze for a beat as a frightening realization sped through all of them. They fell silent and stared at the babe, wondering what kind of she-devil that combination of Winslow and Carlisle might have produced.

Eve wasn’t certain, but she thought she saw Robert shudder.

While that pedigree might make her a hellion when she was older, for now Genevieve slept deeply, not caring that she was being watched and discussed. The poor little thing was worn out from her first outing in life, sadly enough to boring old St George’s, and from having been doused with holy water—for which she promptly spat up on the priest in what was most likely her first act of Winslow-Carlisle defiance.

“We’ll have to make certain she has plenty of adventures,” Eve commented to Mariah as she returned to the settee with her cup of tea. “Just as we did.”

“Perhapsnotas you two did,” Papa interjected warily.

The two sisters exchanged a conspiratorial glance. Neither of them was willing to agree to that, knowing how much fun they’d had together.

“It won’t matter, if I can never get her away from her father.” Mariah placed her hand on Robert’s knee, the gesture softening the accusatory lift of her brow. “I went into the nursery yesterday and found Robert rocking her to sleep when he should have been at the shipping offices.”

Robert wasn’t at all embarrassed to have been caught holding his newborn daughter. Even now, he kept reaching into the bassinette and rubbing his large hand over her small back as she slept, as if he couldn’t believe she was real.

Eve bit her bottom lip. Would Dom be just as smitten as a father, or would he prefer to be left alone in his studio?

“I wanted to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her,” Robert defended himself.

“Oh?” Mariah’s mouth curved into a teasing smile. “And what did you two talk about?”

“How to successfully develop trade routes on the Indian subcontinent.”

“Of course,” she drawled, deadpan.

“And that boys should be avoided.”

Mariah laughed and affectionately placed her hand against her husband’s cheek. The unmistakable look of love that she gave him made Eve catch her breath. “You know, she’ll want to marry one of them eventually.”

“She can,” he said decisively. “When she’s thirty.”

As the two of them argued good-naturedly about Genevieve’s prospects for becoming both her debut season’s Incomparable and the world’s first female shipping magnate, Eve’s gaze fell to her teacup. For the past month, her thoughts had been almost nowhere else except on her own baby, which she still kept secret from everyone. Including Dom. She didn’t want to steal any attention away from Mariah, who deserved to glory in being a new mother.

Eve also didn’t want to face Dom.

Since their argument, her only contact with him had been through Davies. The poor man was caught in the middle, loyal to Dom but not wanting to hurt her, and so he’d delivered all messages from Dom stoically and without comment. Except for one. That time, as he handed the note to her, he said quietly, “His Lordship misses you a great deal, my lady.”

She’d seen Dom only once during their time apart, when he came to Mercer House to retrieve documents from his study that he needed for the exhibition, documents that Davies was unable to bring to him. She watched from the upstairs window as he left, her eyes blurring with stinging tears when he paused to glance back at the house before stepping into the carriage. She swallowed her pride and ran after him, only to remember when she reached the bottom of the stairs that nothing had changed. He’d not come home because of her but because of his art.

She snapped out of her reverie as the men stood.

“I’ve got a special bottle of port in my study that I’ve been keeping for this occasion,” Papa announced as he slapped Robert on the back. “Let’s leave the women to fuss over the baby and make their plans, shall we?”

Hugh Whitby grinned, thrilled to be included. He’d been around much less since Mariah and Robert married last spring, but Eve could have assured him that Mariah would always consider him a dear friend. Thankfully, the inexplicable jealousy that Robert held for the man had largely vanished, although it still reared its head whenever Whitby offered to waltz with Mariah. But judging from Whitby’s dancing skills, that might have been simply a desire on Robert’s part to avoid a devastating ballroom accident.

“I think I’ll take my leave.” Mrs. Smith clasped Mariah’s hands in hers and gave them an affectionate squeeze. “I need to return to the school. Classes start for the new term tomorrow, and I want all the children to feel welcomed.”

“She means that she’s making apple tartlets,” Whitby interjected, cutting right to the unspoken importance of her comment.

“Imeanthat I’m going to make them feel welcome,” she corrected. Then added in a grumble beneath her breath, “Including serving tartlets.”

Whitby grinned at being proven right, his ruddy face somehow making his ginger hair appear even redder. “It was my idea for her to make them.”