Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom(14)

Griffin sprang to his feet. “A few weeks? How the hell am I supposed to take care of a baby until then? I can’t even tell if he’s old enough to be weaned. Who’s going to take care of that little detail, may I ask?”

“You needn’t worry,” Madeline said in an annoyingly cheerful voice. She stopped to coo at the baby, now coming awake with a sleepy yawn. “Rose is just weaning her own son. She has plenty of milk to spare.” When Dominic raised an inquiring eyebrow, Madeline explained. “Rose is one of the girls at The Golden Tie.”

“It’s entirely unseemly to have this baby living in a brothel, nursed by whores,” Griffin said, starting to feel a bit desperate.

Dominic snorted. “For a supposed crime lord and a whoremaster, you’re a bit squeamish, aren’t you?”

Griffin ran a frustrated hand through his hair, pulling half of it out of the narrow leather band that tied it back. “I’m not a crime lord, and I won’t be a whoremaster much longer. But that is not the issue. Besides, Rose cannot be expected to nurse two babies at once. And how, exactly, does one go about keeping a baby in a brothel, especially a secret baby? You are both clearly demented for thinking such a mad scheme could possibly work.”

“Oh, but he won’t really be staying in the brothel, will he? He’ll be staying here with you. As we both know, no one gets into your house unless you want him to,” Dominic said as he crossed to the bell pull in the corner of the room.

“Except street urchins and babies, apparently,” Griffin snapped.

“Truly, Griffin,” Madeline said earnestly, “Rose won’t mind helping out for a little while, and neither will I. Besides, unless I miss my guess, this little one is going on four months, so he will be able to be weaned very soon. That should make things easier.”

“Well, that’s a comfort,” Griffin replied sarcastically. He’d clearly lost control of the situation, which often happened when Dominic was involved. “And in the meantime, is Rose expected to move in with me, along with her little bundle of joy? Bloody hell, I might as well shoot myself now and get it over with.”

Rose was one of the most popular girls in the brothel, well liked for her excessively cheerful nature. But she was also exceedingly noisy and outspoken, and Griffin couldn’t spend more than five minutes in her company without developing an overwhelming urge to flee.

“It can’t be as bad as all that, surely,” Dominic said with mock sympathy.

“Believe me, it is.” Griffin repressed the impulse to curse again as he gazed down at the baby in Madeline’s arms. The little blighter was fully awake, waving his chubby little arms and kicking his legs against the blanket. His eyes were a dark brown, the color of coffee beans. He stared at Griffin, round-eyed and rosy-cheeked, and then his little mouth split into a toothless grin.

Griffin reached down to touch one of his tiny fists. The fingers splayed themselves wide, opening like the petals of a flower, then wrapped themselves around Griffin’s thumb. The baby’s grip was surprisingly strong.

Sighing, he capitulated. Dominic knew him too well. Griffin could no more abandon the poor brat than he could cut off his arm. Because he did know exactly what it felt like to be abandoned, and he understood the damage it inflicted. This baby was far too young to understand anything but that he was warm, dry, and fed, and that someone held him with a gentle touch. Griffin had known the absence of all those things in his life, at one time or another. He’d experienced hunger and cold, and the dark terrors of the streets of St. Giles.

He gently pried the baby’s finger from around his thumb. Little Stephen’s eyes screwed up and he started to huff and puff in obvious preparation for letting out a wail. Madeline hastily rocked him as she leveled a frown at Griffin.