The energetic hound entered first, bowling into the room in a flash of brown-and-white fur. Pandora came next, trotting in a girlish skip that was hardly well-mannered. Brandon, elegant and wickedly handsome, was last to cross the threshold.
Cat launched herself into Lottie’s lap and instantly began licking her face with unrestrained exuberance.
“Oh Cat, you mustn’t. Missus Lady Grenspell don’t want no face lickings,” Pandora announced as Lottie attempted to placate the spaniel with some ear scratches.
“Blast it, Pandy. I told you the damned dog should stay at home,” Brandon growled, stalking across the room to pluck Cat from Lottie’s lap.
But not before she had received a sound tongue bath from the pup. Idly, she wondered if dog saliva was dripping from her chin.
“Duke, you ought not to say no-no words,” Pandy informed him, eyes wide.
He muttered something that sounded suspiciously like another oath. Lottie tried not to be amused by the vignette before her and failed. There was something undeniably adorable about watching father and daughter. Pandy was the perfect,rambunctious foil for the devastatingly handsome rakehell duke. But she would not allow herself to soften toward the man any more than she would allow herself to make love with him again.
Twice had been enough. She’d had her pleasure, and now she’d happily find it somewhere else.
Liar, said a voice within that she promptly ignored.
“Brandon,” she greeted with a cool aplomb that belied the fluttering in her stomach. “To what do I owe the dubious honor of your call?”
“Dubious? I’m affronted.” Holding the wriggling pup against his broad chest, he seated himself on a nearby settee. “I have a favor to ask of you, if you must know.”
Interesting. Also, not what she had expected.
She watched him struggling to contain Cat with undisguised amusement. “A favor? Of me? I’m positively agog.”
“Pandy, no playing with thebric-à-bracon Lady Grenfell’s tables,” he sternly advised the girl, who was unabashedly exploring the room with her hands rather than her eyes.
At that moment, she was holding a framed picture of Grenfell in her hands. Lottie didn’t know why she kept it about—perhaps as a reminder of how dreadful a mistake she’d made in marrying him. As it was, she didn’t think she’d mind if the girl dropped it and the glass shattered to bits.
“It’s only Grenfell,” she said. “She may as well pitch it into the fire.”
“Hardly the tender sentiment of a contented wife,” Brandon observed shrewdly.
Cat finally succeeded in extricating herself from his hold and leapt to the carpet, trotting after Pandy.
Lottie had no wish to discuss her unhappy marriage with him. Or anyone.
So she raised a brow. “What is the favor you need, Brandon?”
He winced. “No time for small talk?”
“Brandon.”
“What’s this, Missus Lady Grenspell?” Pandora asked loudly from across the room.
Lottie glanced in the girl’s direction and realized she was now holding a sketch that Lottie herself had drawn what felt like a lifetime ago.
“You must call me Lottie, dearest,” she reminded Pandy. “And what do you think it is?”
“A cat?” Lottie guessed, wrinkling her brow as she studied the framed sketch in her chubby-fingered hand.
“Pandy, my girl, look with your eyes alone,” he said, with another long-suffering sigh.
“It is indeed a cat,” Lottie answered. “But you may hold the sketch if you like, dear.”
“Missus Lady—Lottie,” Pandy corrected herself belatedly, regarding Brandon with triumph, “has said I may hold it.”
“It’s only a sketch I made in my youth,” she explained to Brandon. “My favorite cat, Mr. Whiskers.”
