Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

“ Y ou have callers, my lady.”

Her butler’s report startled Lottie from the book she’d been halfheartedly reading. It was a dreary, rainy day, and she had overslept this morning, having spent most of the night at the Abernathy ball, much of which had passed in a champagne-soaked blur following her mad coupling with Brandon in the salon.

She wasn’t expecting visitors.

“Did you tell them I’m not at home?” she asked patiently, closing the volume and setting it aside.

For she had made it clear this morning—or perhaps, rather, this afternoon—when she had risen, that she was in no mood for callers. Everything yet felt far too raw and jagged within her, after her second encounter with Brandon. Twice in one day. And once in public, no less. Her body ached in strange places thanks to the creative nature of their couplings.

How had she managed to find herself in such a delicious, foolish predicament?

“Er, yes, madam,” said her butler with politic parsimony of phrase. “I did indeed say that you are not at home.”

A muffled bark drew her attention then, sounding from somewhere in the hall beyond.

Cat?

It couldn’t be. Could it?

Another bark, and she had to believe that it could.

Lottie frowned. “Does the caller have a young girl with him and a spaniel, by any chance?”

“He does.”

Brandon was here. With his daughter and her willful little dog. Her heart leapt, and she couldn’t say why.

“See them in, if you please.”

“Of course, madam.” With a bow, the butler disappeared.

The energetic hound entered first, bowling into the room in a flash of brown-and-white fur. Pandora came next, trotting in a girlish skip that was hardly well-mannered. Brandon, elegant and wickedly handsome, was last to cross the threshold.

Cat launched herself into Lottie’s lap and instantly began licking her face with unrestrained exuberance.

“Oh Cat, you mustn’t. Missus Lady Grenspell don’t want no face lickings,” Pandora announced as Lottie attempted to placate the spaniel with some ear scratches.

“Blast it, Pandy. I told you the damned dog should stay at home,” Brandon growled, stalking across the room to pluck Cat from Lottie’s lap.

But not before she had received a sound tongue bath from the pup. Idly, she wondered if dog saliva was dripping from her chin.

“Duke, you ought not to say no-no words,” Pandy informed him, eyes wide.

He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like another oath. Lottie tried not to be amused by the vignette before her and failed. There was something undeniably adorable about watching father and daughter. Pandy was the perfect, rambunctious foil for the devastatingly handsome rakehell duke. But she would not allow herself to soften toward the man any more than she would allow herself to make love with him again.

Twice had been enough. She’d had her pleasure, and now she’d happily find it somewhere else.

Liar , said a voice within that she promptly ignored.

“Brandon,” she greeted with a cool aplomb that belied the fluttering in her stomach. “To what do I owe the dubious honor of your call?”

“Dubious? I’m affronted.” Holding the wriggling pup against his broad chest, he seated himself on a nearby settee. “I have a favor to ask of you, if you must know.”

Interesting. Also, not what she had expected.

She watched him struggling to contain Cat with undisguised amusement. “A favor? Of me? I’m positively agog.”

“Pandy, no playing with the bric-à-brac on Lady Grenfell’s tables,” he sternly advised the girl, who was unabashedly exploring the room with her hands rather than her eyes.

At that moment, she was holding a framed picture of Grenfell in her hands. Lottie didn’t know why she kept it about—perhaps as a reminder of how dreadful a mistake she’d made in marrying him. As it was, she didn’t think she’d mind if the girl dropped it and the glass shattered to bits.

“It’s only Grenfell,” she said. “She may as well pitch it into the fire.”

“Hardly the tender sentiment of a contented wife,” Brandon observed shrewdly.

Cat finally succeeded in extricating herself from his hold and leapt to the carpet, trotting after Pandy.

Lottie had no wish to discuss her unhappy marriage with him. Or anyone.

So she raised a brow. “What is the favor you need, Brandon?”

He winced. “No time for small talk?”

“ Brandon .”

“What’s this, Missus Lady Grenspell?” Pandora asked loudly from across the room.

Lottie glanced in the girl’s direction and realized she was now holding a sketch that Lottie herself had drawn what felt like a lifetime ago.

“You must call me Lottie, dearest,” she reminded Pandy. “And what do you think it is?”

“A cat?” Lottie guessed, wrinkling her brow as she studied the framed sketch in her chubby-fingered hand.

“Pandy, my girl, look with your eyes alone,” he said, with another long-suffering sigh.

