A Family Affair

by Jennifer Wenn

  She leaned closer to her father and rested her cheek against his warm shoulder while she watched her mother trying not to look too pleased.

  “It was you, not I, who invited Miss Archer to the picnic,” she said sternly.

  When Sebastian snorted, she frowned at him. “Sebastian Darling, this is not the way to address your mother. I thought I had raised you better than that.”

  Sebastian pushed her hand from his knee. “Oh, come on! You more or less forced me into asking Emma to join us tomorrow.”

  “I did not,” Caroline said severely, while looking too guilty for anyone to believe her.

  “Oh, come on,” Sebastian repeated. “When she said she wasn’t going to the picnic because of her mother’s migraine, you told her I was going there without a companion.”

  Sebastian was starting to look so frustrated Fanny wanted to calm him down before the discussion turned from skirmish to war.

  “In my opinion, I don’t think Mother did anything wrong. She merely pointed out how you were going to the picnic by yourself. By no means should that have forced you to anything.”

  Sebastian was speechless for a second, then threw a pointing finger toward Caroline and accused, “She told Emma—in front of me, mind you—that I am too shy to ask someone to join me, and Emma immediately turned to me and offered me her company, as she didn’t want me to go alone to this special occasion.”

  The marquess, Sin, and Fanny all turned their heads toward Caroline, staring at her in disbelief.

  “For heaven’s sake, Caroline,” George said under his breath.

  Sin laughed and winked toward Sebastian, making his brother even angrier, while Caroline twisted her handkerchief between her fingers, not too pleased with the development of this conversation.

  “I just wanted to help him a little on the way.”

  “Help him?” Fanny asked without really wanting an answer. “You more or less threw him at her. You told her he was too shy, and that gave Emma the impression he likes her. How could you, Mama? You put Sebastian in an awfully awkward position with this.”

  “Do you know what’s even worse?” Sin asked with an evil grin. “Now Miss Archer will tell all her friends about Sebastian and his shyness, and before you know it he will be surrounded by young women, all of them wishing to help poor Sebastian Darling out of his misery.”

  Sebastian groaned and gave Caroline a dark look.

  As the carriage stopped in front of their townhouse, George pointed at his wife.

  “You will talk to Miss Archer tomorrow, and I don’t care what you tell her, but you will make sure she understands that Sebastian isn’t, and has never been, in love with her or even slightly interested in her.”

  “I can’t be so harsh,” Caroline cried out. “It will hurt the poor girl’s heart, and she will be devastated. Emma Archer is a gentle young lady, and deserves to be treated better.”

  “You should have thought earlier about what she deserves,” George said as he climbed out of the carriage. “Or were you too caught up in playing Lady Easton’s kind of game?”

  Caroline gasped with horror over his rude remark before she made a face to her husband’s retiring back.

  “I saw that,” he shouted over his shoulder as he walked through the front door of the house, followed closely by his two sons.

  Caroline sighed and slumped back against the velvet cushions, looking pathetic and regretful.

  Fanny smiled lovingly toward her mother.

  It wasn’t easy being such a caring person and trying to embrace everyone without hurting anyone. Emma Archer was a good person too, even though she obviously lacked common sense, as she let Charmaine walk all over her.

  It wasn’t a nice thing Caroline had done, giving the poor girl the impression Sebastian had warm feelings for her, as Emma was almost on the shelf and would probably marry the first person who asked her. She was, after all, twenty years old. The clock was ticking.

  Fanny put her hand on her mother’s.

  “I’ll talk to her, Mama, and try to make her understand there isn’t anything growing between her and Sebastian.”

  “I never meant this mess,” Caroline sobbed.

  George’s remark had apparently done a good job of instilling a sense of remorse, Fanny thought, as she followed her mother up the steps to the front door. Caroline really didn’t like being compared to Lady Easton.

