Leslie Lafoy (30 page)

“Boots is fine with me,” she said, silently looking between her sisters for approval. They nodded and she put Boots back in the bed with his mother.

Carden scooped up one of the remaining three. “How about this one? What are you thinking for…” He took a quick, discreet peek at its underside. “Her?”

“Miss Sera,” Camille suggested. “Because her eyes are blue like Miss Sera’s.”

“Puppies’ eyes don’t stay that color, sweetheart. In just a week or two they’re going to turn brown.”

Camille’s eyes widened. “Are Miss Sera’s eyes going to change color, too?”

“No. Sera is always going to have blue eyes.”
Beautiful blue eyes.

“We could call her Fluffy,” Amanda suggested.

Camille looked at her sister and frowned. “Miss Sera?”

“No, silly,” Amanda countered, huffing in disdain and putting her hands on her waist. “The puppy. Miss Sera isn’t at all fluffy.”

No, never would anyone think to describe Seraphina as fluffy. She was beautiful, yes. She was intelligent and artistic, too. But deep down inside, she had a core of steel and a wanton streak that men would kill for the privilege of unleashing.

“Tippy, Boots, and Fluffy,” Beatrice said, interrupting his thoughts. “That leaves these two and the mama. I think we should call one of them Lucky. They all are, you know.”

“How about this one?” Amanda suggested, scooping one up to hold it in front of her face and coo, “Hello, Lucky.”

Camille puckered her mouth and frowned for a moment before asking, “Is it a boy dog or a girl dog, Uncle Carden?”

He considered Lucky to be in the same category as Tippy and he certainly didn’t want to do anything that might—however innocently—prompt one of them to ask how he could tell the males from the females. “A girl,” he guessed.

“A girl named Lucky?” Beatrice said, her upper lip curling in obvious displeasure. “I wouldn’t want to be named Lucky.”

“What about Lucky Lucy?” Amanda offered, turning the puppy in question to face her sister and inspection.

Carden inwardly cringed. He’d guessed correctly. A female pup. Who was going to go through life with a strumpet’s name if he didn’t quickly make another suggestion. The problem was how to phrase it so he didn’t have to explain matters he didn’t want any of them to ever know about.

Amanda turned the puppy so he could see the animal’s poor little embarrassed face and asked, “Isn’t Lucky Lucy a good name for her, Uncle Carden?”

“It’s a perfectly good one,” he agreed, deciding that he’d shorten it to Lucy and hope the girls eventually did the same. Lucy was going to owe him for the rest of her life.

“That leaves this one,” Camille announced, picking up the last puppy. She turned toward him with it—thank God, belly boldly first—and asked, “Is it a boy or a girl, Uncle Carden?”

“It’s another girl.” He and Boots were severely outnumbered. They were going to have to stick together.

“Let’s call her Beauty,” Bea proposed.

Amanda snorted. “That’s a dumb name.”

“It is not.”

“Then when we take her to the park,” her elder sister retorted, “you can call out ‘Come here, Beauty!’ and let people laugh at you.”

“Well, at least they’d laugh at me,” Beatrice shot back. “They’d just feel sorry for—”

“What about Furball?” Carden tossed out to derail the argument. “She’s furry and shaped something like a ball.”

They all three looked at him as though he’d turned into the village idiot. Beatrice laid her hand on his knee and gently said, “I’m sorry, Uncle Carden, but that’s what cats cough up.”

“She’s red,” he observed, hoping to improve their opinion of him. “Maybe we could just call her that. Red.”

Beatrice shook her head and curled her lip again. “One of the sailors on our ship was named Red.” She looked between her sisters. “For his beard, remember?”

Camille nodded and wrinkled her nose. “He always had
stuff
in it, Uncle Carden.”

He could imagine. Which he really preferred not to do. “It sounds most unappealing,” he replied. “It’s never wise to give something a name that reminds you of unpleasant people, places, or things.”

“Well, so much for Mr. Hopkins,” Amanda said, throwing up her hands in a gesture that would have implied frustration if she hadn’t been grinning.

“And
La-dy
Matthews,” Camille contributed, putting her nose in the air and wiggling her shoulders.

Beatrice stared off into the distance and very somberly said, “And definitely Mr. Treadwell.”

