Page 46 of Duke with a Deception
He had no wish to linger in the hall like a stray dog who had been brought in from the streets. His aching head could only be soothed by the tonic that Hutchens had often fixed for him on mornings when he had over-imbibed. It had been some time since he had required one, but yesterday’s unmitigated disaster had proven quite dire.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Pierpont intoned, leaving King to traverse the hall toward the staircase.
His hope that he might surreptitiously sneak into his chamber for a bath, the restorative panacea Hutchens could offer, and fresh garments was dashed when a child camecrashing into his legs. A girl child with fair ringlets that bobbed around her heart-shaped face when she glanced up at him, her eyes wide.
A sharp, wrenching pain tore through King’s chest, sudden and merciless. He looked down at her and wondered what Daphne would have been like at her age. Would she have had flaxen hair as her mother had or dark like his? Certainly, she would have been better mannered, softer spoken. She wouldn’t have been running wild about the house. This, he reminded himself, was why he disliked children.
He frowned down at the child. “Ladies walk with care. They do not run.”
“It’s sorry I am, Yer Grace,” the girl apologized, her eyes turning luminous with unshed tears.
Christ.
Where was the maid who was acting as the child’s nurse? He looked about but saw no one. He was alone with the girl, who was still gazing up at him as if he were a monster. To be fair, he felt like one at the moment.
He cleared his throat. “Where is your nurse?”
“Preparing the nursery,” the girl answered. “Ye’re taller than wot I remembered.”
He hadn’t been prepared for her abrupt change of subject or candid observation. What a strange little thing she was.
“You are smaller than I remembered,” he countered.
“There’s a stain on yer shirt,” she pointed out.
Horrified, he glanced down and confirmed the girl was correct. There was a yellowed stain, about half an inch in diameter, on his wrinkled and formerly pristine white shirt. Likely from when he’d cast up his accounts earlier.
“Poor form of you to notice,” he said, brushing at the stain ineffectually, as if he could somehow make it disappear.
“Thought ye’d want to know,” the girl answered.
Her response was the perfect logic of a child.
“It is considered impolite to comment upon another’s person,” he admonished.
“Then I guess I oughtn’t tell ye that ye stink,” she declared, sniffing the air.
Damn it all. If Verity was going to insist upon having this miscreant in their home, his wife was bloody well going to have to see to it that Emma was kept under lock and key. She had already run them on a merry chase across London, disrupted their honeymoon, and now she was insulting him.
“Apprising someone that they smell is also considered unmannerly,” he informed her.
“Thought ye’d want to know that too,” she defended without a hint of compunction.
First Pierpont and now the mannerless ragamuffin.
Before he could further chastise her dearth of comportment, the maid charged with her care bustled toward them, looking flustered.
“Oh, there you are now, Miss Emma,” she declared.
Verity was not far behind her, eyes settling upon King for a moment before swinging back to the child.
“Emma, you must stay with one of us at all times,” she reprimanded the girl. “You aren’t to be wandering about, especially not after what you did yesterday.”
The girl hung her head, her curls bouncing, as if even her mane refused to behave. “I’m sorry, Lady Vitty.”
“She is a duchess now,” he informed the rude child. “She is Lady Verity no longer. You must address her with the respect she deserves.”
“Dukes got lots of rules,” Emma announced in an aside as if he weren’t standing there listening to her.
