“I know you don’t.But I will not tolerate your mother’s tears.You’ll leave with me this afternoon and comport yourself like a gentleman around your young cousins.”
“Does that mean I can be my real self with the aunts and uncles?”
Lucien shuddered.“God help us all.”
“That abominable boyis coming for Christmas,” Benedick Rohan, Viscount Rohan, warned his wife as they were dressing for dinner.They’d arrived at the house in the Lake District that afternoon, exhausted after the long trip, only to be greeted by his younger brother Brandon and the unwelcome news that the Scorpion’s son and heir, an absolute doppelganger to Lucien’s diabolical ways, was to join them for their holiday festivities.“If I’d known that, I would have found a reason to cry off.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Melisande “Charity” Rohan said cheerfully.“He’s no worse than you were at that age.”
“He’s a great deal worse.I wasn’t kicked out of Cambridge.”
“You were sent down twice,” his wife reminded him.“They just happened to allow you back.”
“I didn’t hold rapacious gatherings and…and orgies…”
“Your father did.And your grandfather.”
“I didn’t strip green young men of their fortunes at the card table and then watch as they blew their brains out.”
“I hardly think that was Brat’s fault.Young Merrick shouldn’t have gambled.”
“You’ve a hard heart,” said Benedick to the woman with the softest heart in England, and she merely smiled.
“Maybe he’s turned over a new leaf.”
“Not if the gossips are to be believed.And the children adore him.Charles Edward has already been a bit too curious about our reprehensible nephew.”
“Charles Edward has you for a father, not the Scorpion.He’ll be fine.”
“Perhaps,” Benedick said gloomily.“I’m just not sure about us.”
“I’m so happy,”Miranda de Malheur, Countess of Rochdale, said as she tucked a sprig of greenery into the barrel of a dueling pistol.“I haven’t had James home for Christmas in three years, and I just couldn’t do without him any longer.I expect Lucien will be bringing him back with him any day now.”
“You must be happy,” Emma Rohan said as she followed suit, placing a sprig of holly beside a battle axe.The weapons that had once adorned every wall in Pawlfrey House were now limited to the study, the library, and the great hall, and everything was far out of reach of tiny hands.The display looked oddly inviting, and Emma reached for another branch of greenery.
“You don’t mind, do you?”Miranda said anxiously.She was a beautiful woman in her late forties, her brown hair lightly streaked with gray, her face the content visage of a long and happy life.“I know he can be a bit difficult at times.”
“He didn’t call me fat,” Emma pointed out.
“Melisande’s not fat,” Miranda protested.“She’s just comfortably padded.You know Benedick worships the ground she walks on.”
“Which was why he said he was going to take a horsewhip to your son when he made a remark about Melisande.”
“James won’t make the same mistake again.”Miranda said serenely.
Emma wisely said nothing, tucking a spring of laurel into the chain of a mace.“At least there are no young women in the household,” she said again.“The girls are too young to realize just how bewitching a rake can be.”
“Oh, I don’t think he’s a rake, do you?He hasn’t compromised anyone, more’s the pity.If he had, I could be a grandmother by now.”
“I wouldn’t wish that on any poor woman,” Emma said unthinkingly.
Miranda gasped.“You don’t know my son.Once he decides to marry, he’ll become a most excellent husband, just like his father.Look at Lucien.He was quite despicable before he met me.”
And quite despicable afterward, Emma thought.Even now a little bit of the Scorpion went a long way.“I only meant a forced marriage is unpleasant for all concerned.”
“Not always,” Miranda said with a secret smile.
Emma wisely said nothing.“Will he be staying the full two weeks?”