“It is indeed a cat,” Lottie answered. “But you may hold the sketch if you like, dear.”

“Missus Lady—Lottie,” Pandy corrected herself belatedly, regarding Brandon with triumph, “has said I may hold it.”

“It’s only a sketch I made in my youth,” she explained to Brandon. “My favorite cat, Mr. Whiskers.”

“Where’s Mr. Whiskers now?” Pandy asked with the na?ve innocence of a child who has no notion of mortality.

“He was quite old, and he grew sick several winters ago,” she explained gently, her throat going thick with sadness at the reminder of her beloved cat, even after the passage of so much time.

“Oh,” the girl said with feeling.

“Do put the frame back where it belongs, Pandy,” Brandon commanded. “Before Cat eats it.”

Lottie eyed the dog, who was sniffing at Pandora’s skirts. “Has Cat been eating things she shouldn’t?”

“She appears to have a fondness for table legs and the gowns of nursemaids,” he drawled.

“Oh dear.” Lottie cast a speculative glance in the direction of her own tables.

“Fortunately, you’re not a nursemaid,” he said.

“But I do have tables, Brandon.”

“Pandy will make certain Cat doesn’t cause mischief whilst she’s visiting.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she swiveled her head back to the handsome duke currently inhabiting her settee. “What do you mean, whilst she’s visiting ?”

“Ah.” He gave her a rueful look, running a hand along his sharp, whisker-shadowed jaw. “That is the, er, favor I must beg you.”

She sighed. “Go on.”

“I had to sack the last nursemaid after what you told me,” he said quietly. “And the maid I cozened into taking up the situation had a fit of the vapors last evening when I was at the ball and Cat tore away half her skirts.”

“Oh dear.”

“Quite.” His smile was pained.

Lottie couldn’t say why she was taking an absurd enjoyment from his plight. Only that she was.

“Cat has discovered she possesses an affinity for eating skirts,” she mused. “What makes you think she won’t attempt to make mine her dinner?”

“Yours are silk.”

Quick with an answer, every time. The man’s tongue was despicably talented, and Lottie could attest to that personally, in more ways than one.

“I fail to see why that should matter,” she countered, clinging to her patience.

“Cat doesn’t prefer to eat silk, as far as I can tell.”

She stared at him, searching for a hint of laughter. A tiny twitch in his jaw. The wink of an eye. Anything to suggest he was jesting.

Nothing.

“Have you offered her silk as a dining option?” she asked suspiciously.

“Er, no. Pig trotters, cheese, and black French twill appear to be favorites, however.”

“Perhaps Cat is a dog who is also part goat,” she reasoned with a grin.

Brandon winced. “Either way, I must attend to a meeting where I cannot, for reasons you likely can discern, have Pandy as an accompaniment. You have been her champion. I was hoping you might be amenable to keeping her here with you for several hours.”

A meeting where the child wouldn’t be welcome. Her mind instantly flew to his need of a bride. Was he depositing his daughter with her so that he could court another woman? And after what had happened between the two of them yesterday?

She stiffened her spine, her levity dying, for she disliked the notion immensely. “As you said, Brandon, I’m not a nursemaid.”

“Must I beg?”

A vase containing freshly cut flowers teetered as Pandy picked up another frame to examine it, and Cat stood on her hind legs, her front paws on the girl’s skirts.

“Do try not to knock over the flowers, dear,” she called. “I’m afraid Cat would try to eat them and get dreadfully sick.”

“I’m sorry, Lottie. I didn’t mean to,” the child said, her voice contrite.

“Lottie,” Brandon said urgently, his voice low. “I’m desperate. It’s only for a few hours.”

“Off to court Lady Lavinia?” she asked, turning her attention back to him.

“Jealous, my dear?”

It scarcely behooved him to taunt her. She might have pointed that out to the conceited oaf seated in her drawing room requesting a favor of her. But she didn’t want him to see just how affected she was by the thought of him gallivanting with another woman.

“Why should I be?” she asked coolly, fussing with the gathering of her overskirt. “Our association is at an end.”

“Is it?” His eyes flicked over her body with frank sensual intent.

And damn the man, but that green-eyed glance alone was enough to make her nipples hard.

“Of course it is. As we discussed, it was nothing more than a temporary aberration. A brief surrender to madness.”

“Not the table leg, Cat!” Pandy declared.

