Hellfire.Perhaps she was real after all.
Brandon cleared his throat. “I do beg your pardon, Grandmother, but I have no notion of what I ought to be saying for myself.”
“Have you not heard a word I have just spoken?”
Admittedly, he had been wool-gathering. Hoping he had found himself thrown into some slumberous alternate reality.
“I’m afraid not,” he conceded.
Her nostrils flared, and for a fanciful moment, he imagined her breathing fire like a mythical dragon swooping in to scorch him and other unsuspecting mortals in her path.
“I will begin again, Brandon,” she said succinctly, as if she feared very much he lacked the mental acuity to comprehend. “Do try to heed me this time.”
Her scolding was nothing new; Grandmother had always been harder than granite. Although her dark hair had long since turned snowy and the face that had made her the most-sought-after debutante of her day was now lined, nary a hint of infirmity surrounded her. She was a tiny wren of a woman, but sturdy of form.
Now, as ever, she terrified him.
Brandon shifted on his dashed uncomfortable chair, wishing he’d had the forethought to have Grandmother await him somewhere other than the drawing room, a chamber he scarcely used for its ferventLouis Quinzedevotion. “Of course. Pray, proceed.”
She inclined her head and, with a regal air, continued. “As I was saying, a visitor most unexpected and uninvited paid a call upon me yesterday. I am told she was turned away by your domestics. Ordinarily, I would have no desire to concern myself with such matters. Indeed, it is most unseemly. However, the child has your eyes and nose.”
Surely he must have misheard.
“The child?” he repeated, feeling as if the world had suddenly turned on its head.
Everything before him was unrecognizable.
“The girl child,” Grandmother elaborated, disapproval dripping from her voice.
Brandon was still struggling to understand. Was there wine to be had? A cursory glance about the drawing room suggested only tea that Grandmother must have requested. He needed something far less tepid.
“Are you attending me, Brandon?” she asked, her voice sharp.
He wrested his gaze from the tea and pinned it back upon his grandmother. “What girl child?”
“The one who was delivered, much to my butler’s horror, to my door yesterday afternoon by her mother, just before the woman ran off with her lover.”
“Who was the girl’s mother?” he managed, his necktie feeling more like a noose by the moment, growing tighter and tighter.
“She said her name was Mrs. Helena Darby-Booth.” Grandmother’s lip curled as if she had just tasted something spoiled. “A woman of ill repute, to be sure. She was dressed like a harlot, and it is to my everlasting shame that such a sinful creature should have had cause to arrive at my door after having been refused from yours. Have you any notion of the tongues that will gleefully wag? No, I daresay you do not. You are too busy cavorting with your lemans to save a thought for anyone other than yourself. Just like your father. I warned my darling Diana not to wed that scurrilous scoundrel. I didn’t care that he was a duke.”
His grandmother shook her head, caught in the throes of the past and temporarily distracted from her diatribe. Brandon was in shock. Helena had been his lover off and on over the years until she had abruptly married and left the stage some time ago. Had not that man been called Booth? Brandon searched the dim recesses of his mind for the name and the particulars. He had not seen her since, nor had he heard from her. What cause had she to call upon his grandmother, bringing a girl child?
One with his eyes and nose?
He swallowed against a rising sea of bile. “The sins of the father, madam. Tell me, if you please, why Mrs. Darby-Booth should have called upon you, bringing a child.”
“Because Mrs. Darby-Booth is following her new gentleman friend to America, and according to the letter she left with the girl, the man in question could only afford passage for two.” His grandmother’s green eyes, assessing and bright, narrowed. “She was required to leave the child behind, and she therefore deemed it better to leave the child in the care of her father’s family rather than an orphanage.”
No, no, no.
He heard the words Grandmother was speaking, but he didn’t wish to understand them. Surely this was all a dreadful mistake. Some manner of ploy Helena had concocted. He had always taken care with his lovers. He used a sheath. Unless… There had been occasions, particularly in times of drunken revelry at Wingfield Hall or in St John’s Wood, when he may have been too sotted to take care…
Dread seized him, a fist choking his lungs.
“In the care of her…father’s family?” he repeated.
“Yes, since the father himself refused to see her. There was a ship leaving, and our Mrs. Darby-Booth only had so much time in which to complete the task of abandoning her bastard child.”