  The butler of the Darling family’s townhouse, aptly named Butler, waited in the hallway, and in a few minutes he had them relieved of their coats and seated in the airy drawing room with hot cups of tea in their hands. Delicious cucumber sandwiches and scones filled with strawberry jam were placed on a silver tray on the small table between the sofas.

  “Night food is really the best thing,” Sin said, and stuffed his mouth with a sandwich.

  “My regards to Mrs. Lloyd,” Caroline told Butler, who stood at the doorway, prepared to bring his employers anything they wished for.

  He had been with the family since Fanny’s grandfather, Hannibal, was young, and had worked his way up through the servant hierarchy until reaching the pinnacle at the job of butler, when old Jenkins passed away twenty years earlier. He, like a few others of the servants who had been with the Darlings for many years, was more of a family member than an employee, and he was like an uncle for the children of the house rather than a servant. The family had tried for years to get him to join them, especially at family occasions as this one, but he always declined.

  When the two youngest of George’s brothers joined them, Rake and Jamie, Sebastian immediately snatched the last scone from the tray before either of them had a chance to grab it, and shoved it into his mouth.

  “You look like a hamster,” Rake told his obnoxious nephew, as he sat down in an unoccupied armchair. “You’d better be careful no one catches you and puts you in a small cage.”

  “That would be a sight.” Sin laughed and poked his brother hard with his elbow.

  Sebastian grunted something that sounded like a curse. It was well muffled by his mouthful of scone.

  “Did you have a good time?” George asked his younger brothers.

  “Indeed we did,” Jamie said jovially as he sat down beside Fanny and grabbed a cup of tea with a lemon twist. “But not as good as Fanny had.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you, Lady Francesca. You met Hereford again. If my memory serves me right, you were head over heels in love with him the last time you saw him.”

  Fanny looked at him with scorn.

  “I was five years old. I didn’t know better.”

  “But still…”

  “What? There is nothing to it. We met and agreed it had been a while, we danced, and then we said goodbye.”

  “That’s it?” Sin let out, aghast. “You mean we had to live with you all that time while you were moping around, mourning the loss of your Prince Charming, and now, when you finally meet him again as an adult, you think of it as nothing?”

  “That’s right.” Fanny met her mother’s probing gaze. “It was nice to have some kind of closure in meeting him again, but that’s it.”

  “Of course,” Caroline said in a very I-don’t-believe-a-word-but-to-avoid-war-we’ll-let-it-be kind of way. She stood and gave her family a contented smile. “Thank you, my dears, for this evening. It was good of you to accompany us to Fanny’s first outing as a debutante. Now I will retire to my chambers, to get some sleep before the picnic tomorrow.”

  George gave Fanny a kiss on the forehead before he followed his wife out of the room.

  The remaining five sipped quietly on their tea for a while, enjoying the silence of the night. Jamie put his arm around Fanny, and she gave him a sleepy smile as she laid her head against his shoulder.

  The four men sat silently as they watched her fall asleep. No one said anything until they were sure she was sleeping soundly, and then Rake looked gravely at Sin.

  “So what do we know happened?”

  Sin shrugged. “I’m not
sure. When she went to the restroom, I kind of lost her. Mother more or less forced me to ask Penelope to dance with me, so I had to leave my watch.”

  When Sebastian gave him an accusing gaze, Sin hissed, “You, better than anyone, should know Mother’s not-so-subtle way of taking care of business.”

  Sebastian winced at the truth of his brother’s words, having the Miss Archer situation too fresh in mind, and gave his brother an apologetic shrug.

  “Well, I met them just inside the balcony doors,” Rake said slowly, “And I can bet my life I caught them only minutes after they entered the ballroom from the balcony.”

  “What?” the three other Darlings exclaimed, making Fanny stir in her sleep, and they had to wait until she was calm again.

  They were all too aware of what could happen with a young girl out on the balcony, as they had all been there, and they had all enjoyed the darkness.

  A lot.

