She beamed at him. “I’m afraid you don’t have a choice.”
He glowered at her for a moment before relenting. “Very well. You’ll have your favor in return for mine.”
“Excellent.” It required all the self-discipline she possessed to keep from rubbing her hands together in diabolical glee.
Now to think about what favor she would request. And to keep Cat from eating her tables. She rose from her chair and shook out her gown, casting a wily eye in the direction of the spaniel, lest she hatch any ideas about the ribbon trimming and gauzy overskirt.
“Come along, Pandy. Let us see what treats we can find for you and Cat.” She held out her hand to the girl.
Pandy happily skipped toward her, the dog racing her until the child nearly tripped. Lottie had a feeling it was going to be an interesting several hours. And strangely, she was looking forward to it.
The Wicked Dukes Society—or,to be more specific, its founders—convened in the drawing room at the Duke of Camden’s Grosvenor Square town house. There was brandy and cheroots. Bawdy jokes and an overuse of curses. It was decidedly not an appropriate setting for one’s still relatively newfound four-year-old imp and her table-and-nursemaid-eating dog.
“There’s been some news from Wingfield Hall,” Brandon announced grimly to the assemblage when a lull in discussion had occurred.
“News?” Riverdale repeated. “I don’t think I like the sound of that or the accompanying expression on your face.”
Brandon took a fortifying sip of brandy. “And well you shouldn’t. It’s my grandmother, I’m afraid. After all these years of abandoning the estate to my care, she has apparently made an unexpected visit.”
“Bloody hell,” Camden swore.
“Have you received word from her?” King asked, drinking something that decidedly didn’t resemble brandy.
Another of his potions, presumably.
“From the servants,” Brandon clarified.
“And?” Richford wanted to know, raising a brow. “What have they said?”
“Grandmother is suspicious,” he said, repeating verbatim what his butler had relayed. “There are certain…rooms that are likely a concern. To say nothing of our next house party, which is set for a month from now. If she chooses to remain in residence…”
“We’ll have to cancel the house party,” Whitby finished for him.
“But the invitations have already been accepted, as have the payments,” Riverdale pointed out.
And they all knew the payments were an immense sum, divided six ways still enough to be considered a small fortune for each of them. The lucrative nature of the Society was one of the reasons they continued hosting their lavish fêtes at Wingfield Hall. Earning their own funds rather than accepting the familial coffers that had been left them—in varying states of empty and full—had given each man a sense of purpose that had been previously lacking.
But for Brandon, it was more than that. He had been diverting the sums to the orphanage that had been his mother’s favored charity. A small, secret way to pay her honor, but one that was important to him.
He sighed now, raking his fingers through his hair. “I’m well aware of all the problems facing us if my grandmother insists upon staying at Wingfield Hall, and I greatly regret offering it as the location for our Society gatherings, given what she’s been doing.”
Forcing him to marry. Threatening to give Wingfield Hall to Cousin Horace. Now intruding upon the estate she hadn’t visited in years, a month before they were to host a gathering with carefully selected members of the Society. His head was beginning to ache just thinking about it all.
He took another hearty drink of brandy, hoping to dull some of the pain.
“Wingfield Hall is perfectly situated near to London,” King said. “We all agreed upon it for its convenience and the grotto. The fault isn’t yours, old chap.”
Not entirely, perhaps. But he would be the one to pay the price with his own sacrifice. Which brought him to another topic of concern he needed to raise with the rest of his friends.
“As King knows, my grandmother has recently taken a notion into her head that I must marry or she’ll give Wingfield Hall to a distant cousin,” he blurted. “It’s her estate, inherited from her family, and she has the right to do it. I simply…never thought I’d see the day when she would take my birthright and give it away to someone else.”
“You have to getmarried?” Whitby choked out, looking not just astonished but horrified by the idea.
Indeed, with the inflection he put on the word, Whitby might have saidyou have to take a leap from the nearest pier whilst wearing leaden weights about your anklesinstead. The revulsion was the same.
“I do,” he admitted grimly, thinking of Lottie again.
She had looked nothing short of luscious this afternoon. He’d wanted to devour her. To gather her up in his arms and carry her to the nearest room containing a bed, where he could happily enact all the lurid fantasies that had been haunting his thoughts last night when he’d been alone in the darkness of the night.
