I am not your father, Madeline. You cannot call me Papa.
The words took shape on his tongue. He willed himself to say them.
The problem, of course, was that Foxfeltlike her father.
In the days before inheriting his uncle’s fortune, when all his money went to securing care for Susan in her madness, he had been Madeline’s nursemaid.
He had been the one to rock her back to sleep on restless nights. To walk grooves into the floor to soothe her fussing when she cut a new tooth. To discipline her tantrums and help her learn to control her unruly emotions. To sit beside her sickbed, wiping her fevered brow.
And so . . . Fox let the moment for correcting her slide past.
Madeline shot him a winsome smile and darted back across the room, crooning once again to Mr. Dandy.
Fox stared at Madeline, his thoughts a riot of conflicting emotions. Bewilderment that his niece had so easily out-maneuvered him. Sorrow that Susan would never know her bright, golden daughter.
Leah caught his attention. The warmth, understanding, and contentment in her gaze tugged at him to smile and accept Madeline’s declarations.
The three of them in his room—it felt . . . homey. Domestic.
As if they truly were a family.
Fox . . . panicked.
Because unlike his wife and his niece, he knew only too well how fragile their world was. How tenuous. How a simple word reaching the wrong quarter could destroy them all.
The panic increased, clutching his chest in jittery hands and sending him lurching to his feet.
He staggered to the window, staring out at the rain lashing the rugged mountain landscape.
Their current happiness teetered on a razor’s edge.
Where the slightest change in the winds of Fortune could tip it all into oblivion.
Fox’s thoughts werestill gloomy when he awoke the following day. The sun was already high in the sky, light peeking through a crack in the shutters. Leah’s side of the bed was cold; his wife had kindly let him have a morning lie in.
He stretched and crossed to the window, opening the shutters.
Instantly, Fox yelped in surprise, leaping back two feet and flinching violently.
Mr. Dandy satoutsidethe window, perched on the stone ledge there, blue eyes freezing Fox with an icy glare. The cat’s spine and front legs stood at rigid attention, his enormous tail swinging with a leisurelyswoosh.
Bloody hell.
Fox’s heart was a galloping beast in his chest.
Cautiously, he unlatched the window and pushed the casement up.
The cat paused, still assessing him with that unnerving pale gaze, before leaping into the room as nonchalantly as anything.
Fox watched Mr. Dandy stroll past the corner of the large tester bed. Only then did Fox poke his own head out the open window.
Thirty feet of sheer stone greeted him on all four sides.
Damn cat.
How the hell had it gotten onto the window ledge three stories above ground?
He looked back into the room. Mr. Dandy now sat on one of the Queen Anne chairs before the fire.
