"If it doesn't inconvenience you and the new duke, I'd like to suggest we go on as before." He gave me a hopeful look.
I took that to mean he was highly private and independent. He didn't relish the thought of me, or Riggins, intruding in his personal domain.
I nodded softly. "That sounds good to me."
There was a pair of chairs near the fireplace. He offered me one, as well as tea and refreshments. I took the chair and declined refreshments. He took a seat in the chair opposite me.
I hesitated. "Actually, I lied. Partly, anyway. I wanted to talk to you away from the castle about more than the state of your home."
I paused again, trying to frame my words. "I came because you and your family have been on the estate for all of the late duke's reign. And I…I'd like to get to know him through your recollections." I took a deep breath. "This is strictly in confidence, but I recently discovered that he was my great-grandfather. It was a shock, but a pleasant one. I found documentation in his personal effects. I don't want to betray any more family secrets."
Fortunately, Bird didn't push for details. Or even appear more than passingly curious. I was suddenly glad for his quiet nature and apparent aversion to gossip.
"But I'm hoping you can help me. I feel like you knew him better than anyone."
If Bird was surprised, he didn't show it. Instead, he smiled largely and laughed loudly. "As you're the very image of the first duchess Helen, your news doesn't surprise me." He didn't quite wink, but it was clear what he meant. He could imagine how it had gone between the Dead Duke and Helen, and circumstances that could have led to me being the Dead Duke's granddaughter.
Bird studied my face. Finally, he nodded approvingly. "I didn't know the duchess, of course. I only know her from her pictures in the castle. But there's something about the late duke in you. It's not obvious at first glance, but if you look closely, it's there."
I grinned back at him. "You don't know how happy that makes me. I'm glad to hear it! I think so, too. Tell me everything!"
He shuffled in his seat. "Everything's a tall order, madam."
I laughed. "It is, isn't it?" Especially since he wasn't really a talker to begin with. "Start with your memories of him as a boy. I heard he didn't like children."
We spent a pleasant half-hour reminiscing about Bird's boyhood and growing up on the estate with the Dead Duke at the helm. All the memories of the Dead Duke were pleasant ones, as far as I could tell. At the very least, Bird filtered his memories to share only the nice ones with me.
I was hoping he'd tell me about China.
"He loved the estate and the game. Very concerned about the game and proper management of it," Bird said.
I nodded. "Yes. I've heard that from others. He even sent you to China twenty years ago or so to learn some new technique?"
Bird tensed. "Yes. Indeed, he did. I was there nearly a year."
"I've never been to China," I said. "Was it wonderful?"
"It was. And it wasn't." He looked almost heartbroken. "My son was born in China. The duke was very helpful during that time."
My senses went on high alert. "Is that his picture on the mantel?"
"It is."
"I'd love a closer look. Do you mind?" I started to get out of my seat.
Bird jumped up and grabbed the picture, handing it to me with a proud look on his face.
It was a different photo from Will's profile picture. A younger Will. "He's very handsome. I heard he's away at university?"
Bird nodded.
"You must be proud."
"Bursting." Bird smiled.
Holding the picture, I turned to study Bird. "I have a sister about his age. She's adopted. From China." I told him the name of the province Sid was from.
No great surprise registered on his face. Just the mild look of someone who realizes they have something in common with you.
"That's where we were. Very pretty. Parts of it, anyway."
I nodded, smiling. "I'd like to see it sometime." I paused again, preparing my money shot. "Her birthday's coming up." I rattled it off.
"That's the same as my son's." Again, he spoke with only mild surprise and no apparent suspicion.
"It's an odd coincidence, isn't it?" I said, trying not to sound like I was accusing him of something. "Both of them having the same birthday and being born in the same province."
Bird laughed more heartily. "Not so much. There are a lot of people born in China every day, Your Grace."
To my disappointment, he didn't look guilty of hiding a thing. That my sister was Chinese and born on the same day as his son in the same village meant nothing to him.
It was clear he'd about talked himself out. I left his cottage shortly after. As I approached the maze, I swore I saw a figure dart into it. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. Damn that Sherlock Holmes and his hounds of Baskerville for putting scary thoughts into my head. I was pretty sure no great big dogs were following me. But I had the sense that someone was.
I brushed it off as my imagination. Since the pregnancy announcement, Riggins had tightened security around the castle. The odds that a vagrant or stalker would be able to hang around the castle grounds unnoticed by our security team were slim.
I hurried back to the safety of the castle and the pleasant surprise of Riggins waiting to take tea with me.
He had a devilish look in his eyes as we sat side by side on the sofa in the drawing room and dined on British scones, which were much cakier and less sweet and rich than American scones. As a baker I took a professional interest in the differences. Slather them with enough jam and clotted cream and that made up the difference.
We discussed our day. I left out the part about being frightened as I walked by the maze. I wasn't even sure I'd seen anything.
He told me he'd hired me a press secretary of my own, someone to manage my appearances and handle my social media and any situations like Rose's leak to the press. It was sweet of him.
