He waved a footman away and opened the door of the coach himself, smiling into the interior to ask if the ladies had enjoyed their coach ride.
His answer came from Marley, who launched herself at him, so that he was forced to catch hold of her or else she’d fall to the flagway. “Here now, is that any way for a lady to exit a coach?”
“I suppose there are others,” the child answered matter-of-factly, her arms wrapped around his neck, definitely putting paid to his carefully tied neck cloth, her legs scissored around his waist. Oddly, rather than being annoyed, he somewhat enjoyed her enthusiasm. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Uncle Nailbourne. That was quite the most pleasant coach ride I have ever had. Norton pointed out all the sights, and even promised to take me to the park to see the swans. I never saw a swan, did you? Their necks are exceedingly long, Norton says, and then he explained about his hair. Would you like to know why he paints his beard black?”
Darby was still attempting to regain his breath—apparently a slight but well-aimed child had the power to partially knock the wind out of him. And she’d actually addressed him as Uncle Nailbourne. Oh, wouldn’t his friends delight in how far, and how quickly, the mighty had fallen. “Well, I suppose I—”
“Think carefully before you answer, my lord,” Sadie Grace Boxer warned as she made shooing motions with her hands so that he would move away from the coach and the footman could put down the steps for her. “How badly do you want to know about your valet’s personal grooming choices?”
He looked at the aunt, who was now standing beside him, and then to his new ward, who now had her cheek pressed against his shoulder as she blinked up at him, and came to a decision.
“Another time perhaps, poppet. We’ll go inside now.”
“A prudent answer,” Mrs. Boxer whispered as she preceded him up the marble steps and into the foyer of the mansion, just as if she entered mansions every day of her life. “What a lovely residence you have, my lord,” she remarked as she turned in a full circle, admiring her surroundings.
“I do, yes,” he said, finally able to detach Marley from his person. She immediately began hopping—jumping from one large black tile square to the next, careful not to land on any of the white tiles. “This, however, is not it. Make her stop, if you please.”
“The ladies await in the main drawing room, my lord,” the Cranbrook butler said, eyeing Marley as if she might have been a puppy who’d tracked in mud from the streets and now expected a reward.
Mrs. Boxer snapped her fingers twice and, unbelievably, Marley came to her at once, slipping her hand into her aunt’s. From the faintly surprised look on that aunt’s face, she had been as astonished by her niece’s quick obedience nearly as much as had Darby.
“She’s been cooped up in too many coaches for too many days, my lord. Your ward is only showing a healthy, youthful exuberance. Were you never a child? And what do you mean, to say this isn’t your residence? Where have you brought us?”
“I’d say a den of iniquity, were it not very nearly true. I’ll explain once we’re upstairs.” He snapped his fingers twice as he headed for the wide staircase, sadly without the same obedient result, as Marley ignored him to goggle up at the huge chandelier that hung in the foyer. The butler was already halfway up the stairs, on his way to announce the visitors. “If you and Marley will follow me, please.”
“Marley, follow your uncle Nailbourne.”
Once had been enough, and at least the child only repeated what she was told. But the aunt, as well? Go to Uncle Nailbourne. Curtsy to Uncle Nailbourne. Slow down, darling, so poor Uncle Nailbourne can catch up. No, he wouldn’t allow it. He stopped on the second step and turned back. “Darby. She is to address me as Darby.”
“That’s quite impossible, my lord, and definitely not acceptable. She is a child, and you are her guardian.”
“Darby,” he repeated. “She calls you Sadie, and she can bloody—very well call me Darby. Is that clear?”
Sadie shrugged. “You’re in charge, I suppose.”
“There is no suppose about it, Mrs. Boxer.”
He wasn’t made for this. He wasn’t prepared for it, had no idea what to do with a child or the child’s aunt. Neither fit into his life, his idea of what his life was about...and as soon as he figured out exactly what his life was about, he’d be a happy man. He’d been a boy, and then a soldier, and since he’d returned from the war he’d been pretty much nothing but a man happy to move with the tide of events as they occurred. Not quite a grand example for a man now in charge of a young female ward.
To be fair, he had been giving at least a cursory thought to setting up his nursery, as titled gentlemen were expected to do, as Gabe and Rigby and even Coop were in the process of doing—all but tumbling over one another to do, as a matter of fact. It did seem the next logical step.
But if he was going to one day be Uncle Nailbourne, it would be to his friends’ children, and if he were to take a wife, it certainly wouldn’t be— Lord, he needed a drink.
“Darby, there you are, you scamp. What a deliciously confusing message you sent me. We’re all agog to learn more.”
“Aunt Vivien,” he said as the petite woman and her usual filmy draperies and ruffles exited the drawing room, to meet him in the large first-floor foyer. He quickly motioned for Sadie and Marley to sit themselves down on a nearby ornate bench—hopefully out of earshot of whispers—while he dealt with Her Grace.
Within a moment he was engulfed in butter-yellow silk and tulle, kissing the top of the woman’s bouncy silver curls and inhaling her powdery scent. “You’ve saved my life.”
“I have? Well, isn’t that clever of me. How have I done that?”
“By inviting my ward and her aunt to reside with you until I can bloody well figure out what to do with both of them,” he whispered into her ear. “You know they can’t stay with me.”
She whispered right back at him: “They could, if you were in mind of creating a scandal, but I suppose you aren’t. Is that them, plopped down way over there on that uncomfortable bench the fourth duke dragged home from Lord only knows where, saying the elephant feet were all the mode? Pretty, the pair of them, definitely not the bench, which is horrid. Country mice, though, definitely not up to snuff for the Season. May I have the dressing of them, as well?”
“You, Aunt Vivien?” he asked, once again finding himself having to disengage from a clinging female. The woman, dear lady that she was, dressed like a confection suited to be displayed in a bakery shop window. “Only you?”
The duchess gave his chest a playful slap. “No, silly, all of us. Well, except for Coop’s mother. Minerva has the oddest taste. Perhaps we’ll allow her to choose gloves. Not a whacking great lot of damage one can do with gloves, isn’t that right? Now bring them inside. Have you no manners?”
“So you’ll do it? You’ll take them off my—that is, you’ll ask them to join you here until the end of the Season? I know I’m asking a lot, especially with the duke’s birthday fast approaching, but—”
“Must I cross my heart and swear, you scamp? It’s going to be the greatest fun, and give Basil something else to think about beyond discovering himself to be either horizontal or vertical come his birthday morn. Although what you’ll do with them afterward is a subject for delicious conjecture. We’ve already discussed it among us, you know. Clarice says—”
“Another time, Aunt Vivien,” Darby interrupted, well able to image what Rigby’s beloved said. He’d already been put to the blush, as it were, enough for one day, and he still had to face the rest of the ladies.
“Come say hello to your aunt Vivien, my