CHAPTER 13
Brandon was awakened by a familiar scratch at his door, accompanied by an equally recognizable bark.
Pandy and Cat were awake.
“In a moment, Pandy girl,” he called, rising from his bed to the cool air, for once grateful for the dressing gown he’d been sleeping in since her arrival at his town house.
Her new nursemaid had stressed the importance of Pandy observing boundaries and rules. Such as not running wildly about the house each morning and bounding into his bedroom unannounced and uninvited. He had given in to Miss Bennington’s wisdom on the matter. Because, whilst he detested the notion of making his Pandy sad, he was more than aware that when he married, Pandy couldn’t come sprinting into his bedroom with Cat at her heels.
In bare feet, he padded across the cool Axminster to the door, opening it to the sight of his beloved daughter in her dressing gown, nightgown, and cap, her hair a dark cloud spilling over her shoulders.
“Good morning, my dear.” With a narrow-eyed stare, he settled upon the incorrigible pup, whose tail wagged excitedly as she regarded him, tongue lolling. “And Cat.”
“Good morning, Duke!” Pandy executed a small curtsy. “May I enter?”
Progress, he reasoned. “Of course, Pandy girl. Thank you for using your manners this fine day.”
She made a moue of distaste. “Miss Bennington says I must, and I don’t like no manners, but Idowant to make you proud of me. Does manners make you proud?”
Something in his chest tightened painfully. “I am incredibly proud of you, poppet, manners or no. However, it is very important to comport one’s self in a mannerly fashion, as Miss Bennington so very wisely suggested.” He gave her head an affectionate rustle over the nightcap. “In with you, then.”
She raced over the threshold with her customary enthusiasm, Cat chasing at her heels and nearly tripping her as she rushed to his bed and launched herself into it as if she were capable of flying. Her diminutive stature and his high, large bed meant that she could only attach herself to the side, rather like a barnacle, until she climbed higher. Cat leapt with graceful ease.
“Cat, you’re going to make my bed all full of fur,” he said grimly.
The beast eyed him and then burrowed her face into his pillow, shoving it halfway across the mattress as she inhaled and snorted.
“Cat doesn’t got no manners yet,” Pandy told him, lying on her back atop the coverlets and hanging her head over the edge to regard him, upside down.
“So I see,” he murmured as his pillow went sailing to the floor and Cat rolled happily on her back, burrowing herself into the bedclothes. “Pandy girl, you mustn’t hang your head like that. What if you fall upon it?”
“I ain’t gonna,” she declared, grinning.
Her nightcap fell to the floor, joining the pillow, her hair dangling.
His daughter was as stubborn as he was, but Brandon had learned there were ways to maneuver her into doing what he wished. So he crossed the room and laid his fingers on the coverlet, wriggling them.
“What if a spider were to tickle you?” he asked with feigned portent. “Then you might fall.”
Her eyes went wide. “Not the Duke spider!”
His fingers crept closer. “The Duke spider loves to tickle girls who don’t listen to their papas.”
It was the first time, he realized, that he had referred to himself as her papa. If Pandy took note, she didn’t comment upon it, but perhaps that was because in the next moment, his fingers had reached the place under her chin where he knew she was ticklish, making a peal of giggles ring from her.
Swiftly, he scooped her up and moved her so that she was lying safely in the midst of the bed before straightening. Cat took the opportunity to bathe her face with kisses until, giggling and wriggling, Pandy freed herself from the dog’s keen attentions.
“Blech,” she declared, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Cat, your breath smells like pig trotters. It’s asgusting.”
“Disgusting, you mean,” he corrected gently, amused.
“That too,” Pandy agreed, wide-eyed.
He chuckled. “No, Pandy girl. The proper pronunciation isdisgusting, notasgusting.”
“Oh,” she said. “Are you my papa, Duke?”
The question hit him with the force of a blow. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. All the breath seemed to have leached from his lungs. He hadn’t known how to address the circumstances of her birth, nor how she had come to live with him. Nor had he understood how to speak to little girls, particularly his own, whom he had only recently learned about. And so, he had held his tongue, biding his time. Waiting.