Every time I looked at Riggins, which was constantly, my heart squeezed. I wanted him to want to stay with me forever. I wanted tender words of love. And hot words of passion. I wanted to laugh with him. Lie with him. Love him. For the rest of our lives.
If this baby was a girl, I had a better chance of that. For a while, anyway. But we needed a boy.
As always, the tea was delicious. The look in his eyes as we finished was better.
"What?" I asked coyly. I was pretty sure what.
"You have a crumb on your lip." He leaned forward and kissed me. "We haven't done it in the drawing room."
"No, we haven't," I said, and slid into his lap. We still had dozens and dozens of rooms to go. "It's a rather obvious choice, isn't it?"
"But highly dangerous." He kissed my neck and played with my hair.
"As dangerous as the poison garden?" I ran my fingers through his hair.
"Infinitely more dangerous. Someone might walk in to clear away our tea." His lips travelled down my neck to the tops of my breasts.
"Bring it on."
The ice between us was truly thawed. If there had been any doubt about where Riggins would sleep, it was over now for sure. He slept in my bed that night. And all the nights after for a blissful week and a half.
We went to London to the theater. We toured the countryside and made plans for the estate. I even got him to look at baby things. But he couldn't stay in England forever. Flash needed him. He was called back to Seattle. He pressured me to go with him. But two days before we were supposed to leave, I got a bout of hyperemesis gravidarum, severe morning sickness that put me in the emergency room. I had to stay in the hospital overnight.
Riggins was right there with me. He wouldn't leave my side. But it was no way to bond. And there was also no way I felt like flying. The trip from England to Seattle was just too long.
He delayed his departure a few days until I was stable. But on April Fools' Day he went back to Seattle, leaving me in the capable hands of a private nurse, and the ongo
ing throes of morning sickness.
I was relieved, in a way, to see him go. I didn't want him to see me in this horrible sick state, constantly throwing up. It was debilitating. And embarrassing. And not conducive to romance or making him fall in love with me. I slept. I ate cream crackers, as the British called soda crackers. I threw up. I tried endless remedies. I prayed I'd be one of the lucky ones and the morning sickness would peak at some point between nine and thirteen weeks, as my doctor said usually happened, and not last the whole forty.
I let the nurse take care of me. Let Gibson run the household. Let our chef and Alice run the kitchen and Mrs. Rees clean the castle without instruction. I let Bird manage the game.
Everything ran on autopilot. It ran so well, I wondered if I was needed at all around the castle.
I was too sick to care about anything. I mostly gave up on my quest to find Sid's twin and whether Bird was her father. I felt horribly guilty about that. But I simply didn't have the energy or drive. Or five spare minutes where I wasn't tossing my cookies. First thing when I got through this, I promised myself.
As for Sid, she insisted on talking every few days, remaining upbeat and encouraging, and, as desperately as she needed and wanted a cure, not pressing me to do more investigating. She kept me informed on all the happenings in Seattle. Which made me homesick on top of being morning sick. But still, it was sweet. We made plans for her to be in England with me at the end of June after class was out. And in time for my twenty-week appointment, where we would find out the gender of the baby.
"We need a gender-reveal party," she reminded me. "I'll help you plan it." She clapped gleefully and maniacally.
She could get annoyingly excited about stuff. "You'll be announcing a duke's baby's gender. Boy? Or girl? The future of the dukedom is at stake…dum, dum, dum." She laughed as she made her joking, ominous sounds. "It will be an event. No, not just an event. The event. There hasn't been a baby born to the duke of the realm in nearly eighty years. Your gender-reveal party will have to be over-the-top grand."
I was so sick and tired I could barely work up energy for living, but her enthusiasm made me smile. I promised to include her. "Crap. This duchess stuff is overwhelming sometimes. All I really want is a simple gathering with you and a few of Riggins' close friends. If it's going to have to be on the scale of a wedding—"
"Oh, it will have to be," Sid said, enthusiastically ominous.
I made a snap decision. "Then I'm hiring an event planner."
Sid clapped again. "Brilliant! Can I ride roughshod over them? I've always wanted to boss an event planner around and make outrageous demands. This may be my only chance. Who knows when I'll get to be a bride?"
I rolled my eyes. She was so adorable sometimes. She could be bossy, but she was never mean. I seriously doubted making crazy demands was really a dream of hers. "You mean you want to be my maid-of-honor-type person for the gender reveal?"
"Exactly. I'm good at it, too."
She wasn't kidding. She really was. And I didn't have the energy anyway. "Done. You're it. I'll give you a budget."
"Hehehe."
"Are you twirling your mustache, Snidely?" I laughed.
"Absolutely. And I'm angling to be godmother to this kid, too. Someone has to be around to teach it how to party."
I laughed again.
My PR firm handled all inquiries regarding the current state of my pregnancy and how I was feeling. Why anyone should care, I didn't know. But somehow every time I threw up was newsworthy. And so was every millimeter the baby grew. Apps abounded that told you the size of your baby at every week of pregnancy. It's the size of a sesame seed. The size of a plum. It's the size of a peach, honey!