Lottie diverted her attention to her Louis Quinze table, which was being gnawed on by the spaniel.

“No, Cat,” Brandon commanded. “Bad Cat.”

“Do you think her name ever confuses her?” Lottie wondered idly.

Looking guilty, the dog backed away from the table, leaving it relatively unscathed.

“It was hardly an aberration, and I believe you know that,” Brandon added to her in a low aside. “Nor was it madness.”

Heat blossomed in her belly. The very air in the room suddenly felt heated and sparking with electricity. But she wouldn’t think of that now. Wouldn’t focus on the sensations he evoked. The yearning starting to burn deep within her. She’d had what she wanted from him. At least, that was what she was telling herself.

“Whatever it was, it shan’t be repeated,” she told him sharply.

“Have you any sweets?” Pandy wanted to know, apparently having grown weary of inspecting the framed pictures and sketches Lottie kept on the low table and moving on to the window, where she peered into the street below, her face so near to the pane that it left a smudge when she backed away.

“I’m certain my cook has some in the kitchens,” Lottie told her, a rush of fondness for the child going through her.

It was impossible not to like the girl. Pandy was filled with energy, boundless spirit, sweet charm, and a hint of naughtiness. She ran circles around her father, and that also pleased Lottie. If anyone needed to be brought to his knees by a tiny human, it was the Duke of Brandon. His love for his daughter, however, was undeniable. And remarkable. Many men in his position would have sent her away and never thought of Pandy again.

“Does that mean you will grant me this favor?” Brandon asked.

She wished she didn’t find him every bit as charming as his daughter, albeit in a different sense. But she did. When he smiled at her, it was difficult to deny him anything he wanted. Including herself.

But she was wise enough to know that she could use the circumstances to her advantage.

“I will,” she decided, “in exchange for a favor of my own.”

He grinned. “I ought to have known. What is the favor?”

“When I decide upon it, I’ll let you know,” she told him.

His eyes narrowed. “What if I don’t like the favor in question?”

She beamed at him. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”

He glowered at her for a moment before relenting. “Very well. You’ll have your favor in return for mine.”

“Excellent.” It required all the self-discipline she possessed to keep from rubbing her hands together in diabolical glee.

Now to think about what favor she would request. And to keep Cat from eating her tables. She rose from her chair and shook out her gown, casting a wily eye in the direction of the spaniel, lest she hatch any ideas about the ribbon trimming and gauzy overskirt.

“Come along, Pandy. Let us see what treats we can find for you and Cat.” She held out her hand to the girl.

Pandy happily skipped toward her, the dog racing her until the child nearly tripped. Lottie had a feeling it was going to be an interesting several hours. And strangely, she was looking forward to it.

The Wicked Dukes Society—or, to be more specific, its founders—convened in the drawing room at the Duke of Camden’s Grosvenor Square town house. There was brandy and cheroots. Bawdy jokes and an overuse of curses. It was decidedly not an appropriate setting for one’s still relatively newfound four-year-old imp and her table-and-nursemaid-eating dog.

“There’s been some news from Wingfield Hall,” Brandon announced grimly to the assemblage when a lull in discussion had occurred.

“News?” Riverdale repeated. “I don’t think I like the sound of that or the accompanying expression on your face.”

Brandon took a fortifying sip of brandy. “And well you shouldn’t. It’s my grandmother, I’m afraid. After all these years of abandoning the estate to my care, she has apparently made an unexpected visit.”

“Bloody hell,” Camden swore.

“Have you received word from her?” King asked, drinking something that decidedly didn’t resemble brandy.

Another of his potions, presumably.

“From the servants,” Brandon clarified.

“And?” Richford wanted to know, raising a brow. “What have they said?”

“Grandmother is suspicious,” he said, repeating verbatim what his butler had relayed. “There are certain…rooms that are likely a concern. To say nothing of our next house party, which is set for a month from now. If she chooses to remain in residence…”

“We’ll have to cancel the house party,” Whitby finished for him.

“But the invitations have already been accepted, as have the payments,” Riverdale pointed out.

And they all knew the payments were an immense sum, divided six ways still enough to be considered a small fortune for each of them. The lucrative nature of the Society was one of the reasons they continued hosting their lavish fêtes at Wingfield Hall. Earning their own funds rather than accepting the familial coffers that had been left them—in varying states of empty and full—had given each man a sense of purpose that had been previously lacking.

