Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

S he had broken the cardinal rule of taking a lover.

Lottie stared at the missive on her writing desk, overwhelmed by the cloying grasp of dread. The masculine scrawl was familiar. The tone was teasing, intimate, and she had been awaiting it from the moment she had risen that morning, beset by an acute sense of eagerness she hadn’t been able to shake, despite how very much she didn’t want to feel it.

The note itself was nothing extraordinary. An invitation to tea with himself, Pandy, and Cat. It was also one she couldn’t—mustn’t—accept. The time had finally come to face what could be avoided no longer.

There was no doubt that Lottie was going to have to put an end to her affair with the Duke of Brandon. A fortnight had passed since that glorious night of lovemaking at Brandon’s house in St John’s Wood. Fourteen precious days and nights which had passed in a blur of pleasure. They had met most evenings. At his love nest, in his carriage, in an alcove at a ball, in her own bedroom where she had not previously allowed another lover.

And in all this time, she had never, not once tired of him. She woke, counting the minutes and hours until she could see him again. Their lovemaking had grown, their knowledge of each other’s bodies rendering each assignation better than the last. Frantic coupling or all-evening seduction, it didn’t matter. Their every interaction left her longing for him even more.

It was a grievous mistake. One she knew too well. She had allowed Brandon past her defenses. But now, the time had come to resurrect the wall she’d built around her shattered heart. Before it was too late. Caring for him was one thing. What she was beginning to feel now was so much more, which was why it had to be stopped.

One never developed too much tender sentiment for a lover. Because doing so inevitably led to peril. Heartbreak, disappointment, disillusionment. She had suffered once, and she would not do so again.

It was settled.

Putting pen to paper, she composed her answer to Brandon’s invitation, and for the first time in a fortnight, she declined.

“Jenkinson,” she called to her lady’s maid, who was across the chamber, busying herself with her duties for the morning.

“Yes, my lady?”

“See that this note is sent to His Grace, the Duke of Brandon, if you please,” she said, holding the folded missive out for her lady’s maid to take. “And have my carriage readied as well. I’m going to pay a call to some friends today.”

A call to all her friends. Every friend she could find. Anything to keep her from giving in to the desire to see Brandon again.

“Of course, Lady Grenfell,” said the ever-efficient Jenkinson. “Shall I prepare a promenade dress?”

Oh, how she longed to don a tea dress and join Brandon, Pandy, and Cat. She adored Pandy, and she was inordinately fond of Cat. But she had fallen into the same pattern each day of vowing she would not spend more time with the duke before swiftly giving in.

“A promenade dress would be just the thing,” she answered, forcing a smile she didn’t feel.

It was for the best, she told herself. She had known from the start their affair could not last. Best to draw the blood now and then find the time to heal. Already, she knew she could not bear the day when she would inevitably see the notice of his engagement in The Times .

This had to stop.

Distraction was what she needed. Distraction and distance.

A great deal of both.

Her first stop was a call upon Rosamund, who received her in the drawing room, Megs not far on a perch, presiding over the call like a regal, feathered queen.

“Lady, lady,” chirped Megs. “Landlubber.”

“I didn’t expect you today,” Rosamund said without censure. “I’ve scarcely seen you over the past fortnight. Where have you been?”

Heat crept up her cheeks. She couldn’t precisely say she’d been in the Duke of Brandon’s bed, could she?

“I’ve been quite busy,” she offered brightly instead, hoping her friend couldn’t read the discomfiture that was likely written all over her face.

“Busy?” Rosamund gave her a knowing look. “That sounds rather intriguing. Do tell me what you have been doing whilst I have been dreading my impending nuptials.”

“Dreading, dreading,” said Megs. “Gormless shite.”

“Megs,” Rosamund chastised, giving the African grey a hard look. “No pistachios for you if you’re going to misbehave again.”

“Pistache,” the parrot chirped, then made a trilling sound followed by a whistle, her head cocked. “Megs wants pistache.”

“Then hush,” Rosamund ordered sternly, “and you shall have your pistachios.”

Megs made a kissing sound and ruffled her feathers.

“Perhaps you should tell me why you’re dreading your marriage to Camden first,” Lottie said, not wanting to talk about herself.

“Gormless shite,” Megs repeated.

Rosamund wagged her finger at the bird before sighing. “I suppose it is common enough to have misgivings before such a tremendous undertaking. Is it not?”

“Of course it is, dearest,” she reassured her friend. “Particularly when one is entering a marriage of convenience.”

“Were you nervous before you married Grenfell?” Rosamund asked and then winced. “Forgive me for asking. I shouldn’t have done so.”

“You need not apologize. I don’t mind speaking of it, particularly if it proves helpful to a friend.”

Besides, she was grateful for anything that would keep her mind from Brandon.

