Page 61 of The Forsaken

A rose-red blush swept over the girl’s freckled cheeks. “Well, that makes you one, too.”

Frost sighed with the heavy pride of a future duke. “I am here because I’m the marquess and future Duke of Bainbridge. As such, it is my duty to protect you and—ahhh”

Eira lunged, but Andromena shifted the spillikens stick, causing a crash that united the warring twins in shared amusement.

“She touched!” Eira cried out with a true child’s delight, showing just how far away in fact she was from the day of her Come Out.

Andromena cried out. “Drat!”

Frost laughed. “You touched the stick, Aunt Andromena!”

The sigh she let out was neither feigned nor forced. “That I did.”

From the middle of their sword fight, Cassia and Dallin’s eldest sons paused their action long enough to investigate the commotion. “What is it?”

The young marquess gesticulated wildly at the pile spread between him, Andromena, and Eira. “Aunt Andy fumbled the entire pile!”

“Why are you playing with the girls, Frost?”

Redness blotched his cheeks. “I’m not!” And to save face with the other lads, Frost did what boys and men had done since the beginning of time—he scapegoated a woman. “Aunt Andromena was glum. It’s all handled.”

In the absence of a suitable response, like mention of actual physical pain, the pair laughed and resumed fighting.

Frost scrambled to his feet. “I’m finally free to fight.”

Eira stuck a foot out to trip the future duke but, paling, pulled her toes back. “Mama! Aunt Cassia!”

The room went quiet under the unexpected arrival of the Duchess of Bainbridge and Marchioness of Winfield.

Unlike Aunt Catherine, who commanded quiet and unease, Myrtle’s appearance brought loud squeals and laughter and children stampeding and crawling in every direction to hug her or her voluminous ponceau red sarcenet skirts.

Laughing, the young duchess and marchioness patted heads and hugged admirers.

Until the boys recalled they weren’t supposed to want hugs from aunts and mothers and raced away from the grand show of affection to resume a bloody sea battle.

Myrtle queried the room at large. “Now, who is going to tell me why Aunt Andromena is sad?”

“Why is Andromena sad?”

They all looked to this latest intrusion. Meghan, Linnie, and Fleur had made an appearance. It had been inevitable.

Oh, hell.

Andromena got to her feet. “I didn’t say I was.”

She needn’t have wasted her breath.

The trio’s arrival brought with it a fresh celebratory round. By the time the jubilee quieted and lads and lasses returned to their respective games and nannies, there’d been sufficient time for her often flitty family members to forget the prior topic of discussion.

Relieved, she greeted her sisters and cousins with a hug and kisses. “It is so very good to see you.”

“You could have seen more of us if you were not hiding in the nursery.” Cassia, with her usual naivete and bid to be helpful, offered that suggestion.

“Remember, it is because she is sad,” Myrtle reminded her elder sister…which only deepened Andromena’s sisters’ worried expressions.

“I’m not…hiding.”

“It doesn’t escape me you didn’t deny being sad.”