Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom(5)

He crouched down beside the basket. It had been years since he’d held a baby, but he supposed he’d not lost the knack of it. Growing up in his uncle’s vicarage in the wilds of Yorkshire, he’d spent many a lonely afternoon in the kitchen with the housekeeper, Mrs. Patterson, a kind woman and the closest thing to a mother Griffin had known in those days. She’d had an inexhaustible supply of grandchildren, and she’d sometimes enlisted his help when she had to take care of one or another of the brood. Without any siblings of his own, Griffin had never minded. He’d spent many a bleak winter’s day by the fire, rocking a fractious baby to sleep while Mrs. Patterson bustled about with her cooking.


“Now, what’s all the fuss about?” he murmured as he carefully peeled the soft blanket away. A very red, unhappy face peered up at him, its mouth pursed with infant outrage. The baby sucked in a breath and waved its little fists in the air, obviously preparing to let out another wail of complaint, so Griffin quickly slipped his hands under the small body and lifted, standing upright in the same motion.

“Here, none of that,” he said in a quiet voice as he shifted the child to rest more comfortably against his chest.

The baby’s cry wavered and then abruptly cut off, replaced by several rather shattering sobs that sounded more like a case of the hiccups. Tears clung to its dark eyelashes and it still looked miserable in that heartrending way of babies. But at least it had stopped lacerating their ears.

“Huh,” grunted Tom, inching cautiously forward, as if fearing the baby might leap up and bite him. “Never took you for the motherly sort.”

“It’s not exactly advanced mathematics,” Griffin said before turning his attention back to the lad who’d delivered such an unusual package. “What’s your name?”

“Roger. What’s yours?” the boy asked with a nervy curiosity that put Griffin in mind of a squirrel.

“Griffin Steele, at your service. Now, perhaps you’d like to tell me what this is all about.”

Roger gave a satisfied nod. “You’re the nob I was supposed to find. I’ve got a message for you.”

“I’m not a nob,” Griffin replied automatically. If there was one thing in the world he did not want to be taken for, it was an aristocrat.

Roger glanced around the hall and then raised his eyebrows, investing the look with a polite skepticism that would not have been out of place in the finest drawing rooms of the ton.

Griffin sighed. “Well, get on with it then. Who’s trying to dump this baby on me and claim that I’m its—” He broke off, shaking his head. “Is it a boy or a girl?”

The boy lifted his shoulders in an insouciant shrug. “Beats me, guv.”

Muttering under his breath, Griffin gently pulled up the infant’s lace-trimmed robe and gingerly inched aside his swaddled undergarment. He couldn’t fail to notice the clothing was fashioned of the finest lawn, nor that the matching cap was trimmed with lace.

“A boy,” he said, hastily tucking the material back around the obviously well-fed body.

Everyone in the hall seemed to let out a collective sigh, as if they’d all been dying to know the answer.

“Now that we’ve ascertained that pertinent fact, perhaps you can tell me what you’re doing with him, and why you brought him here,” Griffin said, gazing sternly at Roger.

The boy opened his mouth to answer, but the words died on his tongue when the green baize door swung open and Madeline swept into the hall in all her sultry glory. Roger’s gobsmacked expression was one that Griffin had seen on much older faces more times than he could count.