by Darcy Burke
Con blinked, taken aback. He wouldn’t have laid a bet on himself, but Montborne certainly wasn’t going to beat him to monogamy. Antony and Bart had too many obligations to tie themselves to a single woman any earlier than must be done, even to one of ill repute. And Darius…
Con supposed if he’d known to picture any of them bound in an impossible agreement with a prostitute, he’d have placed his wager on Darius. But taking on the responsibility of a child? His twin? Never.
Con had to agree he the most family-minded one out of all of them. “Good put as always, Mr. Benjamin. Now, please tell Mrs. Quinn to send up the tea tray, and have a care to include a cup for Mrs. Dalton.” Family-minded though he might be, even he didn’t dare risk an hour without the nursemaid.
He arrived in the drawing room doorway just in time to hear a peal of baby laughter. Mrs. Dalton’s soothing chuckle followed. Curious to know what amusement they’d discovered, Con paused to observe them. They stood before a portrait of the five Alexander brothers, done when they were all children. Con immediately espied his younger self amongst the brood of blue-eyed boys, as he always did when he happened to notice the thick-framed portrait at the side of the room.
His lips parted in surprise when Mrs. Dalton stuck out a gloved finger and pressed it almost directly onto his three year-old self’s face. “Who is that?” she asked in a gently prodding voice. “Who is it? Is that your papa? Do you see your papa here with all of your uncles?”
“Ahem.”
She startled and spun to face him. Her cheeks mottled red. “Forgive me, my lord, I shouldn’t have taken the liberty—”
“Not at all. Tell me, how did you know that was me and not Lord Darius?” He was genuinely curious.
As he awaited her reply, his ears rang with her words. Is that your papa? Do you see your papa here with all of your uncles?
He swallowed hard. She couldn’t have meant it in the literal sense. She knew what had transpired the night Captain Finn had made his appearance near Ellesmere. She knew Con wasn’t really Oliver’s father.
He supposed she could have meant that he was now Oliver’s papa. In which case, it would be well within the boy’s rights to know what a terrorizing little beast Con had been in his youth. Con smiled. With that upturn of his lips, he had an epiphany. He ought to start thinking of this as a fosterage instead of a swindle. That alone might be enough to calm the foreboding he felt at lying to his mother.
Well, this was a fosterage, wasn’t it? He was now Oliver’s father. He’d pledged to be there for the rest of the boy’s life. Was that any different than taking Oliver as his legal ward?
A soothing peace settled over him. Now this, this felt right.
Mrs. Dalton craned her neck to look at the portrait behind her again. “Lord Darius? Do you mean the anxious-looking little boy?”
“We are identical,” Con replied tersely. Blast. He’d managed one unfettered breath and now he was back to feeling disquieted.
When she cocked her head at that, he explained, “I wondered how you were able to tell us apart.” Now he was sorry he’d made a point of it.
She bit her lip. Her gaze slid again toward the portrait. “You have kinder eyes.”
He wanted to see if it were true, if the painter had captured an intangible difference between Darius and himself that he’d never been aware of. That seemed too intimate a moment to share with the nursemaid, however, and for some inexplicable reason, he wished Elizabeth were here instead.
“My mother is waiting.” He’d come back to the painting later, perhaps with a stiff drink, and see if Mrs. Dalton was right. It wasn’t as though he could bring Elizabeth to see the portrait, at any rate. Best to contemplate it alone.
He wasn’t sure why it mattered that he and Darius be even a little different.
Mrs. Dalton bobbed a curtsey and followed him out of the room. If she was nervous about meeting the marchioness and presenting their lie to her face, she didn’t show it in her bearing. That alone made him wonder about her past.
Con showed her to the stairs and then around the corner to his mother’s suite. The door to her private sitting room stood open.
He paused to rap once on the doorcase. The bright satin of his mother’s purple grown assured him that she was inside. Waiting. This was it. “Mother? I apologize profusely for being late.”
“Do you?”
