Page 23 of The Rake's Bride
“Who’s she?” the boy—Dominic—piped in loudly, disregarding the conversation being had over his head.
Victoria, her head still spinning from the situation, struggled to form words to supply an answer.
“This is Victoria,” Rafe supplied for her as he looked down at his nephew. “She is your new aunt, and she has come to live with us from now on.”
Dominic wrinkled his nose in a singularly childlike expression that was at once adorable and galling. “There are too many girls in this house as it is!”
“Dom…” Rafe warned in a low tone.
This finally nudged Victoria into action. Spurred by her desire to make this confusing situation even marginally lessawkward, Victoria stepped forward and held out her hand to the boy. Smiling pleasantly, she said, “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Dominic.”
Addressed directly, the lad turned his full attention upon her. He shared his uncle’s coloring everywhere except the eyes, which were a piercing pale blue. Spots of ink stained his hands and various places on his cuffs and collar. He stood up straighter with all the haughtiness of a child born to privilege.
“You should be addressing me as ‘My Lord,’” Dominic said with a sniff. “I am a lord, after all.”
Victoria didn’t know what she expected the boy to say, but it certainly hadn’t been that.
Taken aback, her eyes sought the only familiar face in the room. The roll of Rafe’s eyes confirmed the truth of what the boy had said, as well as what he thought of his nephew’s manners. Looking back down into the child’s eyes—so much more mature than she would have expected from one his age—she realized this was a first impression that could very well carry for the rest of her life. As Rafe’s family and dependent, this was someone who would be around a great deal; how their future relationship would play out was in her hands.
She smiled in a way that was placating though not patronizing, and she dipped into a curtsey. “My Lord.”
Dominic looked down his narrow nose at her, stared for a heartbeat, and seemed to judge her offering sufficient.
Rafe, on the other hand, was not as inclined to capitulate. “You needn’t do that.” He jerked his chin in a motion for her to stand.
Dominic harrumphed his displeasure.
“I believe it is only polite,” Victoria replied gently, though she did stand. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she added to the lad. His intelligent eyes looked from her face to her hand, then to his uncle and back.
“You talk funny,” he finally said to her.
“Dom!” Rafe snapped, but his nephew was already speeding away toward the back of the house, leaving his admonishments to fall useless in his wake. This was clearly a situation that had played itself out many times over in one iteration or another between uncle and nephew.
Chapter Ten
Rafe sighed awayhis frustration and refilled his lungs with a bracing breath, but it did nothing to buoy his dismal spirits.
The day had been a disaster.
After receiving the note from Mrs. West, his housekeeper, he’d been too concerned over May’s health to be much for conversation on the carriage journey back to London. His head had been too muddled with horrible scenarios to be trusted to explain everything to his new wife adequately. Now, the time for the full truth had come far sooner than he’d anticipated, and he had to finish tearing open the wound so everything could heal and (he hoped) his marriage to Victoria might move forward on sturdier ground. The situation was not ideal, but maybe it would be for the best. He’d kept his wards secret for months at that point; revealing their existence to Victoria could only be a relief.
Couldn’t it?
Rafe handed his niece back to Nan, murmured a request that he be notified if anything else was needed or if there was a change in May’s condition, saw them off toward the back stairs, and turned back to his wife. They were finally alone in the sparse foyer, so silent they would be able to hear a mouse sneeze in the wall.
He cleared the unease from his throat before speaking. “This was not the homecoming I’d planned for you.” And that was the truth of it. He’d hoped to spend the first part of their honeymoontrip just the two of them, naked more than they were clothed, and then, when she was sufficiently starry-eyed and sated, he planned on revealing to her that he’d inherited the care of his sister’s children…and that he’d been struggling to provide for their care and maintain the lifestyle expected of him as Viscount Blackwood. He’d hoped to soften the blow with a home that had been renovated in their absence, and a full staff befitting the household of a viscount. All of that had been blown to hell with the arrival of that note.
He wished his reaction had been less extreme, but his life had been one tragedy after another as of late. He could hardly be blamed for rushing back to London when he learned of May’s illness. Rafe ran a hand through his hair and wondered at how different his life was from what it had been less than half a year prior.
“No?” Victoria’s tone was deceptively calm when she finally spoke. “Did you plan on having evenmoresurprise children present?”
Normally, he might have been amused by her sass, but he found he couldn’t muster it. He also did not think she would appreciate his making light of the situation. Even if her words might have been interpreted as levity, he knew her better than that. Despite her kindness in the face of Dominic’s deplorable manners, the tightness of her full lips and the lack of sparkle in her eyes warned Rafe that he’d now trodden into dangerous territory. Then, a nauseating possibility struck him straight in the gut and demanded to be immediately voiced.
“You do not care for children, then?” Had he made a horrendous miscalculation and assumed she would enjoy their presence as he did?
Her brows twitched. “It is not that I do not care for children; I merely do not believe their existence should be sprung upon one as a by-the-by.”
Rafe inclined his head. That was fair enough.
