Faith in the unfaithful was difficult at best. Yet, each time his father brought home a new babe from his travels, his mother had loved that child like her own. She had been dealt a poor hand when she’d been given to his father as a bride while he was a diplomat for the Crown in India. Her parents had been honoured by a British earl paying court to their daughter.
Perhaps he was being cynical regarding his father, since his mother had never said a word. His siblings came from different cultural backgrounds and were presented as agiftfor his mother upon his father’s return home after a long dignitary visit abroad.The one time Simon had questioned her about his father’s philandering, she’d replied in a manner that had surprised him. “I was given the winning hand of a full house. I have no complaints.”
Now he wondered how his mother would feel about Sébastien.
The door slowly began to open as if an apparition was slipping into his room to steal his soul—at half past noon.
“Knock! Knock!” Charlotte screeched and flew over to her perch.
A three-foot-tall blond little towhead appeared in the doorway. Big blue eyes, more vibrant than the azure sea off the coast of Italy, stared at him as a second identical little girl peeked in below the first. They stared at him as if he were an actual ghost.
“Hello,” he said with a stunned smile.
“‘Ello. Are ye dead?” The two girls pushed into his room as if he’d delivered a formal invitation. By their attire, they appeared to be children of a wealthy tradesman or daughters of a peer. Yet, despite being dressed most prettily in matching blue gowns and slippers, with ringlets in their hair, their accents were from the streets.
He patted his chest, feeling around to see if he was corporal. “I don’t think I’m dead.”
“Ewww, wook at his finga.” One exclaimed in a heavy Cockney accent to the other as they waltzed over to the side of his bed with all the manners of a street urchin begging for a coin.
He looked down at his pinky finger on his chest that stuck out like a branch coming out of the side of his hand.
“The doctor wanted to lop it off,” he confessed.
“Ye should’ve let him.”
“I’m rather fond of it, even if it is ugly.”
“What’d ye do to it?”
“That’s what happens when you mess with bad characters,” he warned with the solemnity that caution deserved.
“‘Ow do they look, Guv? Did ye put ‘em in the grave?” The girls watched him as if he were a bare-knuckle fighter ready to deliver the story of a knockout punch. He did one better.
When any person of the opposite sex looked to Simon for a story, he’d always delivered one that would please them most. These girls were like Robbi—they wanted blood. “You’d have to ask Davey Jones that question,” he said with a wink.
If it were possible, their eyes became even larger as they leaned in. “Cor,” they said in unison.
He suspected it was a common occurrence.
“Ye mean they be in Davey Jones’s locker?” Letters were dropping off their words in a fashion that would disgust the ladies of the ton. On these two, he found it quite charming.
He nodded solemnly. “A man must do some horrible things to stay alive.”
Their heads bobbed up and down.
“Are ye our father?”
It was his turn to look utterly befuddled. “I beg your pardon?”
“Our mum said our pappa is dead. So, we be wonderin’ if’n ye were ‘im and ye were dead.”
“Aack! Who’s your daddy?” Charlotte’s wings flapped and the girls gasped.
“It’s a parrot!” The girls squealed.
His brow furrowed. “A yellow-naped amazon parrot,” he corrected.
“Can we touch him?”
