She hadn’t allowed him to walk near her on the way back from the salon, and now she hovered between her parents.
“You made a muck of that,” Quinn said as he came up beside him, holding his dessert. “This is heaven by the way.”
Heaven had been listening to Purity. Heaven had been in her good graces all evening. Heaven was not frothy syllabub, but with nothing better to do, he turned and snatched one from the tray.
“Delicious,” he muttered, attacking it ruthlessly, all the while staring at Purity who was deliberately not looking in his direction.
Half an hour later when the party ended, Matthew had managed to get no closer to her. Yet as he approached Lord and Lady Diamond, Purity did not shy away. After thanking his hosts, he glanced at her, and as she had done at the evening’s onset, she offered him her hand.
“Good evening, Lady Purity.” He wouldn’t apologize, as that might only embarrass her again. But with her intense blue gaze fixed upon him, he mouthed the words, “I’m sorry” before he turned away.
Purity looked at thesquirming sack her father carried into the drawing room where she and her sisters were reading and jumped to her feet. When he set it on the low table before the sofa, she peered inside and anger bloomed inside her.
“Kittens!” she exclaimed. “Did Lord Foxford send these?” The question was out before she could reconsider.
It had been two days since his breach of decorum at the party, naturally making every person in the room believe they had some sort of arrangement or understanding.
However, she knew her mortification had been inadvertent upon his part, and she didn’t hold a grudge. After all, it was not as if they had been caught alone together and had their names linked in the newspapers.
Yet instead of a written note of apology, he was sending kittens.How would she explain this to her family?
“Foxford?” her father repeated while Ray and Bri squealed their excitement, each reaching in to pick up one of the wiggly balls of fluff. “Of course not,” he said. “I found these little rascals at Tattersall’s. The mama cat had birthed them in the clean hay, and the stable manager was making a fuss. He had put them all in the sack and was ready to toss them into the Thames.”
“How dreadful,” Ray said. “But their eyes are closed. They are too young to survive without their mother.”
“Which is why I brought her home, too.” He looked behind him. “Where is that footman?”
A moment later, the young man entered, holding a struggling, spitting cat by the scruff of its neck.
“Apologies, my lord. I all but lost it in the mews.” With that, the cat made another desperate twist and escaped the footman’s hold, dropping to the floor and instantly running under the sofa.
“I suggest we close the door,” Purity said, which the man did on his way out. Then she lifted the canvas sack from the table and put it beside the hearth, rolling down the edges until it was evenly low all around and they could see the remaining helpless kittens.
“Put the babies back,” she instructed her sisters, who did as they were told. Then she stood with her father and watched as the loud mewling of the kittens brought the frightened mama cat out from hiding.
In a flash of her tail, she jumped into the bag, too, protecting her babies while trying to settle beside them so they could nurse.
“She needs a larger bed,” her father said. “And a more permanent place to live than this room. Somewhere out of the way until the kittens are weaned.”
Purity smiled at her sisters. They were blessed with a considerate, gentle father in Geoffrey Diamond.
“May I keep them in my room?” Bri asked.
“I don’t see why not,” the earl said.
And that settled the excitement of the morning. Undoubtedly, their mother would approve of taking in a whole family of stray felines because of her soft heart.
“I guess we don’t need a small companion dog now,” Purity reminded him, having heard no more about it since the encounter in his study.
Her father cleared his throat. “No, it shall be lively enough for the time being. You two, go ask Mrs. Cumby for something larger for this brood, maybe a picnic basket,” their father said, and her younger sisters scurried off, seeming to be children again instead of in their teens.
“And you,” Lord Diamond said when they were alone, “why don’t you tell me what’s going on between you and Foxford.”
Chapter Twelve
“Father!” Purity exclaimed, crouching down beside the crowded, ever-moving sack. “It is a litter, not a brood,” she said.
“You are stalling, dear daughter. But I am a patient man. I have to be, what with five children.”
