Chapter 28

28

Lucien found himself smiling as soft daylight fell on Stella…

His daughter.

He chuckled as he spread his body on the floor. Over the past week, this had become his favorite pastime: lying on the rug beside her, listening to her quick breaths, inhaling her innocent scent of lavender soap, strawberry jam, and clean clothes. As he watched her golden curls move while she folded paper, his heart tightened with an ache…and love.

Somewhere in Mayfair, Chastity was about to marry another man. The thought filled him with a clawing, terrible pain of despair. Only by focusing on his daughter could he distract himself from it. Not with meaningless encounters he’d forget by morning.

Look at him now. How far he’d come.

“Like so, darling,” he said and folded his own paper with a perfect sharp corner to form a star.

The movement came easily, his fingers remembering the exact motions Chastity had shown him years ago. Back when he’d never imagined such a simple act of folding paper would one day be his most cherished activity.

The feel of paper under his fingers, the slight burn from running his finger along the fold, and seeing the result caused a sharp ache in his chest. As he watched Stella try to repeat his demonstration, he realized this might be his only remaining connection to the woman he loved.

Chastity…somewhere out there, without him. About to be married.

Forever lost to him.

Stella’s chubby three-year-old hands couldn’t quite manage the star’s folds, and she ended up crumpling it into a ball. With a proud expression, she handed it to him. “Look, Loosh! A star!”

He laughed softly, love and joy brimming over the torn pieces of his heart. Her accent sounded absolutely adorable. It would fade away, he was sure, over the years of living in Mayfair.She already looked like she had been born here, dressed in a white lace gown in the fashionable empire style—which had been hastily acquired the day after her arrival, along with dozens of other items of clothing and shoes and things a little girl needed…

Loosh… That was what she called him, still unable to say his full name.

How could one feel happy and destroyed at the same time?

He didn’t know. And yet, love for Stella—terrifying and wonderful—filled him to the brim.

One week. Just a week since he’d brought Stella home, and she’d changed everything.

Pryde was right. Taking care of his own child would be one thing he would never regret in his life. And yet it was one of the things that had frightened him the most.

“A star,” he said with a chuckle as he took the paper in his hand, as though it was the most precious thing in the world, made by those little fingers that still bore the traces of grime under the fingernails despite the nanny’s efforts. And even though his daughter’s star was nothing but a crumpled paper, he loved it. “This is beautiful, Stella.”

He’d never allow her to think for a moment he didn’t want her. He’d never say the words his mama had said to him. And he’d be ashamed to his death bed for having once allowed himself the cowardice of rejecting his own flesh and blood.

His second guiding star.

How lucky a man was to have just one. And he had two.

His lungs tightened, and tears blurred his vision.

That first night, Stella’s sleepy head lying on his chest as he carried her across the threshold of his London house. The weight of her, so light and yet so monumental, had nearly brought him to his knees. He’d stood there at the doors, frozen, until his housekeeper had gently pried the girl from his arms and set about making her comfortable.

“Beautiful,” he repeated, and Stella giggled.

She had the most adorable, charming giggle that never failed to infect him with joy. Stella turned her attention to the next strange object he’d thought he’d never see in his study…a pile of colorful wooden blocks. Next to the plate of unfinished bread smeared with butter and strawberry jam.

“A house!” she said proudly as she put one block on top of the other.

“Yes, a house,” he said. “Do we live here?”

“No. It’s my old house. It’s small and brown.”She put another stack of blocks one over another, five of them altogether. She picked white and yellow ones. “This is my new house. It’s big and white and…er…big.”

When he’d gone to collect Stella in Whitechapel, the condition of her house had completely repelled him.The air was thick with the scents of damp, moldy wood, unwashed bodies, and the faint odor of boiled cabbage. A thin, straw-filled, sagging bed stood in the corner, covered by a threadbare blanket.A single grimy window allowed a weak stream of daylight over the uneven floor covered with a few scattered rushes. A makeshift shelf stood against a wall with a worn Bible, a cracked mirror, and a tattered bonnet.

“Yes,” he said. “This big and white house is yours now.”

“Where’s Granny?” she asked as she picked up a wooden horse and galloped it over the Aubusson rug towards the tall tower of blocks.

