Chapter 5 #2
She sighed, and Dandy opened one chocolate-brown eye to peer curiously up at her. “All is well, my darling sweet pea,” she crooned, petting Dandy’s silken head.
“Adelia Louise?” Aunt Pearl prodded her.
Addy blew out an exasperated breath and pinned her aunt with an aggrieved look. “You know I dislike it when you call me that. Adelia and Louise do not go together well. Not at all.”
“That is precisely why I call you Adelia Louise. It captures your attention every time.”
Addy grumbled beneath her breath.
“What was that, my dear?”
“Nothing,” she said, offering her aunt a bright smile.
Her aunt gave her a knowing look. “You never answered my question.”
“I recall Mama’s petty fury with you over Mrs. Richard Thomas Taylor. It was very badly done of Mama. She knows what a wretched gossip Mrs. Taylor is. The woman can’t open her mouth without saying something awful about someone else. And it wasn’t as if you indulged in her nonsense.”
“I put the terrible woman in her place,” Aunt Pearl agreed stoutly. “But I heard the gossip on a Tuesday, and I failed to tell your mother until a Thursday. It was an egregious sin she couldn’t possibly forgive.”
“So you see why we mustn’t tell her about my little fib?” Addy tried hopefully.
“I see why we must. You are her daughter. She will forgive you before a year is over.”
Dandy raised her head and made a half woof that heralded someone about to enter the room.
Addy glanced toward the door just as Marchingham appeared there.
Dandy gave a full bark and leapt from Addy’s lap, racing across the carpets in her customary stiff-legged prowl.
Although a small dog, Dandy possessed the bravado of a hound three times her size.
“Dandy acts as if she is a lioness about to tear apart her prey,” Aunt Pearl observed in a quiet aside.
“That is because no one has ever told her she is little, so she thinks she’s the size of a bear,” Addy said.
“Halt,” ordered the duke.
And to Addy’s astonishment, Dandy stopped before him and sat down, as calmly as if she had been following Marchingham’s edicts all her life.
The duke reached into his pocket and extracted something small, tossing it to Dandy, who eagerly caught it in her jaws and swallowed it down.
“What are you feeding my dog?” Addy demanded, outraged.
“Cheese,” he said, his demeanor and tone as grim as if he had just announced a death instead of elaborating upon the treat he had just fed Dandy.
Then he sketched an elegant bow, as if he were in a ballroom. Even his bows were perfection, for heaven’s sake.
“Oh,” she said, her ire instantly deflating. “I was hoping it wasn’t poison.”
He gave her a scathing look as he straightened to his formidable height. “Do you think I would harm your mongrel?”
“You wanted her to sleep in the stables,” Addy pointed out. “Dandy, come here. You ought not to accept cheese from the enemy.”
Aunt Pearl chuckled. “It looks as if His Grace has a new admirer.”
Dandy was indeed gazing up at the duke in an adoring manner, ignoring Addy’s entreaty.
Marchingham reached into his pocket and extracted another small lump of cheese, tossing it to Dandy, who eagerly devoured it.
Addy glared at him, trying not to think about how his lips had felt upon hers, masterful and smooth and demanding. Nor how much she had liked his kisses.
“I do believe you are bribing my dog,” she said. “How did you know she likes cheese?”
“All dogs like cheese.”
“I thought you didn’t like dogs. How would you know anything about them?”
He gave her a hooded stare. “I had a dog myself once when I was a lad.”
A hint of sorrow laced his voice. There was something to that story, and she found herself longing to know.
“Would you care to join us, Your Grace?” Aunt Pearl interjected cheerfully. “Addy and I were enjoying the warmth of your fire and admiring your library’s vast collection of books. We did so miss you at dinner.”
“Aunt Pearl missed you at dinner,” Addy corrected. “I hadn’t even noticed you weren’t there.”
“Adelia Louise,” her aunt scolded quietly at her side.
She was being rude and she knew it, but she was rather nettled that Marchingham had avoided dinner after kissing her so passionately, only to reappear this evening and woo her beloved dog with cheese.
And with pocket cheese! It was hardly ducal to go about carrying cheddar in one’s coat.
She couldn’t think he ordinarily did so.
“I did notice after Aunt Pearl commented upon it,” she added with feigned sweetness.