My PR team, however, wasn't satisfied with any of those mundane apps and their everyday generic descriptions. They put my growing baby's size into ducal terms and convinced Justin, who was a programming genius, to design a custom app to track Baby Feldhem's development. And any other growing baby whose mum wanted to track it in aristocratic terms.
We gave it away free on the website that Riggins established for the castle and dukedom. It was a hit. As was the betting pool to guess the date and time Baby would be born. My team had convinced Riggins to donate a large Flashionista gift card and cash prize. Which may have accounted for a lot of the popularity.
Riggins thought the whole idea was hysterically funny. Yeah.
So my baby, and anyone else's if they cared to use the app, was the size of a ducal seal from Riggins' signet ring. The size of the center diamond in the duchess' tiara. And on and on. When it reached the size of the castle wall, I was done for. Hopefully baby bun would be done before that.
And, in a case of strange bedfellows, Rose became my greatest ally. Maybe she was worried I'd go back on my word and this was her insurance against it. Whatever the case, she mentioned me as often as possible in all her social media, painting a flattering picture of me to be sure. She was a minor national celebrity and used that to our full advantage.
She played up her close social connection to me, spilling my "secrets," and making me into some kind of heroine for bravely bearing the trials of pregnancy with dignity. She managed to make my travails sound almost humorous. Where would the duchess throw up today? Nothing was immune from a sudden lost lunch.
I'd never had so much sympathy in my life. It seemed that hyperemesis gravidarum hit duchesses with startling frequency. To my great surprise and pleasure, I even got a wonderful note of encouragement from the princess.
As I had promised Sid, I hired an event planner for the gender-reveal party. And put Sid in charge, taking only a final-say role for myself.
Riggins. Even though we talked almost every day, I missed him so much I ached. I worried that I was losing my chance for him to fall in love with me. That he'd forget about me. Maybe most pregnant women are a little insecure about something. But for me, in particular, having a bun in the oven wasn't sexy. I was a mess and felt barely alive. There was no energy left over to feel even halfway attractive.
There was no point in Riggins being here. I knew he felt guilty that I had to bear this burden. But what could he have done besides hold my hand while I retched into the handiest receptacle?
No, it was better for him not to see me constantly like this. Better to wait until I blossomed in this pregnancy and had that famous radiant pregnant glow. That was what I told myself. But I couldn't help thinking it was a lie. And holding out hope that it wasn't.
Riggins promised to return for the big gender-reveal event that Sid had so well in hand. And had given me a generous budget for it. But although neither of us admitted it, we were both nervous about it. Me maybe most of all. Because a boy could mean the end of our relationship and free us both from the contract and the clutches of my great-grandfather. And a girl would be a disappointment and keep us under his control. Was freedom better? Or worse? Why was there always a downside?
It poured rain in April and May. Week after gloomy week of it until I dreamed of a tropical paradise and felt as if the sun had abandoned us forever.
Slowly, somehow, the weeks passed. The morning sickness hung on fiercely until about week eighteen. And then, a day at a time, it receded so gradually I didn't notice at first. One day I went an entire hour without throwing up. Then two. Then a whole morning.
I began to be able to keep food down an ounce at a time. Food began to smell good again. Then sound good. Then taste good and stay down. I started to gain some weight and look more and more like a pregnant woman. Not a dehydrated skeleton with a basketball shoved beneath her shirt.
I started to feel more and more like myself. I began taking an interest in life again. I started walking the grounds and the garden. And once again, I had that sense of being watched and followed. It has to be the security detail, I told myself.
But when I asked the security guys about it, they denied following me. They even showed me security feeds that proved it. And also proved I'd been alone. No sinister figures lurking behind
me. On a few occasions, I took one of the security guys with me into the maze and the gardens. Nothing. No one.
No one on any of the security feeds. And yet I kept watching the Ghost Tower, looking for the light again. There were times I thought I saw something. But when I ran to the security room and asked them to check the cameras, there was nothing. And the Ghost Tower was always locked tight when we checked it.
It made me uneasy. I wanted Riggins. I felt safer and more secure when he was here. I even joked with him and asked him to borrow Lazer's ghost-hunting gear next time he came. I wasn't going crazy. I trusted my instincts. Something, or someone, was out there.
I busied myself planning for Sid's visit and Riggins' return. And bracing myself for finding out what I was having. Boy? Or girl? It was ridiculous how important that was.
Chapter 10
June
Riggins
I'd been running. Literally every day. And metaphorically from everything else—impending fatherhood. That damn dukedom. My feelings for Haley. No matter what I did, or how hard I tried, I couldn't fall out of love with her.
Not when we talked via video chat and she looked tired and wan. Not when she was so exhausted and sick she lost her sense of humor. Not when she showed me her growing belly. Not when I lay sleepless and alone in my luxury bed at night. She was out of sight, but never out of mind.
Every little thing she did made me fall more in love with her. The notes she sent me. The stories she managed to tell me about castle life. The way she held up her blouse and pressed her pregnant belly to the computer screen so I could see the baby move. Or imagine I did.
Not when I saw the hell she was going through carrying my child and how bravely she faced it. Not when she'd be in the middle of a sentence and have to tear off to the bathroom.