  “When I think about it,” Rake mused. “Fanny was blushing, and Devlin was drooling all over her. I didn’t think so much of it then, as I was happy to meet Devlin again after all this time.”

  “Where has he been?” Jamie asked curiously.

  “As far as I know, he’s been on the continent for many years now, in the military, and I think it’s high time he did return, as I have missed him profoundly.”

  “A couple of years is an extraordinarily long time for a high-born nobleman to remain as a foot soldier on enemy soil. I can’t think the French like our aristocracy more than their own.”

  “I don’t know more than you do, as I only met him for a second or two, and then his attention was on Fanny.”

  “There is something between them, anyone could tell, and we have to guard Fanny harder, so she won’t slip through our net again. We don’t want her alone with a womanizer like Devlin,” Sin said as he unwrapped his long legs and stood up.

  Jamie and Sebastian agreed. Only Rake remained silent, with a strange look on his face.

  “You know,” he said slowly, “I think I wouldn’t mind if Fanny ends up marrying him. Devlin is a really good friend, honest and reliable, and he would never disrespect Fanny or us by mistreating her in any way. And isn’t it said a reformed libertine makes the best husband?”

  “You might be right about Devlin as a friend,” Jamie said sternly, “But it doesn’t mean he would be a good husband for her.”

  Sebastian nodded in full agreement. “I say we watch them closely, but let them have a little room for a possible proposal. If what you say about Devlin is true, Rake, then she couldn’t do any better.”

  “Agreed?” Rake asked, and the other three men nodded silently. They would let Devlin in a bit closer than anyone else, but every last one of them made a silent promise to make sure nothing out of the ordinary ever happened between the two.

  Sin lifted Fanny into his arms, and with a short “Night” he walked out of the room and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom, where he gently placed her on her bed and tucked a comforter around her.

  “Good night, sweet pea,” he whispered as he quietly closed the door behind him.

  Chapter 6

  The Hereford townhouse at Grosvenor Square stood cold and dark when Devlin entered it at three o’clock in the morning.

  Quietly, he closed the door before he went on into the large hallway, where a footman slept in a chair. Devlin took off his heavy coat and laid it on one of the marble benches at the side of the enormous room.

  Someone with regrettably bad taste had ordered the townhouse built more than two hundred years before Devlin’s birth, and he had many times wished he could rip it apart, the whole house, and build a new one. Something more elegant and sober and not so overwhelmingly large, and especially not stuffed with expensive but tasteless artifacts.

  His own father, the fifteenth Duke of Hereford, had made it clear he thought this house was the essence of nobility. Everyone who entered the front door got the message of power and wealth.

  To Devlin, the townhouse said more about his father as a person than about the standing of the Ross family.

  Conan Ross had been a selfish man, a brutal and unloving father, and an abusive husband, and even though Devlin never spent any time in London as a boy, the house still reminded him too much of all the horrible years under his father’s thumb.

  The memories of Conan hadn’t been the easiest to erase, as his wickedness had spread everywhere, even down to the lowest scullery maid. It had taken Devlin six months merely to get the servants to look at him, as they were too used to crawling in front of Conan, too aware of what he would do to them if he saw something he thought was wrong. Living with Conan had been like living in the darkness under a large, unyielding, smothering blanket.

  However, this evening Devlin had seen the light of Lady Francesca Darling.

  She had been something special as a child, so filled with energy and so utterly stubborn. Her childish crush on him had embarrassed her relatives, but for him it had been heaven to be adored like that.

  No one had ever wanted him the way she had.

  He slowly climbed the grand staircase and proceeded to his bedroom, where it was cozier, thanks to the large fire spreading its warmth through the room.

  “Had a nice time?”

  Devlin looked up as his valet appeared from a dark corner.

  Bear was a gigantic man with broad shoulders, limbs like tree trunks, and waist-long brown hair.

  Devlin had met him his first day in France when he happened to come upon the cheering group of enemy soldiers who had caught Bear. Without a second thought, he had made an attempt to save the big Englishman.

