The Taming of the Duke

Rafe snapped his mouth shut. At least the whiskey seemed to have retreated enough that he was understanding the conversation. "Damn me pink," he said.

"I'm afraid that the money cannot be—"

Rafe waved his hand. "Our father, for all he kept his real family in secret, would never have endangered the estate. We could endow three such colleges, and not feel more than a pinch."

"That is some consolation."

Rafe narrowed his eyes and saw precisely what the problem was. "Holbrook couldn't have bought you a place, if you hadn't been the very best there was," he said roughly.

Gabe nodded.

Rafe searched around for another topic. "What did Griselda say to the story of your dead wife?" he asked.

"She accepted it," Gabe said. "I told her that my wife's name was Mary and that she died in childbirth. I dislike telling lies."

"This is an important one," Rafe said. "There's no amount of money that I could give as dowry for young Mary that could make her a marriageable parti if the truth were known. As it is, we'll have to throw the entire weight of the Holbrook name behind her. But that—" he added with a grin—"is quite formidable."

"Not," his brother responded, with no smile, "if the duke has succumbed to a liver complaint by the time Mary comes of age."

Rafe swallowed.

"You have no wife in the wings," Gabe said. "So who is the heir to the estate?"

He tried to remember.

"There must be an heir?"

"Of course there is! My cousin Roderick. Twice removed and a bit of a prig, but he'll make a decent duke."

"He may be the most estimable of men," Gabe said, turning his silver fruit knife over and over in his hand, "but he will not throw the weight of the Holbrook name behind an illegitimate niece's marriage. My Mary, in other words."

In his happiness at finding a brother, Rafe had forgotten that family entailed more than pleasure. But even when drunk, he had never failed to recognize the truth when it was presented to him.

"I'll give it up," he said grimly.

"I would be most grateful." Gabe looked at him, and it was like glimpsing himself in a mirror. "Not just for Mary and her future. For myself."

For a horrifying second Rafe felt as if tears might be coming to his eyes. He rose from the table so quickly that he had to catch the edge so as not to topple over. "You haven't introduced me to my niece. Shall we?"

"Lady Maitland expressed a wish to meet her as well."

"Then let's collect the ladies," Rafe said. He was on his feet with barely a wobble in his knees. Still, he made a mental note not to hold the child. The last thing he wanted to do was drop his niece to the floor.

Chapter 8

In Which Miss Mary Spenser is Introduced to the Party at Large

Gabriel Spenser was accustomed to making quick and sure decisions. The moment he first saw Aramaic script, he knew that he wanted to read it. And the moment he first saw his daughter Mary, he knew that he would have moved a mountain—or married Loretta—in order to be near her. She was his, from the top of her anxious little face to the bottom of her enchanting little toes.

"She is such a sweet baby," Imogen was saying. Mary was smiling now, but when they entered the nursery, the baby had been standing up, holding on to the bars of her crib and crying for attention.

The fact that her nurse had been peacefully sitting by the fire and paying no attention had been duly noted by her father. Gabe meant to have a word with that nurse on the morrow, but now he just scooped up his daughter. She started dimpling and smiling at him. Obviously she was lonely. He had missed her sorely in the last few months. So much that he'd finally scooped her away from her wet nurse in Cambridge and brought her to Rafe's house.

He held her a little closer. So far he was ignoring Griselda's and Imogen's pleas to hold her.

"I've never seen such enchanting curls," Griselda said. "Did your wife have those red curls?"

Gabe spared a moment's thanks for the fact that Loretta had golden hair. With luck, no one would ever see a resemblance. "Mary is the image of her mother." Not that it was true. Loretta was pretty enough, but to him Mary was beautiful. She had a face like a tiny triangle, and cap of soft curls the color of new roses. Her mouth was a tiny, curved rosebud.

"Did your wife see her before she died?" Imogen said, looking up at him.

Gabe froze, unsure what to say. He and Rafe hadn't worked out the details of his supposed wife's death, merely hammered out the agreement that the solicitor put in front of Loretta, swearing her to secrecy about her motherhood. Not that Loretta had shown the faintest interest in acknowledging the role.

Luckily Rafe broke into the conversation. "Do you remember when I bought all these things for you?" he called to Imogen, gesturing at the heaps of toys on the nursery shelves.

"Who could forget?" Imogen turned to Gabe. "Your brother believed that he had become guardian to four small children, so he bought these toys—as you can see—in quadruple. Four rocking horses, four dolls."

"There were four nursemaids," Rafe said rather owlishly.

After a few months of living in close proximity with Rafe, Gabe could judge his whiskey intake to the glass. At the moment, he would judge him more than half-seas over; he could only hope that his brother would remember his promise to stop drinking on the morrow. More likely, he'd have no memory of the whole evening.

Reluctantly Gabe allowed Imogen to hold the babe. He'd spent far too much time in the nursery as it was. That afternoon, the nurse had finally had to tell him to leave so that Mary could nap.

Mary smiled at Imogen with the same joy with which she greeted him. Gabe couldn't distinguish precisely why that was so infuriating. All he knew was that he wanted Mary to smile at him. She might even frown at a stranger or two instead of greeting all and sundry with the same welcome.

She was chuckling now, and pulling at the slippery strands of Imogen's hair. And Imogen was smiling at him over Mary's head with an expression that told him as clearly as if it had been written in ancient Aramaic that she thought he himself would make a very nice birthday present. She must have forgotten his illegitimacy.

Mary seemed to like Imogen. But so did Rafe, for all he snarled about her. It was an odd thing, to Gabe's mind, to discover that after thinking of oneself as an only child for half a lifetime, he had fallen so easily into the role of brother.

But fall he had. He was astounded by how much he cared for his greathearted drunkard of a brother. Rafe was as generous in his sins as he was in his affections.

Imogen was laughing now. Mary was patting her cheek with her little hand, and Gabe noticed that Rafe had stopped rearranging the cast-iron toys and was staring over his shoulder at Imogen. She was beautiful, but sharp-tongued. Still, there was no accounting for tastes, and Rafe clearly had a taste for his former ward.

"Mr. Spenser," Imogen said, turning to him, "anyone can see that Mary has received nothing but loving attention since her birth. You have done very well by your little motherless babe."

"I have done the best that I could," he said uncomfortably.

"I hope you don't mind if I ask again," she said. "Was her mother able to see little Mary before she died?"