He went in and saw that she had one eyebrow raised teasingly. Her expression elsewise appeared anxious, and he felt badly for causing her to worry. She’d feared he wouldn’t come.
“I promise I do. Have you met Mrs. Dalton? She came to help me with Oliver.”
His mother shook her head and regarded the nursemaid with warm interest. Or was she looking at Oliver?
“In that case,” Con said, eager to get on with it, “Mrs. Dalton, may I present Clara Alexander, Lady Montborne. Mother, this is Mrs. Dalton.”
His mother inclined her head. “How do you do?”
Mrs. Dalton bobbed again. “Very well, your ladyship. Lord Constantine has been ever so nice, and I’ve never been in a grander home.”
Mother winced almost imperceptibly, though her smile remained gracious. Did she know they couldn’t afford this house? Even after all they’d done to protect her sensibilities? Shame stained Con red all the way to his toes.
“Please,” she said, “make yourself at ease, Mrs. Dalton.”
The nursemaid found a chair in the corner and went to it. Oliver went with her. Con remained stiffly at attention. He hadn’t settled into his role, and then there was the awkwardness of the situation. How was this to go? Did he just come out with an introduction? To a baby? What was he even to say?
The longer he paused, the more uncomfortable he became. He indicated the child squirming on Mrs. Dalton’s lap and extended his other hand toward his mother. “I would like to formally present my son, Oliver Nathaniel Spencer, age four months.”
Mother inhaled sharply. Tears came into her eyes. “I’ve waited so long to hear those words. Oh, Con. He’s beautiful.”
She didn’t rise from her perch at the edge of the couch, but gripped her small fists tightly against her knees and looked fervently toward the baby. Con’s conscience reared. But he wasn’t anywhere near to setting up his own nursery, and she was so desperately, desperately lonely. What was the point in denying her this pleasure?
Besides, Oliver was his son now.
“Would you like to hold him?” It sounded like someone else’s question. They weren’t words he’d ever directed at anyone before.
She nodded without hesitation. Oliver was looking around the room, one fist in his mouth. He appeared adorable and alert, squirmy enough to give Con’s mother something to manage but not so edgy he wouldn’t take to being held. Con surprised himself with his confidence in his assessment. He surprised himself even more when he went over, reached out and masterfully plucked little Oliver from his nursemaid’s arms, then cuddled the lad to his chest with one arm and crossed the room to his mother.
Oliver instinctively grabbed hold of Con’s cravat and mangled it in his plump little grip. Mother’s eyes widened and Con smiled, because he supposed he had been more worried about his appearance a few weeks ago than he was today. But a drawer full of identical, starched cravats was only a few steps away in his bedchamber, and there was something delightful in the innocent destruction a small child could wreak as he explored his new world.
Mother didn’t comment on Con’s change of heart, for which he was grateful.
Stopping just before her, he pried Oliver’s grip from his linen cravat and handed down the baby. Greedily, she hugged the small boy to her. She pressed her cheek against the top of his head and drew in a breath undoubtedly laced with Oliver’s warm baby smell. “I love him already,” she breathed.
When the cuddling became too much for Oliver, she set his feet on her knees and held him up so they were face-to-face. “You’re a good lad, aren’t you?” she cooed, brushing a kiss onto his forehea
d. “It’s not your fault your papa has been hiding you away.”
Con didn’t really need any more guilt added to his already heavy burden, so he took himself to the side of the room to observe from afar. Mrs. Dalton also made herself almost invisible, tucking herself into the small chair she’d selected. She seemed to enjoy watching his mother and Oliver playing together.
When she caught Con observing her, she blushed and looked away.
He waited patiently while his mother fussed over the baby. In time, even Mrs. Dalton lost interest in his mother’s antics. Then, with the same effect of a crack of thunder renting the room, his mother mused, “He doesn’t look a thing like you, Constantine.”
Constantine almost doubled over in a coughing fit. “I’m sure he looks like his mother, Mother.”
