One hand on her knee, Axel signaled the horses back onto the road. “The location isn’t as exclusive as Brightley Place or Crest House, but it’s more modern and has plenty of space to entertain. A mature garden, and a nursery…”
“Why?” She couldn’t help asking. She wanted to know if he suspected his father now.
Her question silenced the stream of details he had been listing.
“Why?” He stretched his shoulders forward and then sat back. “My father isn’t trying to kill me.” He sent her a warning glance. “But I’m done with his criticisms, and I won’t give him the opportunity to insult you again.”
She nodded. “You confronted him,” she guessed. He drew his shoulders forward again, obviously uncomfortable with this train of conversation. But she persisted. “I’m going to be your wife, Axel. Don’t shut me out.”
This was an altogether different sort of intimacy than either of them had shared. She watched his throat move as though swallowing an unwanted emotion.
“The reason I’m not suspicious of him isn’t that I have some misguided belief he’s been harboring affection for me. It’s because having two male offspring is something that’s important to him.”
Which made sense—with any other person. And yet, she found it difficult to dismiss her suspicions.
“I’ve been staying at Knight house,” he said as he steered the carriage to the side of the street. “I doubt there’s anywhere safer in London.” They hadn’t driven far, and the street was not an exclusive one, but it was inside the boundaries of Mayfair, and the house appeared to have been well maintained.
Axel was no longer residing in his family home. She would leave it be for now.
“That one.” Mantis pointed to the house adjacent to where they stopped, and her breath caught. Not because there was anything extraordinary about it, but because it could be her future home.
The three-story house, set back from the street, was made up of red and maroon brick and was surrounded by an ornate iron fence. “It’s lovely,” Felicity breathed. “Can we go inside?”
“Of course.” He assisted her out of the gig and opened the gate. “The back should have been left open for us.”
Felicity pushed the cloak away from her face now that they were off the street and allowed the breeze to cool her skin. Well into the season now, summer wasn’t long-off.
“How did you find it?”
Axel grinned. He seemed as excited about this as she was. He told her that Chaswick’s father had kept the house for his mistress and her three daughters, who had been his daughters as well. Chase had taken responsibility for them after the old baron’s death, but he no longer wished to keep them hidden. Bethany and her husband had decided to give his half-sisters the opportunity to participate in society.
With their mother having moved to the country with the youngest of them, the two older girls were now settled at Byrde House.
“That’s rather daring of them.” Felicity would help her friend, however. Presented properly, with backing from a few powerful members of the aristocracy, the illegitimate girls stood to be accepted by most members of the ton.
Not all—there would always be sticklers unwilling to forgive the circumstances surrounding their birth.
“Chaswick made updates upon his father’s death.” Mantis pushed the door open, and they stepped into a gleaming kitchen. “We’ll hire servants, of course.”
Felicity drug her fingertips along the edge of a countertop.
Her own home.
Their own home.
By the time he’d taken her upstairs to the main part of the house, she was quite enamored with the idea.
“And the master chamber.” He gestured for her to enter. “We’ll order new furniture, and I’m sure you’ll wish to change out the wallcoverings. And there’s an adjoining chamber for you…”
Felicity did not need to see it.
“I love it.”
He hesitated with a frown. “You’re not just telling me what you think I want to hear? I wasn’t sure since it belonged to the old baron’s mistress…” He searched her gaze anxiously. “It isn’t nearly as—”
She threw herself into his arms. And in case he’d not heard her properly before, “I love it.”
His arms clamped around her. She didn’t care who had previously lived in the house. It was going to be theirs!
