Chapter Twenty-Three
“Would you join me, Mrs. Silbern?” Beckett asked, offering his arm to Iris. “Butler, please see to the guests and then find me in the kitchen when you’ve finished.”
Iris put her hand around his sleeve. Good heavens.
She’d never wished to be blind, but the last five minutes were a near thing.
Trent and his naked, flapping cock had been waiting there for her.
One more shame, one more embarrassment to remind her that the only reason she would ever be accepted in Society would be because he’d deigned to allow her to attach “duchess” to her name—as long as she shared a bed with him.
“Beckett,” his mother said sharply. “I require a word with you.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the dowager marchioness. “Go home, Mother. I’ll deal with you later.”
Halfway to the kitchen, the guests still shouting and gabbing and swearing and laughing behind them, Iris pulled him to a stop. “What just happened?”
“I have no idea,” he answered her. “I’m running away to the kitchen to see to the children and hide until everyone leaves. Are you with me?”
“Absolutely.”
He started off again, then stopped. “You did note that your aunt was still advocating for you to wed Trent, didn’t you?”
“I did.” Iris tightened her grip on his arm.
“She wouldn’t have done that on purpose, would she?
I mean, if that had been me, she wouldn’t have screamed and drawn everyone’s attention to the morning room.
I know she and Harold have been impatient to be rid of us, but…
” She stopped. Of course her aunt had been involved.
Why else would she venture into the morning room in the first place? “That witch.”
“I concur.”
“And Trent. He…” She trailed off, beginning to feel as if she’d come within an inch of being caught in a wave and swept under the ocean to drown. “I’m beginning to be horrified all over again.”
“I’m still somewhere between disbelief and rage.” He gripped her hand. “If you’d gone in there … I can’t—” He stopped, turning around. “Excuse me. I need to go thrash someone.”
She grabbed his arm. “No. It didn’t happen. I’m not marrying him.” Another wave of giddy relief flowed over her. “And if he needs a thrashing, I will do it.”
Beckett grinned. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”
“You have to let us go, Bradley!” Edmund yelled from the kitchen. “This was not part of the plan!”
“What happened in the morning room?” Rebecca chimed in. “Were they kissing? Do they have to get married now?”
Iris caught Beckett’s frown. “What the devil?” he murmured.
“Oh, I have no idea, but I mean to find out.”
In the kitchen Mrs. Alliday sat at the servants’ dining table, her hands over her ears, while Bradley still had an arm around each of the children, holding them half off the ground as they struggled to get away from him.
“What plan?” Iris asked succinctly, and both children froze.
“What?” Becks asked, putting on an angelic look of confusion.
“Oh, don’t even attempt to look innocent, Rebecca,” her father took up. “Explain yourselves. Both of you.”
“Make Bradley put us down first. This is undignified,” the little girl stated.
“Bradley, if you would. Children, sit down. Everyone else, out of the kitchen.”
“It wasn’t only them, my lord,” the footman said, his face going red. “They shouldn’t get all the blame.”
Beckett cleared his throat. “Very well. In five minutes, I want to see everyone who had anything to do with this in this kitchen. No, make it ten minutes. After all the guests are gone.”
The footman bowed. “I’ll see to it, my lord. Mrs. Alliday, come with me.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” the cook said, sprinting for the door. “I don’t wish to faint into the dessert.”
Rebecca ran forward, her arms wide. “Papa, are you—”
He backed away a step. “What is all over … Never mind. Sit down, Rebecca. You too, Edmund.”
“Do I have to, Papa? I’m quite sticky.”
“Yes, I can see that. The bench will manage. Sit.”
The children sat down next to each other. Iris took a seat on the other side of the servants’ table, and a moment later Beckett sat beside her. “I don’t know if I can stand much more of this,” she muttered. “My mind is rattling about like a bucket with one rock in it.”
“We’ll explain everything,” Edmund said. “But first we have to know: Are you engaged to His Grace, Mama?”
“Are you engaged to Lady Pauline, Papa?”
She glanced at Beckett to find him looking at her.
That was the bit, the part that kept sticking in her mind and refusing to go anywhere.
She and Beckett—at the least, neither of them had ended the evening betrothed.
In fact, the things he’d been saying before the earth opened up had been …
quite remarkable. A daydream, except she was wide, wide awake.
“I am not engaged, Edmund,” she said slowly.
Beckett cleared his throat. “I am not engaged, Rebecca.”