She asked this question at least every hour, and every time his heart shattered all over again for her.He had offered Mrs. Murray the option to come and live with Stella and him as long as she wished. Surely, it was better for a three-year-old girl to have the only relative she’d ever known by her side. He would have been glad if Mrs. Murray had moved in with them. He’d even offered her a monthly allowance, to help her keep her health and provide whatever she might need.

But she didn’t want to stay in London and asked for money to go to Yorkshire instead, which he’d given her.

“She lives with her sister,” he said. “On a farm in Yorkshire.”

“Oh,” said Stella. “What is a farm?”

He picked up a few more blocks and laid them in a flat square. “It’s where piggies, chickens, and geese live.It’s better for her health. Fresh air. We can visit her soon, if you wish.”

“Yes,” she said. “I’d like to go to a farm to see Granny, chickens, and geese.”

But she’d ask him again soon where Granny was, and he’d tell her the same thing again, with as much love and kindness as he could muster, no matter how angry he was with her grandmother. She’d abandoned Stella.

But who was he to judge? Hadn’t he abandoned the child when he had first learned of her existence?

“Very well,” he said as he picked up a wooden figure of chicken and placed it into the “farm.” “We shall.”

She nodded and galloped with her horse towards the chicken in the farm. “I’m going to visit my granny and her chickens with my papa.”

Lucien didn’t think he’d heard her right at first. He went completely still. His throat closed, fighting a sudden onslaught of a raw, hot emotion. His eyes blurred with tears.He cleared his throat. She didn’t mean him, surely? But she had no other papa.

That was who he was.

Her papa .

“Yes, darling,” he said, his voice croaky and quiet. “You are going with your papa.”

This week had been filled with moments like these. Where he went from utter depression to soaring happiness in a blink. And every single one of these moments, he wanted to share with Chastity. And then with Dorian. He had found a daughter but lost his best friend and the woman he loved.

And yet, only a few weeks ago he had been a different man. He’d been a rake. Drinking, whoring around, living for no one but himself.

Now…he was someone’s papa .

This precious little human being he never knew he wanted was entirely dependent on him. And how happy it made him just simply playing with blocks with her, giving her a piece of buttered toast. And what ecstasy a simple little word—“papa”—could bring him.

Better than any orgy in Elysium.

Chastity’s poem was right. He had been running away from himself all along while everything he ever wanted was right there, inside of him. This entire time.

Although he’d denied it, he had been in love with one woman his entire life. He’d had his best friend who had been his true family since their shared, broken childhood. And the love he’d desperately sought from his parents had always been in his heart. And now that love was pouring straight into Stella.

“My papa and I live in a big white house,” she said as she mimed the horse talking to the chicken. “And there’s always buttered toast with jam any time I want it. I also have a nanny, but I like my papa best. My papa is lonely. So it’s good that I came to keep him company.”

Lonely… But he didn’t feel lonely anymore. Not like he had before.

You’ll die pox-ridden and alone…

The words no longer haunted him. Because he had Stella. He had faced the most frightening thing of all…accepting he had a child.Could he do the next incredibly scary thing—fight for the woman he loved? Give her what she wanted?

In that moment, looking at his daughter’s relaxed face, Lucien felt something shift inside him. The last walls around his heart crumbled, leaving him raw and exposed, but also light.

He loved Stella. He loved Chastity. And for the first time in his life, love didn’t terrify him. Instead, it filled him with strength and resolve. He needed to be worthy of Chastity’s love. Of Stella’s trust she’d shown by calling him her papa.

Lucien sat up, his mind whirling. Then he stood, his chest barely able to take in enough air. Stella looked up at him, the horse frozen in her little hand.

He’d been a fool, running from love all these years. Chastity had seen the best in him, had offered him her heart, and he’d nearly thrown it away. But now, with Stella in his life and Chastity’s words echoing in his mind, he saw everything with startling clarity.

“Stella,” he said, his voice thick, “what would you say to an adventure?”

Stella’s violet eyes lit up, and she stood up with him, the wooden horse falling with a soft thud against the rug. “Yes, Papa! ’Venture!”

Lucien chuckled, his heart swelling as he marched towards the servant bell and pulled it. “Excellent.We have a wedding to stop.”