The time had come.
“Yes, Pandy girl,” he answered, his voice thick with suppressed emotion. “I am your papa.”
“I knowed it was you,” she said solemnly, scratching Cat behind her ears.
“How did you know?”
“Your eyes.” She nodded. “They’re just like mine. And Mama always said I had another papa somewhere. A fancy bloke. One what was importament.”
“We do share the same eyes,” he agreed, a rush of tenderness sweeping over him. “And the correct pronunciation of the word isimportant, my dear, although I don’t know how important I am.”
Indeed, he’d never felt so until now, with his daughter’s gaze upon him.
He wondered what she saw when she looked at him. Wondered if she was happy here. If she resented him for only entering her life now.
“You’re the most importamentest to me, Duke,” she said.
A strange tickle began at the back of his throat, accompanied by a prickle behind his eyes. His vision blurred and he blinked furiously. The Duke of Brandon didn’t cry. He was stronger than that.
“That’s the loveliest thing anyone has ever said to me, Pandy girl,” he managed to say, still struggling to keep those tears at bay.
Pandy reached into a pocket on her night wrap and extracted a small scrap of fabric. “Here y’go.”
He accepted the handkerchief from her. “Thank you.”
Feeling foolish, he dabbed at the corners of his eyes.
She nodded sagely. “I only used it for my nose a time or two.”
Sweet God.
He instantly held the cloth away from his face, peering at it as it dangled from his fingers. There was something suspicious and dried marring one of the corners. His stomach tightened.
“Next time, you might warn me before I use your handkerchief,” he managed, holding it out for her.
She nodded, taking it back from him and stuffing it into her pocket. “Are you going to find a wife soon? That’s what the frowning old lady said when she bringed me to you. Her said you need a duchess to keep you from trouble.”
Ah, his grandmother. He could well imagine her response if he told her Pandora had referred to her asthe frowning old lady.
“I am trying to find one, Pandy girl, yes,” he admitted gently. “The frowning lady was not wrong. But you needn’t fear that my doing so will change anything. You shall always be my very best poppet.”
Cat rolled happily to her back, inviting Pandy to give her a belly rub, and the meager, remaining hopes of keeping his bed free of dog fur vanished.
Pandy obliged, but her gaze was solemn and so like his. “I like Missus Lady Grenspell.”
His heart quickened. “I like her too, Pandy girl.”
He thought of their dinner, which had been meaningful yet chaste. He’d been careful not to press his suit, not with Pandy in the house. Losing his head that day in the study had been risk enough. Instead, they had spent an excellent evening learning about each other’s pasts, and at the end of their dinner, he had seen her to her carriage, brushing a kiss over her gloved knuckles after he handed her up into the conveyance.
Pandy nodded, looking thoughtful for a moment as she rubbed Cat’s white stomach. “Duke?”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Should I call you Papa now?” she wondered.
His heart seemed to swell to twice its size. “Yes, Pandy girl. If that is what you want, then you should.”
She grinned at him. “It’s what I want.”
