time of asking but rushed out of the house. Fotherby looked down at Cassandra who now gripped his hands in her own.

“Will you take Philip? He should not be in there.”

“And take him from his wife? I think that is precisely where he should be.”

“He has lost his senses, Lieutenant. I am afraid for him almost as much as I am for Rosie.”

They waited almost an hour before the midwife arrived and at once she insisted that Portland left the room. Ignoring all the other people in the house he walked down the stairs and into the dining room where he sat alone at the long table with only the bottle and glass for company. David Portland returned to find the house in anxious waiting, unable to find from anyone what had happened, for only his eldest brother see...

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