After the fourth day in a row of grueling parliamentary sessions, Hawk was ready to hang himself with his cravat.

Sitting through the sessions was his duty to his title and to the Crown, but surely there was a limit to how much any man could be expected to withstand arguments on gossip-column caricatures and Princess Cariboo sightings.

There were so many more important topics to discuss. Construction of the Waterloo bridge. The reintroduction of the gold sovereign. Hawk finally escaping the Palace of Westminster to spend time with his family.

He had been married less than a week and already one of the best parts of Hawk’s day was returning home from Parliament, knowing Faith and Christina would be in the house waiting for him.

When his carriage pulled up at the front walk to their townhome, an entire day’s exhaustion vanished into the air. Hawk all but sprinted up to the doorstep, letting himself in and beating his driver to the task.

But when he opened the door, nobody was there to greet him. Not even the maid.

He frowned and tilted his head. The townhouse was silent. Perhaps the honeymoon, such as it was, was over. Faith and Christina likely had any number of better things to do than sit about waiting for Parliament to wind down, while their stomachs growled in displeasure.

The house was almost eerily quiet.

Before his mother had fallen ill, she had been the one to greet him. Often with recriminations about this, or complaints about that, but at least he had known she was well.

Since becoming bedridden, she had ceased to greet him by the door, but her wracking cough was violent enough to make the house tremble. Yet there were no such rumbles.

Alarm coursed through his muscles. For a woman who was not willing to leave her bedchamber, complete silence might mean something horrible had befallen her. Something too dreadful to consider.

Hawk sprinted up the stairs to the sleeping quarters and skidded to a stop just outside his mother’s receiving parlor.

She was not in bed, but nor had she succumbed to an untimely demise while Hawk was at Parliament.

His mother’s quarters had been rearranged such that she was now bundled not into her four-poster canopy, but rather upon a chaise longue beneath an uncurtained window.

He could hardly see her beneath the multiple layers of old woolen blankets and suspiciously bright-colored satin pillows piled up on the chaise.

The tea table had been dragged from the unused corner of the room in which it had stood for the past several years, and now stood between his mother’s chaise longue and a footstool, upon which perched Hawk’s wife.

Before his disbelieving eyes, his mother cast a handful of cards toward Faith’s face.

Just as he stepped forward to intervene, Faith tossed two playing cards of her own in his mother’s direction with a gleeful, “…and I’ll raise you three!”

Hawk’s mind blanked. What the devil? This was the throwing card game the Grenvilles had been playing. Faith had taught it to his mother.

His mother was out of her sickroom tossing playing cards about with a low-born commoner.

He backed away from the open door and collapsed against the wall in awe and relief. Mother looked better than she had in a month. She was going to pull through.

More importantly, so was his family. Somehow Faith had managed to soften the one woman Hawk could’ve sworn could not be melted.

He had no idea how she had done the impossible, but her methods were likely the exact talents that enabled her to be a beloved teacher to students who had never heard a kind word prior to becoming wards of the St. Giles School for Girls.

Compared to some of those challenges, he supposed gentling his mother had been child’s play.

The corner of Hawk’s mouth lifted. Literal child’s play. He would not soon forget the sight of his mother tossing playing cards with abandon.

He peeked around the corner one last time. He could not rightly claim that he was looking at his wife with new eyes. Not when he had always loved her.

But for a short while, he had allowed the anger in his heart to blind him from the treasure he already had.

If Faith could work such magic with Mother, surely all of them working together could turn a household of virtual strangers into a true family. Create a true home.

He turned away from the laughing women and made his way to the end of the short corridor where Christina’s bedchamber stood.

She sat in the center of her small room, on a rug Hawk had never seen before but strongly suspected had come from her old bedchamber. Or at least from her grandparents. A ring of even more brightly colored pillows encircled her, several of which were adorned with one or more dolls.

Hawk stepped into the room and inclined his head at the maid folding freshly laundered pinafores into Christina’s armoire.

“May I join you?” he asked his daughter.

She pointed toward one of the pillows. “Your spot is there.”

“I have a spot?” he asked in surprise.

“Your spot is by your doll,” she said impatiently, as if he were being purposefully dimwitted.

“I have a doll?” Hawk echoed in bewilderment.

Christina leaned forward with a huff and yanked up the doll that had been lying on the pillow she indicated. Short, light brown hair, a wide smile, evening dress far more elegant than anything remaining in Hawk’s wardrobe.

He sat down on the pillow and accepted the doll. “This is me?”

“That’s Hawkridge Doll,” Christina said, as if explaining the obvious to a baby. She pointed at each of the figures sitting on the pillows. “That’s Aunt Faith Doll, Grandmother Doll, Grandfather Doll, and Christina Doll. Plus their animals. Hawkridge Doll is the newest.”

He blinked at her. “When did you get it?”

“Grandmother and Grandfather sent it to me.” Christina marched a wooden pony from one pillow to another. “I promised to try and love it.”

Hawk glanced down at the doll in his hands then back to his daughter. “Why would you promise to try to love Hawkridge Doll?”

“Well… He hasn’t been with us for as long as the rest of the dolls, but he’s still family.” Christina’s hazel eyes hesitantly met his. “Aren’t we?”

Hawk nodded and walked his doll across the carpet to press a kiss to the top of Christina Doll’s curly head. “Forever and ever.”