Their Instant Baby

Eleanor smiled at Amy and Winnifred, then turned her attention back to Harry. Spreading her cards out in front of her, she announced triumphantly, “Gin!”

Harry shook his head ruefully, then shot Eleanor an admiring glance. “You really must tell me your secret someday.”

Eleanor smiled coyly and remained mum.

Harry stood and looked at Winnifred. “Tea and cookies for three?” he asked formally as he straightened his tie.

“Thank you, Harry.” Winnifred smiled as she pulled up another chair beside the bed and motioned for Amy to sit in the one Harry had vacated. “That would be lovely.”

Once again all business, Harry exited quietly. But Amy wasn’t fooled. She had seen the brief but intimate looks he and her aunt Winnifred had given each other. There was more going on between them than they wanted anyone to know, or she would eat her shoe.

“I’ve asked Amy to help us redecorate your new quarters to your liking,” Winnifred told Eleanor.

Eleanor’s eyes took on a troubled gleam and she held up a staying hand. “My dear Winnifred, I’ve told you that redecorating the carriage house on my behalf isn’t necessary. This room is lovely and I’m not planning to be here that long. Just another few days.”

It was also claustrophic, Amy thought, looking at the windowless walls. So much so that no one had slept in any of the little rooms of the servants’ quarters for years. Even Harry had quarters upstairs on the second floor.

“Where are you going to go?” Winnifred asked plaintively. “You’re supposed to stay off your feet as much as possible until your ankle heals completely, and Gabe said that will be another week at the very least.”

Eleanor was silent. She turned her glance to the wheelchair and walker next to her bed, then looked down at the ice-blue damask coverlet across her lap. “I think I’ve brought enough hardship to this family already, without adding any more,” Eleanor said in her cultured voice.

“If you’re talking about what happened years ago,” Amy returned gently, “everyone in the family has agreed it doesn’t matter to any of us what happened then.”

“I don’t know how you can say that.” Eleanor speared Amy with a troubled gaze. “I was involved in an illicit love affair. I brought shame to the family name and caused the death of someone I loved very much. My entire family was miserable in the wake of the tragedy, and everyone blamed me.”

“If you’re talking about the curse Dolly Lancaster hired a Gypsy to put on you and Captain Nyquist—” Amy said, but was interrupted by Eleanor.

“As well as the entire Deveraux family! There hasn’t been a happy marriage or an enduring relationship since.” Eleanor looked at Winnifred. “Your husband died within a year of your marriage. Grace and Tom divorced.”

“But the streak of bad romantic luck seems to be turning around at long last,” Amy was all too happy to point out as she leaned forward urgently. “Chase married Bridgett, Mitch married Lauren and Gabe married Maggie. I’m the only one of my parents children left unattached.”

“And that is going to change, too,” Eleanor promised.

Amy smiled. Her great-aunt had been encouraging romance—secretly—for years. They had just thought it was either her ghost or someone pretending to be her, who had been doing the matchmaking for the Deveraux heirs. Amy narrowed her eyes at Eleanor. “How do you know?” she asked.

Eleanor lifted one delicate hand. “Lately I’ve just had a knack for predicting such things,” Eleanor said.

“Or a knack for matchmaking,” Winnifred amended dryly. Winnifred looked at Eleanor. “That was you, wasn’t it, who was leaving the notes and sneaking in and out of both my home here and the Gathering Street mansion where you and Douglas Nyquist used to meet.”

Eleanor blushed, looking guilty as charged. “Even though I was no longer part of the family,” she explained sweetly, “I’ve always tried to keep watch over the entire Deveraux clan.”

“I understand why you would want to be close to family,” Amy ventured, figuring now was as good a time as any to get all her queries answered. She looked at her great-aunt closely. “What I don’t understand is why you let everyone believe you were dead all these years.”

Eleanor shrugged and twin spots of color appeared in her cheeks. “It seemed easier for me to disappear and be on my own than to have everyone else linked to the debacle flee Charleston in mortification.” Eleanor paused, tears of remorse glistening in her faded-blue eyes. “I thought my ‘death’ would end the misery, but it didn’t. The scandal only seemed to get worse. And since I made my mistakes, no one connected to me who stayed in Charleston has remained unscathed. That’s why I stayed away from the family all these years. And would have continued to do so, had I not gotten hurt and you not figured out who I was. Because that was how I thought I could best protect the rest of you from the pain I had already suffered.”

Amy thought Eleanor’s motives had been noble, if misguided. “But now the secret’s out,” Amy said pragmatically, “don’t you think you should stay with us from now on?”

“I don’t want to be a burden,” Eleanor said simply as Harry came back into the room carrying a large tray with a silver tea service and several plates of snacks.

“Your money is gone?” Winnifred guessed.

Eleanor nodded reluctantly, the embarrassed color in her cheeks deepening. “I have less than a thousand dollars in the bank, which is why I have to leave as soon as possible.”

“To go where?” Winnifred asked, plainly vexed. “And do what?”

Eleanor shrugged and averted her eyes. “I’ll get by.”

“You need to do more than that,” Winnifred said sternly. “You need a job.”

Amy gaped at her aunt Winnifred. As did Eleanor. What could an eighty-year-old woman with a bum ankle do? But clearly, the fifty-year-old Winnifred had plans.

