Chapter 5
“A guardian to two young girls?” Hamilton Sparrow, Viscount Vale, guffawed. “You?”
“Regrettable, but nonetheless true.” Sunny sipped his brandy. They were enjoying a meal in the eating room of their club, an exclusive male enclave luxuriously appointed in dark colors and expensive furnishings with plush carpets underfoot. “My uncle sent them into my care due to his supposedly ill health.”
“Is it his mind that’s going?” the viscount asked. “Because the very last place any innocent child should be is under your roof.”
Vale ought to know. The former spy had attended a handful of Sunny’s wilder parties prior to falling under the spell of a common heiress Vale had kidnapped at the altar on the day she was to marry another man. To Sunny’s horror, Vale had wed the girl himself a few weeks later and was now tiresomely devoted to his flame-haired wife.
“I couldn’t agree more.” Sunny bottomed out his glass and signaled for the attending waiter to bring more brandy. “Not that you would know, having no children under your roof.”
“True enough,” Vale agreed. “I’ve only been wed a few months, after all. What are you going to do with your wards?”
“Ignore them as best I can, I suppose. Leave them to the care of the harpy nursemaid who landed on my doorstep along with the brats.”
The third man in their party, Cosmo Dunsmore, who’d been quietly listening until that point, laughed out loud. “In my experience, children cannot be ignored. They simply won’t allow it.”
The duke turned toward the large dark man with strong blunt features. Just a few years ago, Cosmo, the heir to a marquessate, had rivaled Sunny when it came to wine, women, and overall debauchery. But then a half-English, half-French aeronaut had parachuted into Cosmo’s life, upending everything and depriving Sunny of a longtime partner in vice and depravity. Sunny had never quite forgiven the woman.
“Is that wife of yours still falling from the sky?” he asked Cosmo.
The other man winced. “Unfortunately, yes. Although, thank the heavens, she pilots the hot air balloon and parachutes far less frequently now that the children keep her busy.”
Sunny shook his head. “If you don’t care for her aeronautical adventures, why not just forbid them?”
Dunmore and Vale exchanged an amused look before bursting into laughter.
Sunny looked at them. “May I ask what the two of you find so amusing?”
Vale answered first, his mouth still trembling with mirth. “Once you keep company with a woman for more than just bed sport, you will understand.”
Vale’s attitude did not surprise Sunny. The man had never been overly enthusiastic about attending Sunny’s parties; the viscount’s flirtation with profligacy had been a passing fancy while he’d wrestled with some difficulty in his life that Sunny wasn’t privy to.
But Cosmo was an entirely different matter. He’d embraced the licentious life as devotedly as Sunny, perhaps even more so. Then he’d gone and saddled himself with a completely unbiddable wife and a couple of brats—a boy and a girl—born in quick succession. And the thing of it was, the man had never seemed happier.
“Do you actually spend time with your brats?” he asked Cosmo.
“My children?” his friend responded. “They can be tiresome, but on the whole I find my son and daughter to be quite entertaining. I’m besotted by them, to tell you the honest truth.”
“Truly?” Sunny thought of Patience and Prudence’s constant barrage of questions. He grimaced. “The two imps in my care cannot stop chattering. They’re constantly asking questions.”
“That sounds a great deal like my daughter.”
“However do you cope?”
“She’s completely charmed the entire family,” Cosmo said. “Perhaps the same will be true for you once you become better acquainted with your wards.”
“I highly doubt that.”
The deep devotion both men exhibited toward their families perplexed Sunny. In his experience, family was a necessary evil, a tiresome duty that one must bear. He couldn’t imagine the late duke, his own father, ever being charmed by any child.
And he certainly wasn’t about to be captivated by the two little hellions who’d invaded his life. Sunny wasn’t capable of that kind of affectivity. He simply wasn’t made that way. Like his dispassionate parents, he was as sentimental as a chair.
“Ah, here’s Will,” Cosmo said as a trim, wiry man with spectacles and copper-colored hair joined them. “Sunny, I believe you are not acquainted with my brother in marriage. This is Will Naismith.”
Sunny tilted his head back against the chair as he regarded the man. “Huntington’s by-blow, aren’t you?”
The man’s cool eyes held his gaze. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Will’s married to my sister, Eleanor,” Dunmore said.
The sister had been the toast of her season, if Sunny recalled correctly. “You’ve certainly done well for yourself, Naismith.”
“I’m a fortunate man, of that there is no doubt,” Naismith agreed with a quiet but formidable confidence.
The earl’s bastard certainly could hold his own, despite being the only one among them without a title or hope of one. Sunny remembered hearing the man even worked for his living—did something or other at the Home Office. “Why don’t you join us for a drink?”
Cosmo came to his feet. “Alas, there is no time for that. We’re off to the country for a few days. Father and our wives and children are already there. We leave this evening.”