Blast it, there she went again, thinking of him .

“I was nervous, as I recall,” she added, forcing herself to return to the subject at hand. “I was hopelessly in love and terribly na?ve. I didn’t know the first thing about being a wife. Tell me, is it that you fear you’ll prove incompatible with Camden after you marry?”

That had never been a consideration of Lottie’s, and she had suffered for it. Being trapped in a loveless, joyless, hopeless marriage had been its own form of hell.

“Kissing,” Megs declared, making an exaggerated sound that corresponded to the word. “Fucking, fucking. Show me your bubbies, luv.”

“Er, rather the opposite, I fear,” Rosamund confessed, color in her cheeks.

Lottie wouldn’t have been more surprised if Rosamund had announced her intention to leap headfirst from the window. She reeled for a moment, taking in the implications of what her friend had just revealed.

“So you’re saying that you and the Duke of Camden have…been intimate together?” she asked, uncertain of what, if anything, she should say in such a moment. It had simply never occurred to her that Rosamund and Camden would have been engaged in anything of a scandalous nature.

They didn’t even like each other, for heaven’s sake.

Did they?

Her gaze narrowed on her friend, who was looking suspiciously uncomfortable.

“That, er…ah,” Rosamund began, shifting uncomfortably on her seat, “I suppose you might…that is to say…we never…we wouldn’t. We absolutely wouldn’t.”

But Lottie was no fool. She knew a lie when she heard one, and she also knew her friend well enough to understand that she was prevaricating.

Lottie pressed a hand over her mouth, shocked. “I don’t believe it,” she murmured quietly, lest her voice carry to the servants moving silently through the halls beyond. “You have bedded the Duke of Camden.”

Rosamund said nothing, her cheeks flaming, a telltale giveaway.

“How?” she asked, then shook her head, her mind suddenly a vast jungle from which there seemed no escape. “When?”

“In the customary way, I suppose,” Rosamund said quietly, biting her lower lip as if something deep within her pained her greatly. “As for when, it matters not, does it?”

Megs chirruped and then whistled. “Matters not. Bedded Camden.”

“Megs,” Rosamund gasped, eyes going wide. “You must not repeat that.”

“Gormless shite,” Megs said, blinking.

Lottie bit her lip to stifle her chuckle. “Is Megs speaking about the duke, perchance?”

“She isn’t Camden’s greatest devotee, I’m afraid.”

Megs fluffed her feathers as if in affirmation but remained where she was on her perch.

It occurred to Lottie with sudden clarity that both she and Rosamund were experiencing the same misgiving. Just as Lottie feared she had begun to like Brandon too much, Rosamund feared she could grow to care for Camden. They were both scared of becoming too vulnerable. Of having their hearts broken.

But unlike Rosamund, Lottie would be spared that fate, because she wasn’t marrying Brandon. Someone else was.

As she and her friend continued their tea, Lottie decided that the odd heaviness in her chest was caused by relief. Nothing more.

“Why have I yet to see a betrothal announcement in The Times , Brandon?” Grandmother demanded without preamble.

“My dearest darling Grandmama, it is lovely to see you as well,” he drawled, bowing over her proffered hand.

She looked august as usual this afternoon in black silk, her countenance pinched into an omnipresent expression of displeasure, as if all the world around her and everyone in it was a source of great disappointment. He had been thoroughly nettled by Lottie’s refusal of his invitation to tea this afternoon, and the unexpected arrival of his grandmother meant that his day was going from dreadful to worse.

“Do you dare to mock me?” she demanded coolly.

“Never, dear lady.” He tucked her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow and guided her to a nearby settee, noting that she had brought a gilded cane with her and she was leaning more heavily upon it than she ordinarily did whenever her arthritis particularly pained her.

She favored her left leg, using him for support as well as the cane. “Don’t lie to me, Brandon. I’ll box your ears.”

He didn’t doubt she would.

“I wouldn’t dream of lying to you,” he prevaricated, tongue in cheek.

She seated herself on the settee with a harrumph that told him she hadn’t believed his protest for a moment. “Where is the girl child?”

“Pandy?” He was surprised that his grandmother asked after her, for despite her family’s lineage, she was a stickler for propriety. He hadn’t known whether Grandmother would ever even mention Pandora again.

Grandmother’s silvery eyebrows snapped together. “You’ve a pet name for her now?”

He seated himself with ease opposite her, intentionally beyond reach of any ear-boxing he might receive. “Pandy suits her best, I believe.”

His grandmother’s eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You haven’t sent her away, then?”

The very notion of sending his Pandy girl anywhere else made his chest tighten. “Naturally not. I am her father. She belongs with me.”

