The window of possibility for when he could have fathered this alleged child was narrowing significantly. He'd gotten back to England in 1888, and had that whole entanglement with Bella Scrimgeour, but despite what everyone in the world including her father thought, he hadn't actually slept with her. So it could only have been summer of that year at the earliest, and summer of 1889 at the latest — at the end of the season he'd gotten involved with Melody again, and he'd just been sulking around Excalibur from then basically until the day the two of them unexpectedly eloped. And, actually, if the child had been born before they'd eloped, that meant... what was nine months before February? June — so late summer of 1888 to early summer of 1889. He had less than a year of time to go through in order to figure this out.

Melody was talking to him again.

"Work," he lied, gesturing vaguely at the mess of paperwork on his desk. "Trying to get a big contract off the ground. Once I'm finished with this deal, though, I won't be so busy anymore. Promise."