On the first Sunday of her betrothal, Jane frowned at her reflection in the looking glass. When had her eyes become so sunken and why was the darkish magenta beneath them refusing to dissipate now that she only rose once a night to care for Robert? Pursing her lips, she spotted the deeper creases on her forehead and immediately slackened her face. Breathing a sigh of relief that her porcelain skin did not remain so ghastly wrinkled, she found little to cheer about in her complexion. Long gone was the carefree maiden who danced and dined with only the need for a suitor. Staring back at her was a woman of wisdom and experience, who ran a household and raised a babe not of her own making.

Imagining her mother’s nervous energies fussing over her loss of bloom, Jane wondered what her mother would think if she knew her daughter had caught the eye of a Duke’s son? A muffled cry on the other side of her bedroom door forced Jane to rise from her dressing table and rush to the door. A fussy Robin howled in the maid Alice’s arms until Jane took him, but his cries continued at a reduced frequency.

“I’m sorry, Miss, he did not care for his bath. I tried to warm the water, but he did not want me, no way and no how.” Alice dipped into a curtsy.

“Fret not, the boy is gaining his teeth and troublesome for all.” As if understanding his aunt’s words, Robin pulled her free hand to his mouth to gnaw on her fingers. A razor sharp pierce of her thumb made Jane jerk her hand away. A shocked, momentary silence from Robin was followed by a renewed howl louder than his earlier cries.

Jane dismissed the maid and carried Robin further into her room to shush his cries and attempt to placate  the child. Her door remained open and on her third trek  across the room, her partner in the babe’s parenting  surfaced with a solution. Jane pushed Mr.Hamilton’s hand away.

“No, you must be mad!”

He ignored her fussing and smiled at Robin whose cries had diminished at the comforting bass voice of the man he knew best.

“This is a long standing Hamilton tradition. I watched my mother soothe my younger brothers thus.” Graham Hamilton dipped a finger into the glass of amber whisky he held and offered it to the teething Robin. The boy greedily grabbed the man’s thicker finger just as he had Jane’s, not caring a whit about the raisined, purplish skin scarred from last summer’s fire. Jane gasped to see Graham’s injury, an intimacy she had rarely been afforded.

“Does it —?” Jane gulped as Robin cooed at the strong taste and numbing effects of the spirit that dripped from Mr. Hamilton’s finger refusing to relinquish the man’s hand. “Is it painful?”

Graham beamed at the boy.

“Ha! Your first taste and in love already. Ye be a Scotsman through and through there, laddie.”

Removing his hand to dip once more and give the child a second dose, he looked up at Jane once the boy’s brief squabble ended at the return of his medicine. “The pain subsided months ago, but I’m afraid they shall always be misfigured.”

“They are not misfigured!” Jane exclaimed, popping her mouth closed at her outburst. When she spoke again, her tone evened. “I think they are very fine hands and they saved so many lives that night . . .”

Graham studied Jane’s face, but knew the woman’s sincerity and love for him already drove her nearly as mad as he. In fact, he had attempted to broach the subject of marital relations to no avail. Jane Bennet demanded a traditional path to marriage even without the need for chaperone or social inducement such nonsense required.

“We must leave if we are to make services in town. I ordered the carriage or I would have been here sooner to help with the child.”

Jane suddenly felt bereft at the idea of leaving Robert alone at home. He could not attend services. Though he had been baptized in the small chapel abutting Starvet House two weeks after the Darcys left, with Jane and Graham standing as godparents, it was too soon for the questions that would surely surface. Officially listed for the Kirk as Robert Wickham, their story that Lydia had been married before George Wickham was killed in London was all the registrar required to save the child’s soul.

The Scottish authorities would think his parents were married in England, and the English authorities would be told they were married in Scotland. And hopefully, there would never be occasion for the truth to come to light.

“But Robin shall—”