“Not if you are to find a bride, she doesn’t.” Grandmother frowned, thumping her cane on the floor for emphasis. “No gently bred young lady will come to live in a house where you are keeping your bastard. The scandal would be far too great.”

He tensed, not liking the impersonal way his grandmother spoke of Pandy. “I’ll thank you not to refer to Pandy thus. And if any lady wants to marry me, then living in a house with my daughter is the price she will have to pay. I’m not sending my daughter away as if she’s a shameful secret.”

Grandmother’s lips thinned. “She is a shameful secret, Brandon. By her very birth, she is a tremendous scandal, and no woman of virtue is going to countenance her presence here in your household.”

He clenched his jaw, gripping the gilt arms of his chair so tightly he feared they might snap. “Pandy is not responsible for the circumstances of her birth, and I’ll not allow her to be punished for them. She is to remain here, with me. I refuse to send her away.”

“Little wonder you have yet to find a bride,” Grandmother lamented. “Your time grows thin, Brandon, and with this nonsensical insistence upon keeping your natural child in your household, I expect to hand the keys of Wingfield Hall over to your cousin Horace soon.”

“I am courting a lady I would very much like to make my duchess,” he ground out, frustrated, “a woman who will be pleased to share a household with an innocent child who deserves a loving home, having been ruthlessly abandoned by her own mother mere months ago.”

Not that one could aptly name what he had been doing with Lottie as courting. Their present relationship was complicated. They were lovers in secret, polite acquaintances in public. As far as she or the rest of London knew, he might be courting any of the young debutantes he had obligingly danced with at balls. But that was all a ruse to hide his true aim, not just from polite society, but from Lottie herself.

He didn’t wish to frighten her off until he was sure he could persuade her that marrying him would be nothing like marrying Grenfell had been.

The sudden cacophony of excited barking interrupted his tête-à-tête with Grandmother, heralding the arrival of Cat and, perchance, Pandy too. At least, he thought rather wryly to himself, the interruption during this visit with his grandmother would be caused by his daughter and not a naked opera singer wearing his dressing gown.

“What in heaven’s name is that commotion?” Grandmother asked, frowning.

Before Brandon could answer, the doors to the drawing room burst open to reveal a grinning Pandy racing into the room, the barking spaniel at her heels.

“Sweet angels, child, what is that you’re holding?” Grandmother demanded of Pandy, sounding horrified.

That was when he realized his daughter was clutching a pig trotter in one grimy hand as if it were the greatest prize she had ever obtained. Also, likely, the reason for Cat’s frenzied barking.

“Me and Cat is playing chase-chase,” Pandy declared proudly. “She hided the trotter in the garden, and I dugged it up.”

Grandmother extracted a handkerchief from her reticule and held it to her nose, looking ashen. “What is that wretched smell?”

“Likely the pig trotter,” Brandon guessed, eyeing the dirt-encrusted trotter, which was quite pungent now that a whiff had reached him. “Pandy, how long has that trotter been buried in the garden?”

“I dunno,” she said, shrugging dramatically.

Cat barked, clearly unhappy with being kept from what she wanted most in the world. Brandon could empathize. Only, it wasn’t a rotten old pig trotter buried in the garden that he longed for. Rather, it was a stubborn, beautiful goddess who had been so badly hurt by her scoundrel of a husband that she was determined never to marry or love again.

Brandon took in the spectacle unfolding before him. There was the eager spaniel, who continued to shift restlessly and bark, her eyes fastened upon the trotter Pandy held out of reach. Then there was his daughter, her cheeks flushed from her madcap dash from the garden with Cat on her heels, oblivious to the dirt streaking her hands as she wielded her prize aloft. And last, his grandmother, handkerchief pressed to her nose, eyes wide, the pallor of her skin ominous. He couldn’t blame her. The trotter did smell quite terrible.

“Pandy girl, where is Miss Bennington?” he inquired lightly. “Was she not watching you in the garden?”

“I’m faster’n Miss Bennington, and so’s Cat,” Pandy pronounced. “Her couldn’t catch us.”

Dear Lord. He could only imagine the poor woman racing through the maze, frantically trying to find a fleeing dog and a small child.

As if on cue, Miss Bennington appeared at the threshold to the drawing room, dashing into a quick curtsy.

“Your Grace, madam,” she greeted breathlessly, looking shamefaced. “Forgive me for the interruption. Miss Pandora, please accompany me to the nursery at once.”

“What ’bout this?” Frowning, Pandy waved the trotter about.

A piece of something fell to the Axminster, and Cat promptly ate it with a delighted chomp.

Grandmother groaned.

“Oh my goodness, whatever can that be?” Miss Bennington asked, peering at the dirty trotter. “And what is that horrid scent?”

“It’s the pig trotter,” Brandon offered.