But for Brandon, it was more than that. He had been diverting the sums to the orphanage that had been his mother’s favored charity. A small, secret way to pay her honor, but one that was important to him.

He sighed now, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’m well aware of all the problems facing us if my grandmother insists upon staying at Wingfield Hall, and I greatly regret offering it as the location for our Society gatherings, given what she’s been doing.”

Forcing him to marry. Threatening to give Wingfield Hall to Cousin Horace. Now intruding upon the estate she hadn’t visited in years, a month before they were to host a gathering with carefully selected members of the Society. His head was beginning to ache just thinking about it all.

He took another hearty drink of brandy, hoping to dull some of the pain.

“Wingfield Hall is perfectly situated near to London,” King said. “We all agreed upon it for its convenience and the grotto. The fault isn’t yours, old chap.”

Not entirely, perhaps. But he would be the one to pay the price with his own sacrifice. Which brought him to another topic of concern he needed to raise with the rest of his friends.

“As King knows, my grandmother has recently taken a notion into her head that I must marry or she’ll give Wingfield Hall to a distant cousin,” he blurted. “It’s her estate, inherited from her family, and she has the right to do it. I simply…never thought I’d see the day when she would take my birthright and give it away to someone else.”

“You have to get married ?” Whitby choked out, looking not just astonished but horrified by the idea.

Indeed, with the inflection he put on the word, Whitby might have said you have to take a leap from the nearest pier whilst wearing leaden weights about your ankles instead. The revulsion was the same.

“I do,” he admitted grimly, thinking of Lottie again.

She had looked nothing short of luscious this afternoon. He’d wanted to devour her. To gather her up in his arms and carry her to the nearest room containing a bed, where he could happily enact all the lurid fantasies that had been haunting his thoughts last night when he’d been alone in the darkness of the night.

“My sincere condolences.” Whitby shuddered, then raised his glass in a mock salute. “To the memory of the Duke of Brandon. May he rest in peace.”

“I’m marrying, not dying, you arse.”

“Is there a difference?” King asked wryly.

Damn it. Not much of one, as far as Brandon was concerned. Even if the thought of wedding one woman in particular didn’t terrify him nearly as much as it ought to. Indeed, the notion of marrying Lottie somehow held unexpected appeal. Waking to her every morning, shagging her silly each night…

But no, he mustn’t think of that now. There were five pairs of eyes trained upon him, awaiting his answer.

“Perhaps not. But rest assured, I’ll do whatever it takes to secure Wingfield Hall for the Society’s sake,” he vowed.

“Even so, marriage , Brandon?” Whitby shook his head. “You needn’t go that far. Surely there’s another way. One that isn’t so drastic. So completely bloody terrible.”

“Have you made the acquaintance of my grandmother? She has the tenacity of an ox, a dog, and a mule combined. I am persuaded she could put any general on a battlefield to shame.”

“I have met her,” Whitby conceded with a wince. “Excellent point, old chap. The old harridan is rather terrifying.”

“Sounds as if the both of us will be married men soon,” Camden announced grimly.

“You?” Brandon turned to his friend, still surprised though Lottie had warned him as much on their carriage ride from Sidmouth’s wedding breakfast.

“Me,” Cam confirmed. “Although the lady has only just consented to be my wife—and with a list of stipulations five times longer than the bloody Magna Carta.”

“Stipulations?” Now this was interesting to Brandon, the very thought of his iron-willed friend bending to a prospective bride’s demands. “Never tell us you’ve fallen in love.”

“Christ no,” his friend reassured him. “You know I haven’t a heart. Nothing but a husk where it ought to have been.”

Brandon would have said the same for himself not long ago. But that had changed when Pandy had stormed into his life with her outrageousness, her utter lack of proper manners, and her dog perversely named Cat. Now, by contrast, he felt too much. It was as if his heart had grown large and tender and new again, softened by his daughter’s innocence in a way he otherwise would never have known.

He didn’t like it, but that didn’t make it any less true.

“Who is the fortunate lady in question?” King intoned, raising his glass. “Perhaps a toast is in order.”

“Miss Rosamund Payne,” Cam said.

“The chit with the pet squirrel who rides on her shoulder?” Riverdale inquired, sounding aghast.