“So soon?” Sunny looked from one man to the other. “Why rush after them when you are free and unencumbered of familial duties? London has many pleasures to offer a man on his own.”
Naismith shot him a quizzical look. The earl’s bastard struck Sunny as quite humorless. “It is precisely because we are here alone in Town that we are anxious to join our families.”
“Don’t bother, Will.” Cosmo bowed in farewell to Sunny and Vale. “The duke would not understand.”
Sunny stared after the two men as they made their way out. “I wouldn’t understand what, exactly?”
“Never mind.” Vale smirked and came to his feet. “It would take far too long to explain it to you. Are you up for some cards?”
Sunny rose. “At least you are not running home to your wife like a castrated sheep.”
“No indeed.” Vale waited a beat before adding, “Did I mention that Emilia is away? She’s spending a few days in the Lake District with her mother.”
Sunny shook his head with disgust. “You, Dunsmore, and Naismith—none of you comprehend a wife’s proper place.” His mother and father had led completely separate lives and had obviously preferred it that way. They’d barely ever spoken to each other. He couldn’t fathom why these men were constantly in their wives’ pockets.
“Right you are,” Vale agreed good-naturedly, following Sunny into the cards room.
One of the brats was underfoot the instant Sunny returned home the following morning after a boozy evening with his actress friend.
Patience—at least he presumed it was the tumbler although it was hard to tell in his current half-inebriated, completely sleep-deprived state—sat on the steps of his sweeping marble staircase in the front hall. The little hellion’s elbows were braced on her knees with her chin propped in her palms. The hound that Sunny rarely saw these days dozed on the step next to the girl, his eyes half open.
“You’re looking glum,” Sunny remarked to the child as he passed off his hat and the crumpled cravat he’d relieved himself of hours ago to a waiting footman.
“I am,” she said petulantly.
“Well, I’m off to a bath and then to my bed.” He angled past her and the animal sprawled on his steps.
She jumped to her feet and trotted up after him. “Aren’t you going to ask why I’m sad?”
“No.” He moved faster, taking the steps two at a time, hoping to shake the little nuisance.
She ran after him. “Why not?”
“Because I could not care less. That’s Finch’s department.”
“But she’s the reason why I’m sad.”
Suppressing the urge to curse in the most profane terms possible, he halted, realizing the urchin was liable to follow him into the bath if he didn’t give her a moment of his time. These brats were always demanding his attention, something he would never have dreamed of pursuing with his own parents.
In fact, he’d spent his childhood dreading the daily private audiences with the duke and duchess. The encounters normally lasted about fifteen minutes during which Sunny was interrogated and tested on the lessons he’d learned or skills he’d perfected. He’d learned quickly that there was a steep price to be paid for deviating from the path his father had set for him—not just for Sunny, but for others as well.
“Izzy is why I’m sad,” Patience repeated.
He exhaled long and loud. “Very well. What has Finch done now?”
“She forbade me from tumbling. And I cannot go outside for two days.”
“And why is that?”
“Because I fell off the wall, of course!” The words were emphatic, as if he were a dotard for not knowing why she’d been punished. “Don’t you comprehend anything?”
“I understand better than you know.” As a boy, he’d been room-ridden more times than he cared to remember, usually when he’d failed to master a lesson or task as quickly or adroitly as his father thought befitted a duke’s heir. He’d spent endless hours sitting in his rooms at the opposite end of the country mansion from his parents’ bedchambers staring out the window at the gardens and copse of trees in the distant Sunderford orchard, wishing he were free to climb the trees, to roam and explore.
But there’d never been time for that. All of Sunny’s days had been scheduled down to the minute—the studies with his tutor, lessons in deportment, history, culture, manners, and dancing, riding out with his father to meet tenants and learn about the estate yields. It had been never-ending.
All of this will one day be yours, his father had said. You must always be a credit to the Sunderford name and me. Sunny did not care to recall the longing that had filled his boyhood, or the anger and frustration he’d felt at having to stifle his natural urges and interests. But it all came rushing back to him now.
“How would you understand?” Patience craned her little neck all the way back to peer up at him. “You’re a duke. Izzy says you can do anything you like.”
“Now I can, that much is true,” he allowed. “But when I was your age, it was a different matter entirely.”
“What do you mean?”
Normally, the constant barrage of questions from the half-pint would annoy him, but given his own experiences, Sunny felt sympathetic to the child’s current plight. “I was not allowed to play.”
“What does that mean?” Her high little forehead scrunched up. “You couldn’t play until your lessons were finished?”
“My lessons never came to an end. A duke has many responsibilities.” Although, as an adult, he’d neatly evaded most of them. “There was always something to be learned.”
She made a face. “Being a duke sounds terrible.”
“Not all of it. There are certain advantages.”
