A Duke of Her Own

Page 42

Having made his point, Oyster stopped barking.
“How do you know our names?” Lucinda demanded, putting her arm protectively around her sister.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Eleanor said after a second’s silence during which Villiers tried to figure out how to say Because I’m your father.
“Looking for us? Why?” The girl’s chin jutted out. “You can tell Mrs. Minchem that we hope she falls over and the pigs eat her ankles, because we aren’t going back.”
“I agree,” Villiers said.
“Ever.”
“Would you like to get out of the blanket box now?” Eleanor inquired. “I can assure you that Oyster won’t hurt you.”
The bolder girl climbed from the box. She was wearing hardly any clothing, just a rough gown with no stockings and one shoe. Oyster started forward and began smelling her legs with an air of deep interest.
She certainly had an interesting odor; Villiers identified it immediately as Scent of Sty. In fact, now that he thought of it, all four of them were likely pungent.
“Oyster won’t hurt you,” Eleanor said encouragingly. “He’s just a puppy.”
Lucinda gave Oyster a pat. He had finished sniffing her legs, so he sat back down, looked up at her face and gave a brisk command.
“What does he want?” Lucinda asked.
“He wants you to give him a proper pat,” Eleanor said. “And scratch his ears. He likes that. Would you care to come out of the box?” she asked Phyllinda.
Phyllinda shook her head.
Lucinda sat down on the floor of the carriage while Oyster jumped into her lap. She started giggling helplessly as the dog licked her face. Villiers watched with some interest as the shape of her face emerged from all the dirt.
But he didn’t see what she really looked like until he pulled Oyster outside, bringing Lucinda with him. And then he almost dropped to his knees in surprise.
Her eyes were a gorgeous dark lilac, the color of larkspur in late summer.
“My grandmother’s eyes—” he started to say to Eleanor, then realized that she was still inside the carriage. He poked a head in to find that she had coaxed Phyllinda out of the box.
“He’s not a bad dog,” Eleanor was saying. “If you just peek out the door, you’ll see your sister playing with him. Oyster is just a puppy.”
But Villiers took one look at Phyllinda’s terrified, obstinate face and knew that it was all too much for her. She was five years old, and she’d spent the night in a pigsty, presumably terrified of being eaten; she’d escaped the sty only to find her way—God knows how—into their carriage; and now she was risking being chewed by a wild dog. Her instincts for self-preservation had clearly been honed inside the orphanage.
“Here,” he said, plucking her off the seat.
Her body went rigid, but he scooped her against his shoulder and backed out of the carriage.
It was only when he turned around that he realized what an audience they had drawn. By now, most of the Duke of Gilner’s household had emerged from the house and were watching transfixed.
Eleanor bent over Lucinda, now sitting on the ground with Oyster in her lap. “If you stand up and come with us, Oyster will come as well,” he heard her say.
The coachman was staring straight ahead, as was proper, but Villiers could see his ears practically wiggle as he listened.
“This is Lucinda, and this is Phyllinda,” he said. “Lucinda, stand up.” She scrambled to her feet. There was a little rustle among the servants, as if wind blew through a pile of straw.
“Does anyone know where my son is?” Villiers inquired.
They all looked around, as if someone else was sure to know. “He left for the orphanage this morning,” Villiers continued. “Did anyone see him go or return?”
No one said a word.
“Is he in the nursery?”
Popper gestured and a footman dashed up the stairs.
“What would Tobias be doing at the orphanage?” Eleanor asked, knitting her brow. “He—”
“He said he was going home,” Lucinda put in, looking up from the dog.
This was unexpected. All eyes turned to the little girl.
“You know Tobias?” Eleanor asked.
Lucinda grinned, and Villiers looked past the streaked dirt and dog spit and who knows what to discover that his daughter was an extraordinarily beautiful girl. “He got us outta the sty this morning,” she said. “We heard a banging.”
“We thought it was Mrs. Minchem coming again,” Phyllinda said, her voice high and thready.
He tightened his hold on her. “Mrs. Minchem is incarcerated.”
“Where’s that?” Lucinda asked.
“The Clink,” Eleanor explained. “And she’s not coming out either.”
“Tobias unlocked the sty and took you out,” Villiers said, rather stunned. “And then he stowed you in the blanket box.”
“He put the blanket down and said as we should just go to sleep and he’d walk home and then sneak us out of the box later.”
“So you’ve been asleep?” Villiers asked, suddenly remembering talk of virginity in the carriage.
“We couldn’t sleep last night because of that old sow,” Lucinda said. “But I would have just kicked her good if she tried to bite us!”
“I was too scared,” Phyllinda whimpered.
“We stayed awake all night instead,” Lucinda said. “An’ then we slept in that box until we heard this doggie barking.”
“Don’t let Oyster lick your mouth,” Eleanor told Lucinda. “Your cheek is all right, but your mouth, no.”
“Send someone out on horseback to look for Tobias,” Villiers said to Popper. “It’s quite a few miles, and he has to have stowed the girls after Lisette sent the carriage back.”
“Why didn’t he just climb in the carriage and wait for us?” Eleanor said. “He could have told any of the groomsmen and they would have fetched us.”
“It’s a surprise,” Phyllinda whispered against Villiers’s cheek. “We weren’t supposed to move even after the carriage stopped.”
“Why not?”
“We was going to have a bath first,” Lucinda said. “We still needs to have that bath. He said our pa won’t like us if we aren’t clean.” She gave Oyster a final pat. “If you don’t mind, mister, we’d better have that bath because our pa might be along at any moment.”
The entire household went utterly quiet, every eye fixed on Villiers.
He looked down at Lucinda. She stood almost as high as his waist. She had one hand on her hip, and she looked five going on forty. Phyllinda was staring at him expectantly.
“What on earth is going on out here?” Lisette cried, bouncing down the front steps and waving at her maid. “Beatrice, I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Please fetch my painting materials; I had a fancy to paint a portrait of young children.” She smiled at Eleanor. “How could one not want to paint youth, after seeing those beaming faces this morning?”
“Yes, well,” Eleanor said, “they did beam after we dispatched with Mrs. Minchem, of course.”
“Their joy was wonderful,” Lisette said, sighing.