The children grabbed hands and squeezed, then settled onto the bench again. “I have another question,” Rebecca said. “Are you sad, Papa, that you’re not engaged?”
Beckett took a slow breath. “Not particularly. Why?”
“Because she said it made you sad to have to look after me all the time and that I leeched all the happiness out of you. That you would only be happy again if you were married and had someone to look after you.”
The marquis stilled. “Who said that to you, Cricket?” he asked, his voice mild despite the hard clench of his jaw. Beckett had a much better rein on his anger than she did. More practice, Iris supposed. It gave her some hope for herself, at least.
“Lady Pauline said it,” his daughter answered in a small voice. “That was when I choked on an orange slice.”
“That was why you choked?” he snapped, his fists clenching. “I thanked her for saving you.”
“Well, you didn’t know.” Rebecca reached across the table and put one of her small, sticky hands over his.
His fingers, now streaked with what smelled like orange meringue, opened again. “And why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because she said you would lie to me, and then you’d feel bad about marrying at all and you would never be happy again, and that I’d already killed Mama.
And then she started insinuating about boarding school.
” Rebecca sighed, her slim shoulders lifting and falling.
“I have been very worried over the past few weeks.”
That absolute horror of a woman. “I don’t doubt it,” Iris said, brushing a tear from her eye. “You are a brave young lady. And I’m very glad you’ve told your papa everything.” She took a breath. “Edmund, have you? Told me everything?”
“Not quite,” her son said. “We made the squirrels escape on purpose, to try to let Lord Hentrose see how horrid Lady Pauline really was. It didn’t work, though. She didn’t scream and start cursing at us like we’d hoped.”
“And Eddie knew how horrible the duke was, and his family, and we decided we couldn’t let you marry him, no matter how much money he gave you.” Rebecca put her free hand around Edmund’s shoulders.
“Especially after he said I would have to go away to boarding school, too, because I was on your teat.”
“You’re ten, for heaven’s sake,” Iris snapped, then subsided again. She could be furious later.
“After Lady Becks told me about her conversation with Lady Pauline,” Mrs. Brubbins said, walking into the kitchen, Mr. Fredericks with her, “I agreed to help. Hand me my papers if you so wish, Lord Hentrose, but I could not let that awful woman be in your daughter’s life.”
“You might have told me your concerns, Martha,” Beckett said brusquely. “You are not a child.”
“I gave both children my word, as did Mr. Fredericks, before they would confide in us. I wouldn’t ever betray Lady Becks’s trust, unless it meant her safety. And thankfully, we nipped it before that could happen.”
“So your plan was to ‘nip’ our respective betrothals before they could happen, and without us ever knowing?” Lord Hentrose lifted an eyebrow. “I enjoy a good jest, but this is too much.”
“Outside of your presence, my lord,” Butler took up, trailed into the room by Bradley and George and Mrs. Alliday, “Lady Pauline made it quite clear that we were not up to snuff. That your household was too lax. So I suppose there is some selfishness in this, as well. I … I am proud of my position here, Lord Hentrose, and I didn’t wish it gone simply because I cleared my throat when Lady Pauline told Lady Becks she would be out of the house soon. ”
“She said that when she was mistress of this house, she wouldn’t allow me to make desserts any longer because she didn’t want a fat husband,” Mrs. Alliday contributed. “And no more of me making orange meringue for a pie, even though you say it makes your toes tingle.”
“Orange meringue pie makes your toes tingle?” Iris asked, a smile slipping past her before she could rein it in.
“It does,” Beckett confirmed.
“That’s good to know.”
He glanced sideways at her. She wanted to add that she would make certain they had orange meringue pie every night, but at any moment he might recall that he wanted a wife who could guide Rebecca into Society, and not into a wrestling match.
That while he’d escaped Pauline, a better choice—much better than her—could well be out there, waiting with perfectly coifed hair and not a single ill-mannered word or thought.
“Is there perchance anything else we need to know, children? Staff?” he asked.
Edmund grimaced. “Well, at first we just wanted the two suitors gone,” he admitted, lowering his head. “But then Becks and I decided that we wanted to be brother and sister, and that you two should fall in love and get married instead.”
Iris blinked. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” Rebecca nodded. “We thought we were winning when Papa bought Delilah Biscuits for you, but then Lady Pauline walked up and took her away. And one of us was supposed to go out in the garden and see you kissing tonight, so you would have to marry each other, but—”