“I am dismayed that my presence is so easily overlooked,” he said stiffly, his gaze meeting hers.
Had she hurt his feelings? She couldn’t tell. His face was unreadable. She hadn’t supposed he could be so easily offended. He seemed quite inured to her at all times.
Except for when he had been kissing her.
Addy banished the wicked thought.
He strode past Dandy, entering the library fully, dashing Addy’s hope that he would excuse himself and leave her to her peace with Aunt Pearl. Dandy followed at his heels as if she were loyally trailing after Addy.
All because of pocket cheese and one cunning duke.
“Apparently your presence isn’t easily overlooked by someone,” Addy said with a pointed look in her beloved dog’s direction. “To think I have been replaced in her affections all because of a few hunks of cheese from your pocket. It was likely covered in lint.”
His lips twitched as he seated himself in the empty chair at her side. “I must admit, I’m wounded by your poor opinion of the state of my pockets, Miss Fox. I can assure you that they never hold anything as disagreeable as lint.”
Dandy sat at his feet, gazing at him with her big brown eyes, silently begging for more pocket cheese.
“Traitor,” she grumbled at her dog.
“I prefer to think of her as having discerning taste.”
“Do you? Hmm, I rather like to call it having no loyalty. Who saved her from a frigid end in the stables?”
“Who saved her from a frigid end in the carriage?” Aunt Pearl added.
“You, of course,” Addy conceded. “I’ll forever be in your debt for rescuing my darling Dandy.”
“By that logic, you are also in my debt, Miss Fox,” Marchingham drawled.
Drat the man.
“Perhaps you have already collected what you are owed,” she dared, keeping a tranquil smile in place.
Addy was referring to what had transpired in the music room, of course. There was nothing she wanted more than to shock a response out of him. How could he have kissed her as he had, only to reemerge with such elegant nonchalance, as if her presence were of no consequence to him?
He reached into his coat. “I don’t think I have.”
Surely he didn’t have more pocket cheese, did he? Dandy wriggled with excitement, then licked her chops.
“Stay sitting,” Marchingham ordered Dandy in a voice that was authoritative and yet far from sharp. “Behave, little mongrel.”
“Dandy is not a mongrel,” Addy countered, insulted on her dog’s behalf.
He extracted another small hunk of cheese, not answering her. As the duke lowered his hand toward Dandy, Addy was compelled to warn him.
“Take care when you feed her, Marchingham. She has very sharp teeth, and she tends to bite.”
His blue gaze burned into her. “It would seem that she has a great deal in common with her mistress, in that case.”
Addy’s mouth fell open at the jibe and the way Dandy gently took the piece of cheese from the duke’s fingers, rather than ravenously devouring it along with a few bits of his flesh.
“Are you intending to vex me at every turn?” she demanded.
Aunt Pearl coughed delicately. “The hour is late. I do believe it is past time for me to retire. Addy, do you care to join me?”
“Of course, Aunt Pearl. I’ll take Dandy for her small walk in the gardens first and then retire for the evening as well.”
Her aunt rose from her seat and pushed her spectacles up the bridge of her nose. “Good evening to you both.”
As Aunt Pearl began to take her leave of the library, Addy turned her attention back to her stubbornly treacherous dog. Dandy was still seated before Marchingham, giving him her undivided attention.
“Come to me, Dandy,” she ordered the pup.
Dandy refused to comply. Instead, she rose on her hind legs and placed her paws on the duke’s knees and gave a small bark. Addy was familiar with her dog’s forms of communication by now. She knew what Dandy was requesting—more pocket cheese.
“Come along, you naughty girl. No more cheese for you today, pocket or otherwise.”
The duke surprised her by patting Dandy gently on the head. “Her name was Mittens.”
He was gazing down at Dandy, stroking her sleek fur, seemingly lost somewhere in his own thoughts. Marchingham was telling her about his dog, she realized.
“Mittens,” she repeated. “You must have been a very young lad to have named a dog so frivolously. I would have thought her name would be Queen or Princess or something equally lofty.”
“I was four, and I don’t expect I was sufficiently lofty just yet,” he said with a small smile, glancing in Addy’s direction even as he continued patting the dog’s head.