“I’m in need of a good social secretary,” Winnifred said firmly, apparently not about to take no for an answer. “So, Eleanor, how’s your penmanship?”

IN SHORT ORDER, it was agreed that Eleanor would stay on indefinitely with Winnifred and hand-address the invitations and place cards for Winnifred’s many parties in exchange for her room and board. The long-unused carriage house behind Winnifred’s mansion would provide sleeping quarters and an office for Eleanor.

“I’ve been meaning to make the carriage house into a guest house for years, anyway,” Winnifred said airily as she and Amy entered the old structure, which had been used for storing her antiques.

“Why haven’t you?” Amy asked.

Abruptly Winnifred looked very sad. “Because I didn’t want anyone here. This was where my husband and I stayed when we were newlyweds, before he went off to serve overseas.”

Winnifred’s husband had been killed a year into their marriage. She had lived with her parents in the carriage house until they had died and then moved into the mansion. “But it’s time it became something other than a source of my memories,” Winnifred said thoughtfully.

“Does this mean you’re ready to move on—romantically, too?” Amy asked.

Winnifred’s expression became closed. “I’ll never marry again,” she said. “You know that.”

Except, Amy thought, if she was correct in her observations, her aunt already loved someone—Harry—even if Winnifred wouldn’t yet admit it to herself. “So,” Amy said, getting out her notepad as she realized time was really getting away from her. She was supposed to be back at the cottage in less than an hour, as per her baby-sitting agreement with Nick. She smiled at Winnifred. “What did you have in mind?”

DEXTER WOKE UP grumpy from his nap, and he stayed grumpy, no matter what Nick did. Although Nick had gotten lucky when he’d figured out how Dexter, who was used to being breast-fed, might want to take his bottle, he had no idea what to do with a cranky baby who’d already had a nap, had his diaper changed and had no interest in eating again yet. So Nick tried to remember some of the tips he’d seen on various television shows he’d produced.

He walked Dexter outside. He rocked him inside. He sang to him. He cuddled him. He put him down on a soft blanket on the floor. He waved toys in front of his face. He made silly sounds, even sillier faces. He soothed, he pleaded, he begged until he was up and walking the floors with the baby and close to shedding a few tears himself.

And it was then, Nick noted with resentment and relief, that Amy walked in the front door. She was lugging her canvas briefcase and several large wallpaper and carpet sample books. She looked harried and tired, and it was quickly apparent from the indignant scowl on her face that she blamed Nick for Dexter’s crying spell. Dropping her belongings in a heap, she rushed to Dexter and scooped him out of Nick’s arms.

Dexter quieted immediately as he gazed adoringly into Amy’s face. Nick didn’t know whether to be consoled or annoyed that she so easily did what he had just spent more than an hour trying to accomplish. “Obviously he likes you more,” Nick said with a sigh, recalling—without wanting to—a similar situation in which he had failed a child, badly. Nick clenched his jaw. “So maybe you should take care of him from now on.” Judging by the way his nephew was behaving, it would certainly be better for Dexter.

Amy’s chin jutted out stubbornly. She angled her head at him, looking both pretty and furious. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“You can see I’m lousy at it,” Nick argued, feeling exasperated. For reasons that were both egotistical and familial, he might not want to be honest in his assessment of his abilities regarding child care—but for all concerned, he knew he had to be. He couldn’t afford to let Dexter down, especially with Lola and Chuck both overseas. Giving his nephew the best possible care was the least Nick could do under the circumstances.

“Oh, pshaw. That’s a lame excuse if ever I heard one,” Amy said as she walked Dexter back and forth.

Nick tried not to notice the intuitive way she had cuddled Dexter against the pillowy softness of her breasts, or how gently and tenderly she held him. No doubt about it, Amy would make an excellent—and very loving and caring—mother. With effort he returned his gaze to Amy’s face and struggled to keep his mind on the subject at hand. “I beg your pardon?”

Amy pursed her lips and continued to regard him contentiously. “Guys always say things like that to get out of doing things around the house or with their kids,” she told him disparagingly. “I see it all the time with my married friends, and I have to tell you—” Amy paused and looked him straight in the eye “—it infuriates me.”

Nick braced a shoulder against the wall and returned her steady gaze. “Dexter’s been crying for an hour. I’ve done everything possible to quiet him, with no result. You waltz in—a good forty-five minutes later than you said you would be, by the way—you glare at me, take him from me, and bingo, the kid is happy as can be.” What did she call that if not proof that Nick was not exactly material for Stand in Father of the Year? Never mind husband or father material—for anyone. Pain twisting his gut at the loss he had suffered in the past and the emptiness and loneliness that would no doubt be part of his future, Nick swallowed hard and forced himself to stand up to the quiet accusation in Amy Deveraux’s turquoise eyes. “My nephew knows what he wants and what he wants is you,” Nick said gruffly, irritated at finding himself failing so completely and unexpectedly again. He looked at Dexter’s tearstained face. “Believe me, he couldn’t have been clearer about that.” And that hurt, too. Because even though the two of them hadn’t yet spent much time together, Nick loved his nephew, Dexter, as much as he loved his sister, Lola. He hadn’t expected to be so summarily rejected the first chance the two of them had been alone together. But he had been, Nick thought, discouraged and exhausted. There was no denying that.