“I always keep a spare pig’s trotter in my reticule,” she teased.
The girl’s eyebrows rose. “You do?”
Oh dear. She hadn’t recalled the penchant of the very young to take every utterance literally.
“Goodness no, I was jesting, my dear girl. I would shudder to think of what my reticule would smell like should I keep a spare pig’s trotter in it,” she explained, smiling gently at the child. She truly was a sweet girl, and her resemblance to her father was undeniable. “But I have a feeling we might lure Cat from beneath the settee just the same. Would you care to hear my plan? Before you listen, I must warn you, Pandy, that we have to keep it strictly secret in order that it shall work. Can you do that?”
Pandy glanced in her papa’s direction, looking uncertain. “May I keep a secret with Lottie, Duke?”
“We can tell Duke as well,” Lottie said, winking at Pandy. “It shall be a secret just between the three of us. One mustn’t keep secrets from an adult, after all. How does that sound?”
“Capital,” the girl declared, grinning as if Lottie had just announced her intention to give her a basket of sweets, the sole caveat being that she must eat them all at once.
“Duke?” Lottie asked politely, glancing at the unsmiling Brandon. “Have you any objections?”
“None,” he said grimly in a tone that suggested the opposite.
It occurred to Lottie—quite belatedly—that she was overstepping her bounds. But it was too late for such concerns now. Pandy was eyeing her expectantly, Cat was still cowering beneath the furniture, and Lottie had offered her plan as a solution.
She decided to ignore Brandon’s brooding intensity and settled her attention upon the girl instead, using a loud whisper. “Now then, you’ve said that the only way you’ve been able to lure Cat is with food, yes?”
Pandy nodded solemnly. “But I don’t got no food now.”
“But I don’t have any food now. That is the proper way to say it, my dear,” she corrected gently. “However, Cat doesn’t know we haven’t any food, so what we shall do is use our imaginations.”
“Magimation?” Pandy’s eyebrows rose. “What’s a magimation?”
“Im-a-gin-a-tion,” she said, enunciating the word with slow, deliberate care. “It’s simple. We will pretend we have food in our hand, and Cat will think we have something for her to nibble on, and she’ll come out of her hiding place. When she does, Duke will scoop her into his arms.”
“Here now. I’ve not offered myself for such a service. The shabby little sack of fleas can go back to where she belongs, which decidedly isn’t under the settee in my emerald salon.Pandy, what were you thinking, bringing a mongrel into the house without my permission? Where have you been keeping the creature?”
Pandy sniffed, batting her long lashes against gleaming tears, her small countenance clearly on the verge of shattering. “But Duke, Cat ain’t a mongrel.”
“Of course she isn’t,” Lottie hastened to reassure the child, casting a disapproving frown in Brandon’s direction. “And every young girl must have a dog. Why, did you know that I had a faithful hound myself when I was about your age, my dear?”
“You did?”
Fond memories of her beloved pup Fancy brought a smile to Lottie’s lips. “I did indeed. And a cat as well.”
Pandy grinned, her tears forgotten. “Then you know all about how to rescue dogs ’n make them come without pig trotters, doesn’t you?”
“Of course I do,” she said with far more confidence than she truly possessed, for there was no telling how tame the dog was. “First, we must get down on our knees so that Cat can see we aren’t a tall threat looming over her.” Grasping silk, Lottie lowered herself to her stockinged knees on the Axminster. “Like so.”
With far less ladylike aplomb, Pandy dropped to her knees as well.
“And now, we must pretend as if we are eating something. The most delicious something we have ever eaten,” Lottie explained, holding her palm open and then using her other hand to pluck an imaginary delicacy out of it before holding it to her lips and pretending to eat.
To her amusement, Pandy mimicked her motions, pretending to stuff a bite of imaginary food into her mouth. “Oh, missus, this is the best something what I ever did eat.”
“Lady Grenfell, Pandy,” Brandon said, presiding over their imaginary feast with a forbidding air. “You must refer to the lady properly.”
“This is the best something what I ever did eat, Missus Lady Grenspell,” the child parroted brightly.
With a long-suffering sigh, Brandon raked his fingers through his hair, leaving it in disarray that Lottie was bemused to discover she longed to smooth into place. That simply wouldn’t do. The Duke of Brandon had already made himself clear. He wanted a wife. Lottie wanted a lover. No complications, no vows, no rules, no nonsense. Nothing but pleasure, her autonomy, her life to live as she saw fit.
With that reminder, she turned her attention back to the settee, where a wet black nose had made an appearance, followed by the swipe of a long pink tongue.
“It is working, Pandy,” she said quietly. “We must keep eating.”