The nursemaid’s eyebrows went up. “Oh dear. I am so sorry, Your Grace. Miss Pandora is not usually so spirited at this time in the afternoon. I thought to take a turn in the gardens, that fresh air would prove a boon, and Cat was sitting at the door…”

Grandmother made another choked sound.

Idly, he wondered if she was going to cast up her accounts. That would certainly complete the ridiculous display, which seemed rather indicative of his life. How had he gone from being a rakish bachelor, unencumbered by anyone else, to a father, a man in love, who now had so many to answer to?

“You needn’t explain further, Miss Bennington,” he said reassuringly. “If, however, you would kindly see that the trotter is taken away with the rubbish before you lead Pandy back to the nursery?”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Miss Bennington curtseyed, clearly flustered. “Thank you, Your Grace. Once again, my deepest apologies for the interruption. It won’t happen again, will it, Miss Pandora?”

Pandy’s nose crinkled. “What’s a ’rupption?”

“What you have just done, child,” Grandmother informed her from behind the handkerchief. “A lady never goes running about halls or digging through dirt. She is to be clean and presentable and mild-mannered at all times.”

His daughter shook her head. “Then I don’t wanna be no lady.”

Brandon couldn’t contain his shout of laughter at Pandy’s response. Nor could he blame her. His daughter grinned at him, her green gaze twinkling. Cat barked. Miss Bennington looked as if she didn’t know whether to weep or flee from the room, and Grandmother continued to look bilious.

He rose from his chair and ventured to where Pandy stood, dubious pig trotter still in hand, and sank to his haunches so that they were at eye level. “You’ll make a fine lady one day, Pandy girl. But for now, you’re to do as Miss Bennington says. You mustn’t run off with Cat or play chase-chase indoors. Do you understand?”

She nodded, looking a bit crestfallen. “Yes, Papa.”

There was that word, the one that was by far the greatest title he’d worn, the mantle that made him feel like a goddamned king. Papa.

He ruffled her curls affectionately. “Good. And if you discover any pig trotters Cat has buried in the garden, you’re to tell Shilling, who will see that they’re properly removed by a footman.”

Her expression grew mulish. “But Cat loves ’em.”

“Cat also loves to scoot her bum on the carpets,” he explained patiently. “That doesn’t mean she ought to do so.”

“Brandon!” protested his grandmother over his shoulder, her tone scandalized.

“That was a rather indelicate matter for me to discuss,” he conceded, giving Pandy a wink. “You see? None of us is perfect. We are, each one of us, a book that’s still being written. From now on, Cat is only to have fresh trotters from the kitchens, no running about, and mind Miss Bennington.”

She nodded solemnly. “Yes, Papa.”

He bussed a kiss over her crown, love for her bubbling up in his heart, more than he had ever known possible. “Now run along, Pandy girl, and do see that you give the trotter to one of the footmen. It’s making Great-Grandmama gag.”

“I would never do something as indecorous as that,” his grandmother protested, her voice muffled from behind the handkerchief.

He gave Pandy another wink and patted her lightly on the head.

Cat barked, still miffed that she was being kept away from her stinky prize. Brandon gave her a thorough scratch between her ears as well. “Off you go, Pandy girl. And Cat, too.”

Cat barked, her tongue lolling. Pandy dipped into a passable enough curtsy, and then she hastened toward her waiting nursemaid, thankfully taking the trail of stench along with her. Cat followed in her wake, ever hopeful that she might get a second mouthful of rotten pig trotter.

Miss Bennington curtseyed. “Thank you, Your Grace, madam. It won’t happen again. You have my word.”

He inclined his head. “Thank you, Miss Bennington.”

Brandon waited until the unlikely trio filed from the drawing room, rotten pig trotter and all, before returning to his chair. In the absence of the source of the smell, Grandmother lowered her handkerchief, eyeing him warily.

“The child called you Papa, Brandon.”

“I am her father, am I not? What else should she call me?” he asked evenly, holding her stare without flinching.

She was silent for a moment, taking stock of him, perhaps the way some might a horse one was intending to purchase. “You truly intend to keep her here,” she said at last, breaking the silence.

“It’s where she belongs,” he repeated firmly. “I’ll not lock her away like a shameful secret. The woman I intend to wed will need to accept my position on the matter, and that is final.”

She thumped her cane on the floor with another harrumph. “Well, you had better wed the girl quickly, because you’re running out of time, and I remain firm in my determination that Horace will receive Wingfield Hall and the rest of my fortune if you refuse to marry.”

“I assure you, Grandmama, that I have already chosen my bride. Cousin Horace won’t be setting so much as one foot upon Wingfield Hall if I have anything to say about it.”

Because Brandon was going to marry Lottie, damn it.

All he had to do was convince her to give him a chance first.