“Like what?”
“I have my playroom for example, where little girls can tumble while watching themselves in the mirror.” The words slipped out almost unbidden, but he wasn’t sorry. Why shouldn’t the child have the opportunity to play? If Finch was anything like his draconian old nursemaid, she routinely sucked the fun out of the girls’ lives.
“But you said I cannot play in there,” Patience said.
“You cannot. And certainly not without my permission. However, I have decided to grant you access just this once.”
Pleasure lit her silvery eyes. He’d never noted it before, but they were the same distinctive shade as his own—the famous Fairfax eyes—a radiant metal shade with an otherworldly glow. He paid his eye color little mind, but his paramours sometimes went into raptures about it.
Patience sobered. “If Izzy catches us, she’ll be very cross.”
“It’ll be our secret.” He leaned down closer and spoke in a conspiratorial tone. “Finch never comes into my playroom so she is unlikely to catch us.”
She seemed to struggle with the decision. “I’m not supposed to lie to Izzy,” she said uncertainly.
“It’s not lying, strictly speaking,” he reassured her. “It’s not as if Finch is going to ask you outright whether you’ve been to my playroom.” He was starting to warm up to his plan to circumvent the shrew. “Now go and get your sister.”
She brightened. “Prudie can come, too?”
“Absolutely. Why not?” He straightened. “I shall go and bathe while you retrieve your sister. I will meet you both in my playroom in thirty minutes’ time.”
“Watch me, watch me!” Patience insisted. “I can do ten wheels in a row.” Sunny obliged the girl as she contorted her body from handstand to somersault and then upright on her feet before doing it all over again. Pan ran along beside the girl, barking while dodging ungainly legs and arms that twirled into his path.
Refreshed from his bath, his hair still damp, Sunny had found the girls and Pan eagerly awaiting him in front of the closed playroom door. Now comfortably ensconced on the plump sofa before the large window, a part of Sunny was beginning to regret offering up his cherished space as an actual playroom. But a larger part of him was thrilled to be able to thwart the she-dragon by allowing the girls to play unencumbered.
Prudence, who was clearly the quieter and shyer of the two children, stood hesitantly by the mirrored wall watching her sister’s antics.
“Prudie,” Patience shrieked while flying upside down through the air, “you should go and ride the swing.” She landed on her feet with a decisive thump. “She loves to swing, Duke. Will you let her?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
Prudence regarded him shyly. “Will you push me so I can go high?”
“I suppose.” He rose from the couch, wondering why it was that children always seemed to want to drag reluctant adults into their play.
He waited for her to climb onto the swing before he pushed her. She almost tumbled off from the force of it, but luckily her plump little hands tightened on the rope, saving her from toppling to the floor.
“Not so hard, Cousin Adam!” she admonished, giving him a hesitant smile over her shoulder.
“My apologies.” He pushed more gently this time. He’d never actually pushed a child on a swing before. He’d misjudged the amount of force required for such a task. He was accustomed to pushing grown women on the swing…sometimes two at a time.
She’d called him Cousin Adam, which, strictly speaking, he supposed he was. Her father, Cornelius, had been Sunny’s cousin, although he’d never met the man. As he pushed Prudence, he considered the irony of his situation. Not even a fortnight ago, two naked goddesses had been in this very chamber seeing to his pleasure. And now here he was, responsible for these two little orphans, and seeing to it that their harridan nursemaid didn’t squash all frivolity out of their lives as the adults in his life had done so many years ago.
Patience eyed the billiards table. “Can I climb onto that and jump off?”
“No, you may not.”
“Why not?” Patience insisted. “I just want to stand on it so I can jump off and do a somersault in the air before landing.”
“Because you will damage the billiards table.”
“Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.” She said the words in rapid-fire succession so that they all sounded like one long aggravating phrase.
“The answer is no.” Sunny gave Prudence another light push. “I will not have you destroying my billiards table.”
“Is no one ever allowed on the billiards table, Cousin Adam?” Prudence asked in a quiet voice.
“No. Well, sometimes,” he said, remembering the few times he’d screwed women on that surface.
“Sometimes?” Patience perked up. “Like when? How come you let others sometimes but you won’t let me now?”
“That was an entirely different circumstance,” he said irritably.
“Different how?” Patience wanted to know.
“Just different,” he snapped. She was worse than Pan with a bone. “I’m a duke, by God, I don’t answer to anyone.”
“Humph.” Patience crossed her arms over her chest. “Adults always say things like that when they don’t have a good reason for taking away our fun.”
“Oh, very well,” he said, exasperated. “Just the once.”
She let out a cheer and scrambled onto the table. “Watch me!” She stood on the wooden edge, her face a picture of concentration until an unwelcome voice broke the momentary silence.
“What in heaven’s name is going on here?”