“It’s not a squirrel, Riverdale,” Cam corrected. “It’s an African grey parrot, and yes, she does occasionally squire the thing about on her shoulder. Her name is Megs, and she delights in calling me all manner of names. The latest is ‘gormless shite,’ I believe.”

“I thought the chit’s name was Rosamund, not Megs,” King said, frowning into his glass. “And that’s a hell of a thing to be calling one’s future husband.”

“The parrot, you dolt,” Cam elaborated. “Her parrot is called Megs, and the bird in question is the one who has been heaping insults upon me. Miss Payne is quite obviously called Miss Payne.”

“Miss Payne. How very formal. I reckon you don’t have to marry her because you’ve bedded her, then?” Whitby inquired.

“Has anyone recently told you that you’re a rude prick?” Cam asked him conversationally.

“Always.” Whitby took a deep inhalation of his cheroot and blew a perfect cloud of smoke into the air above him, unrepentant.

“Stop nattering, the two of you,” Riverdale admonished. “You’re worse than a pair of squabbling biddies. We need to come to a decision about Wingfield Hall and the Society house party. If we want to cancel it, then we should act now.”

“I can’t afford to cancel it,” Cam admitted, his cheeks going ruddy.

“Can’t afford it?” King frowned. “What the devil do you mean?”

“I mean…I need my share of the funds,” Cam said. “I’m pockets to let, and I’ve already spent the blunt. It’s also why I need to wed Miss Payne.”

“And her squirrel,” King reminded him.

“Damn your hide, it’s a parrot, not a squirrel,” Cam gritted. “A parrot I strongly dislike, mind you.”

“Pockets to let,” Brandon repeated. “This is bloody news, Cam. Why did you not say something sooner? I’d be more than happy to lend you some funds.”

“This isn’t the sort of debt that can be erased with a mere loan,” Cam said, “though I do thank you for the generous offer.”

“I’ll gift it to you, then,” Brandon suggested. “Your problem is easily enough solved without resorting to nuptials.”

But Cam shook his head, his expression turning mulish. “I don’t want a gift. A man does have his pride, even if it’s all that he has left.”

“Still,” King argued, “you should have told one of us.”

“For what purpose? I’ll not accept alms from any of you. The funds from the Society were sufficient to keep me afloat for a time…until they weren’t. I’m afraid when my father decided to apply himself to the family tradition of being a dissolute wastrel, he excelled. In fact, it was probably the only thing he was good at, aside from bedding light-skirts and making my mother miserable. But even his profligacy pales in comparison to my brother’s.”

Like Brandon and the rest of their inner circle, Cam had no loyalty to his dead sire. They were united in their cause—pursuit of pleasure and the destruction of their fathers’ bitter legacies of unhappiness and destruction. For Brandon, that cause had taken on a new shape. He hadn’t ever supposed he would marry, but now that Grandmother demanded it, he hadn’t a choice.

He wondered idly if he ever had.

Likely not, and it had been the height of foolishness to imagine he’d had the liberty to rule his own life as he saw fit. He’d been born to be the next Duke of Brandon, and nothing had altered him from that course. He could almost hear his bastard of a father laughing from the grave.

“You’re certain you want to marry the squirrel chit?” Whitby asked Cam, retrieving Brandon from his woolgathering.

“Damn you, it’s not a squirrel but a parrot, and I don’t want to marry her, but it seems the preferable option at the moment.”

“Preferable to?” Brandon prodded.

“Selling my soul to the devil,” Cam offered, and not without bittersweet irony.

“I do hate to tell you, old chap,” King drawled, “but you’ve just given the very definition of the parson’s mousetrap.”

“Better the devil you know, et cetera,” Cam said, raising his brandy in salute, his features set in grim acceptance of his fate.

And in that moment, something occurred to Brandon. The devil one knew was decidedly better than the devil one didn’t. He knew Lottie—intimately, if not the depths of her soul. He liked Lottie. Pandy liked Lottie. This was the devil he knew.

She was also the devil he intended to marry. He just had to convince her. He had offered for her once and she’d refused him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t ask her a second time. He didn’t want to marry a debutante. He wanted her.

“To what must be done,” he said, raising his own glass, “like it or not.”

“To what must be done,” his friends echoed in unison, clinking their goblets together.

“And to who must be done,” Whitby added slyly to ensuing laughter.

King raised his glass again. “Also, to squirrels.”

“Bloody hell, King, it’s a goddamned parrot,” Cam grumbled.