Camille froze. Amanda started, then gave Beatrice a quick shove in the shoulder before pinning his gaze and saying breezily, “There were a great many unpleasant people in Belize, Uncle Carden.”

“Apparently,” he said, thinking that Gerald Treadwell ranked as the most unpleasant.

“I miss Belize,” Camille admitted on a sigh, hugging the puppy close. “It was very pretty there. And warm and sunny.”

“Since you have good memories of Belize,” he suggested, hoping to avert a slide into melancholy, “why not call the puppy that? Belize would be a good name, don’t you think?”

They instantly brightened and nodded and each took a turn petting the shiny red coat.

Tippy, Boots, Fluffy, Lucy, and Belize. It had a cadence to it. As Camille put Belize back with her sisters and only brother, Carden reached out and began scratching the mother dog behind her ears. “What should we call the mama?”

“Every time someone says ‘mama,’” Camille said very quietly, “I think of Mama and Papa and miss them all over again.”

“Me, too,” Bea whispered.

Afraid that they were about to dissolve into tears, he hastily offered the first alternative that popped into his brain. “We could call her Queenie.”

“Why?” Camille asked, her grief mercifully evaporated by curiosity.

“I don’t know. Lots of people name their female dogs Queenie.”

“The queen’s name is Victoria,” Bea mused.

“I don’t think she’d be flattered,” he countered. Ruffling the fur on the dog’s head, he said, “Patience, girl. We’re working on it.”

“Patience!” Amanda exclaimed. “That’s perfect!”

Bea grinned from ear to ear. “And the next time Miss Sera tells us that we have no patience, we can say, ‘Yes we do!’”

“How long till she comes back, Uncle Carden?” Camille asked, wiggling and clapping her hands. “How long?”

“It will be a while. I think you’re going to have to be…” He paused and looked pointedly between them, struggling to contain his grin. “Patient.”

They groaned in unison.

“Patience is a virtue,” he laughingly reminded them.

Amanda clutched her stomach and groaned, “I’m going to retch.”

“Well, do it in your room,” he chuckled as the upstairs maid stepped into the kitchen doorway. “Anne’s here to see you tucked in.”

They scrambled to their feet and each planted a quick kiss on his cheek before bounding off. “Good night, ladies,” he called after them.

Amanda paused in the shadows of the dining room, then turned and came back to the doorway. “I miss Mama and Papa, too, but not always,” she said, her expression so solemn that she suddenly seemed far older than her years. “Sometimes, with you and Miss Sera, it feels very much as though we’re still a whole family. Good night, Uncle Carden.”

“Good night, Amanda.”

With you and Miss Sera
 … Carden sighed and climbed to his feet. It had been a smoothly executed ploy, but if Amanda had had any deliberate thoughts of it being sufficient to keep him at home tonight, then she really needed to learn something about—

“No, on second thought,” he muttered, heading for the larder, “Amanda doesn’t need to know anything about the needs of men.”

C
HAPTER
17

He found a chunk of cheese and slab of roast apparently left from dinner and took them to the butcher block in the center of the kitchen. By the time he’d pulled a knife from the slotted holder, the dog was at his side, her puppies temporarily abandoned in the hope of sharing his impromptu meal.

He cut two slices of the roast, tossed one in the air, and popped the other into his mouth with a smile as the first was seized—and consumed—before it even came close to hitting the floor. Two more slices of roast and six of cheese followed after that.

He was slicing another chunk of the roast and thinking about seeing if he could make Patience do a half-turn in the air for it when she suddenly looked at the back door, her ears perked forward. He listened with her and watched her hackles slowly rise. She was growling quietly, low in her throat until the knock came, and then the growl became a furious bark as she charged the door on stiff forelegs.

Through the glass he could see the unmistakable outline of Barrett Stanbridge. Holding Patience by the scruff, he opened the door and then dragged her back to the central table, saying over his shoulder, “She appears to be an excellent judge of character.” He’d no sooner uttered the words than Patience eyed the roast on the table and settled with a hopeful look in her eyes.

Barrett smiled. “I came by for three reasons. The first is to let you know that Reginald Carter has apparently gone to ground. Until recently he was living high and well in a Chelsea townhouse. According to his staff, he walked out the door the morning before last and they haven’t seen or heard from him since. My guess is he’s gone into the no-man’s-land of Newcastle or Southwark. It’s going to be the devil to find him, but I’ve got good men on the task.”

