Brandon awoke, as he had each day since his daughter’s arrival at his town house, to a tremulous, girlish voice calling him from the foot of his bed.
He sat up, already wearing a silk dressing gown for this very reason, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “Yes, Pandy?”
“The wolf m-man was comin’ to get m-me again.”
Bloody hell.Yet another nightmare. His poor, sweet girl—her sleep was riddled with them after her mother had abandoned her. He didn’t count himself particularly paternal, but even a dissolute rakehell like him could see quite plainly that the child needed protection and comfort.
He held out his arms to her, forcing a reassuring smile. “Come here, my darling girl.”
His sentence was scarcely finished before she launched herself at him, a tiny bundle of arms and legs and a fat braid that slapped him in the cheek as she landed in his embrace. He cradled her against his chest, patting her back gently as she pressed her wet face to the crook of his neck and sniffled loudly.
Good God, he didn’t know if that was tears she was smearing on his neck, snot, or both. Likely a combination of the two. He really needed to begin keeping a handkerchief by the bed.
“The wolf man cannot get you,” he promised her, laying his cheek atop her head and reveling in the miracle that was this tiny body, somehow a part of him. “I won’t let anyone hurt you, I promise.”
She sniffed loudly, confirming his suspicion that snot was involved. “I tried w-wakin’ Nurse, but she t-telled me good little girls must go b-back to sleep after n-nightmares.”
“The devil she did,” he muttered, thinking he would have a talk with Miss Partridge tomorrow. Or was the woman’s name Wren? Pheasant? Something avian, he was sure of it.
“Y-you mustn’t s-speak of the d-devil,” Pandora warned him. “M-mama said so.”
“She’s not wrong, Pandy,” he conceded. “I ought to watch my tongue.”
Having a child running about his home was still new. He had yet to curb all his base impulses, cursing being one of them.
“B-but she was wrong a-about some things,” she said, clinging to his neck with the tenacity of a hangman’s noose.
He continued patting her soothingly. “What things, my clever girl?”
“That I w-wouldn’t miss her,” his daughter said, her chest rising and falling with uncontrollable dry sobs. “I m-misses her lots.”
That heartless witch. First, she had kept his daughter a secret from him for four years, and then she had abandoned Pandora without a backward glance to sail off with her lover.
“Of course you do, sweeting.” His voice was thick with his own barely suppressed emotion.
“And I m-miss Papa,” she said.
Brandon kissed the top of her head, a pang going through his heart at the way she referred to Helena’s former husband, Mr. Booth, as Papa. He didn’t blame the child, of course. Booth, who had apparently taken ill and died just before Helena had found her new lover, had been the only father Pandora had known. Until she had been unceremoniously dumped at his grandmother’s town house like an outmoded hat, that was.
“I’ve no doubt you do, Pandy,” he said, still patting her small back.
He had never paid much attention to children. Had never supposed he would have a child of his own. Brandon was not the dutiful sort who was happy to carry on the family line. Quite the opposite. He’d been pleased at the notion of it ending with him, just to spite the bastard who had sired him. But there was something undeniably wondrous about the small form clinging so tightly to him. The moment her green eyes had met his, he had seen himself in her, and the accompanying surge of protective instincts had proven unstoppable.
And now? He would burn down the world just to make her heart hurt less.
“I dreamded the wolf man h-hurt Papa,” Pandy said, her frame shuddering with a new onslaught of tears. “He m-made Papa die.”
Sniffle, sniffle.
Something was dripping down Brandon’s neck, but he ignored the sensation and the troublesome question of what that something was. He was too preoccupied with comforting his daughter. He hated the fear in her voice. Hated the way she trembled and sobbed in his arms, the uncertainty and fear.
He swallowed his resentment down, however, knowing he needed to remain stoic for her sake. “It was only a nightmare, Pandy girl. You’re safe with me always.”
“Thank y-you, Duke.” Another sniffle.
He wished she might call him Papa one day. But he was willing to wait and not press the matter. Pandora had been through enough in her short, young life. He had no wish to add to the upset.
“You needn’t thank me. I’m meant to protect you.” He gently shifted her so that she was no longer sliming his neck with snot and tears, looking down at her through the shadows. “I was intending to venture to the kitchens and see if Mrs. Willoughby has left any sweets about to eat, but you wouldn’t want to do that, would you?”