“Your mistress, yes,” his mother replied evenly, without taking her adoring gaze from Oliver. “That’s true. You know, I hadn’t any idea you had a mistr—”
“Mother! For God’s sake, have a care for Mrs. Dalton, if not for your own gentility.”
She finally turned to regard him. Oliver jerked his head Con’s way, too, and flashed him a toothless grin.
“Firstly,” Mother said, looking rather baffled by Con’s prudish outburst, “Mrs. Dalton is her employee. It would be very odd for the nurse to be offended by what is surely common conversation in their house. Second, it’s perfectly normal for a man of your age to keep a paramour. Your father had dozens. I’d be more surprised if you didn’t, and to be far more frank than I ought to be—”
“Yes, you are being,” he drawled.
“—I’m glad to put the rumors to rest. Really, Constantine. How closeted do you think I am?”
He couldn’t even look at Mrs. Dalton. “It doesn’t befit a marchioness to discuss the private and very personal matters of her son’s activities,” he bit out, “nor would I care to hear more about my father’s prowess, nor a single word more about my own proclivities.”
She turned back to the baby without comment. For another quarter hour she dandled Oliver and pressed her nose to his cheek until he laughed. Quite honestly, Con hadn’t entertained the slightest thought that his mother would be so enamored of children until she’d begun pleading with him to see Oliver. Most women of her station dispensed their babies to the care of nursemaids and governesses. Had this been his childhood? He remembered very little of his father, who had died when Con was twelve, but he had fond memories of his mother as far back as he could recall. He would have been too young to remember her doting on him like this, however, and as one of the youngest, he had no memories of his brothers as babies.
“You may pretend innocence in all of this, Constantine,” she said at last, gaining his attention, “but I hold the evidence right here. Where is she? Your mistress?” She slid a satisfied glance askance at him as if she’d thrown that last bit in just to set him off again.
“Out.” He shifted to the other foot, suddenly finding the swirls on the carpet fascinating.
“Out? Out where? Out of doors? Did you leave that poor woman on the steps?” His mother sounded horrified.
“Not on the steps.” He shifted back to his right foot.
“But out of doors? You did not invite her in? Even to the servants’ quarters?”
Even Mrs. Dalton was looking at him with interested pity.
“Pray tell,” he began defensively, “how I was to ask the servants to entertain a woman whose name shouldn’t even pass their lips? They may not be blue-blooded, but they know these things ought to be discreet.”
“But she’s a lady!”
Oh, yes. Mother had ferreted out the name of his mistress and paid a call on her parents. He’d forgotten. Not that she’d needed to do much sleuthing, for the name of his paramour was all over London, just as he’d intended.
Despite her excursion to Shropshire to appeal to Lord and Lady Wyndham on his behalf, and thereby demonstrating that she truly didn’t give a fig for propriety, he would never, never grow used to speaking this frankly with her. “The topic of Oliver’s mother is off-limits from now on, Mother.”
“I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t receive Lady Wyndham’s daughter,” she replied, making it clear she wouldn’t rest on this issue, just as she’d refused to retreat on her demand to see Oliver. “It needn’t be public, but for all that is good in the world, I won’t be on unspeaking terms with the mother of my only grandson.”
He couldn’t begin to imagine what she meant to do about it. He couldn’t let her do anything, really, because her demand was so ludicrous, she couldn’t be humored even the tiniest bit. While he’d been perfectly willing to parade Elizabeth through Hyde Park at the hour when Cyprians typically stretched their legs, bringing her here, to his house, and leaving his mother and brothers to suffer the ton’s shock was entirely different. In fact, he could hardly agree to it without his brothers’ permission, as it was indeed their reputations that would suffer, if and when word escaped Merritt House. “It’s nice to learn you’re so progressive, although I’m not certain you’ve thought through how such an association could change your lives. Nevertheless, I won’t bring her here without the express consent of each of my brothers.” He was certain this would quell any more talk of Elizabeth setting foot in their home. Didn’t Mother have a care for her own reputation?
“Very well,” she replied staunchly. “I will speak to Antony myself.”