Somehow, the thought of him as a little boy made her heart soften. Had he always been proper and staid and serious, even then? Or had his life experiences and his duties molded him into the man he was today? She desperately wanted the answers to these questions. These, and so many more.
“You were fond of Mittens?” she asked hesitantly.
“I was.” He stroked Dandy’s head yet again, his countenance turning contemplative. “For three years, she was my favorite companion. She was forever at my heels, following me wherever I went. Until one day, she wasn’t.”
“What happened to her?” she asked, dread cramping her stomach.
His gaze returned to hers, his eyes sad. “She was struck by a cart in London. She wandered from the house without anyone taking note until it was too late.”
“Oh, Marchingham.” Her heart ached for the dog taken too soon, for the young boy he must have been. “That’s truly awful. I’m so sorry that happened. You must have been inconsolable.”
“My father…didn’t tolerate weeping, and particularly not over a mere dog.” Marchingham swallowed. “I was punished for the excessive emotion I exhibited and was never allowed another hound.”
What manner of man would reprimand his young son for being sad that his beloved pup had been killed?
Addy was horrified. No wonder the duke was so reserved and frigid.
He had been raised that way, and then he had taken over his ducal duties at an early age when his father had died.
Addy knew that much from what Letty and Lila had told her.
They had been girls of seven and eight at the time, their older brother only eighteen.
His revelations certainly put his reaction to Dandy in a different light.
Before she could think twice, she reached for him, settling her hand over his on the armrest of his chair.
A jolt skipped up her arm and slid down her spine.
Touching him had been a mistake. He turned to her, their gazes colliding, and it was as if the bottom of her stomach dropped out.
In his eyes, she saw the man within Marchingham’s frosty, impenetrable exterior.
She saw the same man who had kissed her until she’d been breathless.
And she longed for that man.
Addy leaned toward him, wanting to kiss him, to banish the unpleasant memories haunting him, to give him comfort. Wanting things she should never want from the Duke of Marchingham, who had made no secret of his scathing disapproval of her.
But he hadn’t seemed nearly so disapproving when his mouth had been on hers in the music room.
“That is dreadfully unfair,” she said, her voice thick.
“Life is unfair, Miss Fox,” he countered, his head angling toward hers.
It was as if they were magnets, drawn together. Marchingham turned his hand so that their palms were aligned, their fingers entwined. Addy was suddenly hot everywhere, but not because of the hearty fire.
“I suppose it is,” she allowed, unable to look away from his eyes.
Was he thinking about what had happened between them? Was he wanting more too?
“Miss Fox,” Marchingham began, only to be interrupted by a determined bark from Dandy.
Dandy pawed at the duke’s knee, apparently jealous and seeking his undivided attention. Addy bit the inner corner of her lip and considered her dog. That makes two of us, Dandy, she thought grimly.
Marchingham withdrew his hand, using it instead to point at Dandy in an authoritative fashion. “Sit, Dandy.”
Dandy promptly settled on the carpet, gazing up at him adoringly.
Addy clearly needed to procure some cheese, though she hadn’t a pocket to store it in. Marchingham withdrew yet another hunk and tossed it to Dandy, who caught it in her mouth and swallowed it whole.
“Little beggar,” Addy said without sting, deciding that it was past time for her to flee the duke’s presence before she did anything reckless.
Like kiss him again.
She rose from her chair. “Come, Dandy. A quick stop outdoors, and then it’s time for rest.”
The duke stood as well, his full height overwhelming Addy. When he was seated, it was easy to forget how wonderfully tall he was.
He offered her an elegant half bow. “Good evening, Miss Fox.”
His formality felt wrong. But she knew that clinging to it was for the best. They could forget the music room had ever happened. It was apparent that Marchingham didn’t wish to revisit their lapse in judgment. He hadn’t even spoken of it.
“Good evening, Your Grace,” she returned, because, like his formality, needling him about his form of address felt wrong. “Come, Dandelion.”
Dandy looked from Marchingham to Addy.
“Go on,” he told Dandy.
And as if she had been awaiting his permission, Dandy finally turned away and trotted to Addy. Hastily, she retreated from the library, thinking grimly that somehow, both she and her dog had been charmed by the Duke of Marchingham.
She wished for a miracle, that the snow would melt entirely tomorrow.
Because the sooner she could leave Marchingham Hall and the handsome duke who presided over it, the better.