  Due to his inexperience, he had failed miserably.

  Instead, he too had been caught and had to listen to Bear repeatedly sighing over his stupidity until they finally were able to escape.

  To Devlin’s surprise, Bear did not leave his side. Somehow Devlin had won the trust of the beast, and they had been inseparable ever since.

  “What do you think?” Devlin rolled his eyes, and Bear chuckled in response.

  “That fun, eh?”

  “We had more fun the time we were snowed in at the hut in the French Alps. I keep forgetting how philistine the members of the ton are.”

  Devlin took off his clothes and washed quickly before he put on a robe and sat down by the fireplace.

  “Want something to wash all the tittle-tattle away?”

  “Why, yes,” Devlin breathed, and soon he had a glass of brandy in his hand, as did Bear, who seated himself in the other chair.

  The giant put his feet on a pallet before he leaned back with a growl that made Devlin shake his head with a chuckle. Sometimes Bear seemed more like a force of nature than the youngest son of an earl, but Devlin didn’t mind.

  In fact, he embraced Bear’s directness and honesty.

  There was not a person on this earth he trusted more than the man who sat beside him. Bear would always tell him the truth, no matter what. In war or in peacetime, loyalty and honesty were the best traits.

  The only thing Bear didn’t share with him was his reason for pretending to be a valet instead of taking his rightful place among the ton.

  Devlin did wonder, but out of respect to Bear he didn’t ask. Some things you needed to keep to yourself, and he knew Bear would tell him when he was ready.

  “I met my friend Rake today, a nice surprise. I haven’t seen him since my father’s funeral, and then was neither the time nor the place to get reacquainted.”

  “I guess it wasn’t a complete waste, attending the ball?”

  “Not completely.” Devlin grinned. “However, I will never understand why most of our peers find these functions so important. The same old people gather at the same old places, gossiping about the same old things, and no one finds this strange or boring. The only difference is the latest debutantes, but even they share the same mission as debutantes from earlier years: catch an eligible husband.”

  “Oh, come on—” Bear laughed—”T
here is more to the social season than a boring repetition of last year.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, I do. However, I haven’t been around the ton for quite some years now, and I guess things might have changed.”

  “Probably not,” Devlin chuckled as he ducked to avoid being hit by the boot Bear threw at him.

  “Come to think about it,” Bear continued, without acknowledging his boot, which Devlin held a little too close to the fire crackling in the fireplace, “The only good thing about the Season was all the ladies who were more than willing to lift their bedspreads for me.”

  “Really? I certainly didn’t meet any of those today. I was surrounded by desperate mamas and the offspring they kept shoving in my direction. Lord, I felt for the poor girls. They looked just as uncomfortable as I felt.”

  “Surrounded by mamas with a mission? I must say I owe you an apology. It must have felt like hell, being caught in the middle of all those dimwitted young misses. Debutantes are extremely boring, and I prefer them much more when they have been married for a couple of years, had their heirs, and are free to roam. Then they are interesting indeed.”

  “Now you’re exaggerating,” Devlin objected with more force than he had intended. “Some of them happen to be all right.”

  “Oh,” Bear breathed with a knowing smile. “You met a lady.”

  “No,” Devlin growled. “I did not. I only disagree with you when you say they all are the same, because there could be some poor young lady out there among them who happens to be both nice and intelligent.”

  Bear didn’t answer but gave his friend a look that told Devlin exactly how pathetic he sounded.

  Oh, for the fires of hell, he thought. Why not share the truth with Bear? The pretend-to-be valet knew everything about him anyway, so why bother to hide something that might affect both their lives in the future?

  “I might have.”

  “Really?”

  Devlin sighed. “Yes, really.”

  “I have to admit I find this hilarious. Here you have been sulking the whole day because you felt you had no choice but to attend this—as you called it—bloody ball. And then you go and meet some little eye-batter who makes it all worth the while.”