“I don’t care what it costs,” Carden said, flinging a slice of meat for Patience. “I want him found.”

“It won’t cost you anything until he is. I don’t pay men for looking, just for finding. It tends to motivate them to get the job done efficiently.”

Perfectly sensible. He hoped Barrett’s men were either the greedy sort or had a lot of mouths to feed at home. “And the second reason you’re here?”

“I went by the club this evening and had a drink or two with Rob Tompkins.”

“I had drink or two with him this afternoon,” Carden shared, slicing himself another bite of the roast. “Was he still upright? Still sobbing into his cups?”

“He was not only upright, but quite happy, actually. He said you’d agreed to come look at the problems they’re having with a patch of the underground, that you’d taken the drawings from him and were going to go over them.”

“He was so miserable I took pity on him. They’re on my desk.”

“I just wanted to say that I’m glad to hear it, Card. You’re wasting your talent on conservatories.”

But better conservatories than feeling like a rat burrowing beneath the city. And none of it compared with feeling like a bird on a soaring, long-span trestle. “And the third reason you’re here?”

“I was heading to Covent Garden for some sport and wondered if you wanted to go along.”

So that Barrett might—at some critical juncture and ever so accidentally—mention the occasion to Sera. “I can’t,” he said, wondering if Barrett really thought he was that feebleminded. “I promised Tompkins I’d have some ideas for him first thing tomorrow morning.” He hadn’t made Tompkins any promises at all, but as excuses went, it was the perfect one.

Barrett shrugged and took the doorknob in hand, saying, “Work should come before play, I suppose. If you get done sooner than you anticipate or just change your mind…”

“I know where to find you,” he said, tossing a piece of cheese for Patience.

Barrett left without another word and Carden snorted as the door closed. Hell would freeze and the Prince Consort would go out in a dress before he made the mistake—no, the fatal error in judgment—of meeting Barrett anywhere and chasing skirts with him.

He wasn’t willing to give up on his hopes for Sera just yet. He’d behaved like an ass yesterday, raging at her like some cuckolded husband, pushing her too hard and too fast. Of course she’d retreated behind the façades of pride and propriety; he hadn’t given her much of any other choice. And by the time he’d realized his blunder, the damage had already been done.

The question now was how to smooth things over with her, how to reach past her fear and draw her back to his side, to get her to look up at him, smile, and invite his kisses. Just one soulful kiss; that’s all it would take. Sera always melted when …

Carden closed his eyes and shook his head. How thick could a man be? He was a master of seduction who had ignored every damn rule of the game. He’d allowed their relationship to wander into the realm of the mundane and everyday. He’d asked Sera to come to his bed by conscious choice. He’d negotiated terms. Jesus. It was no wonder he was home sharing his meal with the dog and she was out to dinner on the arm of his friend.

Well, by God, that was going to change and change before sunrise. He’d ignore her evening out with John Aiden; just pretend it hadn’t happened. It was of the mundane and had no place in the world of enchantment he was going to weave around her. He’d apologize for his behavior in the greenhouse and ask her to forgive him. When she lowered her defenses to do so, he’d draw her into his arms and kiss her. And when she looked at him, lost and searching for her way, he’d whisper to the wanton in her. Of decadent pleasures. Of dangerous delights and wicked satisfactions. He wouldn’t give her time to think, time to talk. And Sera would come to him, wanting and trusting and so very willing.

All he had to do was bide his time until she came home. Tompkins’s drawings would do for distraction. But the minute Seraphina came through the door … Carden grinned and tossed Patience what was left of the roast.

*   *   *

He unrolled the drawings and flipped to the ones for the section Tompkins had said they were presently constructing. The problems were small ones and, in and of themselves, no more than an aggravation. But when combined, they were consuming man hours and delaying forward progress. And time was money. Great wads of it.

Carden studied the design and could see nothing wrong with it. The designing engineer had been a thoroughly competent one. Judging by the general approach, Carden could see that the man had come to the underground project with considerable experience in building aboveground railways. There was nothing wrong with the plans. But given the problems as Tompkins described them …