Con’s stomach twisted. That was not reassuring. What if she immersed herself in his scandal, all for the goal of seeing a baby who wasn’t truly her flesh and blood? He’d feel like the worst son imaginable if she lost the respect of her friends, all for supporting his impetuous commitments.
Belatedly, he remembered that he was supposed to be thinking of Oliver as his legal ward. That didn’t really hold up, though, when it came to the potential devastation of his mother’s position in society.
Antony chose that moment to round the corner and prop his shoulder against the sitting room door. “Did someone call for me? Oh, look. A baby.” His blue censure found Constantine, but he said nothing else in their mother’s presence.
“Isn’t he the sweetest little thing?” She glanced from Oliver to Antony and back. “Now, there’s a bit of a resemblance. He couldn’t look less like Constantine with all that dark hair, but you and Bart are swarthy compared to the others.” She squinted at Tony again before nodding her head decisively.
“Constantine,” Antony drawled, “we need to talk.”
Chapter Eleven
CON SHOULD HAVE EXPECTED to encounter any of his brothers while trapped in plain sight of his mother’s doorway. He never went a day without seeing at least one of them in a surly mood. That was the rub when five men crammed themselves into one modest living space. But he didn’t want to talk to Antony today. Especially not now, after his mother had just uttered the most whimsical statement about Oliver resembling the two middle Alexander men.
Surely it was impossible to feel any guiltier about his ruse.
But he would prefer even less for his mother to witness whatever dressing down Antony was about to give him, and so he pushed himself off of the mantel he’d been resting against and spared a moment to address Mrs. Dalton, who’d returned from her daydreaming to look upon Antony with imprudent attentiveness.
“You will see to my son?” Con asked her. In spite of all his misgivings, calling Oliver his son out loud felt peculiarly right.
“Yes, my lord.” She didn’t take her eyes off Tony.
“Good,” Con replied. “I’ll be but a moment.” He hoped. The look in Tony’s eyes didn’t bode well for a speedy return.
He followed his brother from the room. He heard a baby cry behind him. Oliver. Sad because he’d left? He half-turned to go back. Then he came to his senses. Mrs. Dalton would comfort the baby. Or even Mother. What could he do that they couldn’t?
He went back to the sitting room door anyway. He didn’t go in, but he couldn’t imagine leaving, either.
/> Oliver continued to wail.
“Are you coming,” Tony asked, “or do you want to stand in the hallway?”
“Is there a third choice?” He didn’t tear his eyes from the two women worrying over the squalling babe.
“It’s not my reputation at stake,” Tony said behind him. “Actually, maybe it is. Did I hear Mother extend an invitation to your paramour to visit her in this house?”
“I knew you wouldn’t appreciate that,” Con muttered.
“I find nothing funny about this. Do you know what’s being said—” Tony came up and thumped Con on the shoulder. “The library. Now.”
“But…” He looked helplessly from his brother to his son.
“He won’t stop that racket while you’re standing in the doorway.”
Tony probably had a point. Maybe they all knew more about babies then they let on.
It was the second time in recent memory that Con had tried to avoid being backed into Tony’s library. When they entered the room a few minutes later, he remembered why.
Bart reclined against an arm of the couch. One booted foot was propped against the far armrest and the other stuck out over it. Always the barrister, he managed to seem intense even while reclined.
Montborne sat in a wingback chair, turning the pages of a book. He didn’t appear to be reading it, nor did he seem to be looking at prints. He’d been odd like that, morose and inward-looking, for several months now.
Even Darius was at home. He stood by the fireplace much the way Con had been standing in their mother’s drawing room a moment ago. He looked worried, and Con’s stomach twisted. He better not be in any deeper. Con could barely manage his own affairs, let alone save his brother’s neck yet again.
Tony closed the door behind them. Without preamble, he fired at Constantine, “What in God’s name are you doing now?”
“Thinking seriously about letting my own rooms,” Con grumbled. “What the devil are all of you doing here at the same time?”