My Fair Marchioness (Scandalous Affairs Book 3) by Christi Caldwell (best short books to read txt) 📗

“Since they were found…” He allowed that concession. He wasn’t going to get hung up debating her on semantics when there were far more pressing points to win with her. “Male children were taken. There were no girls.”

She scoffed. “Of course there were. Why should a criminal overlord obsessed with having connections to the peerage steal only male children and not girls, hmm?” She lifted a white eyebrow.

There was a warning there.

Abandoning his drink, Harris faced his godmother. “I don’t presume to know how or what a madman rumored to take noble children would think, Your Grace,” he admitted.

He also didn’t believe it. Not beyond the one gent whose family had tried to rid themselves of him when he’d been a boy so they could take his title and lands. What Harris did believe was that any number of men were now foisting themselves off on lords and ladies who were desperate to believe their missing family members had been found. “What I do know is that there’s been no hint of the girl for years. There was never an indication that she lived.”

His godmother took him by the shoulders. “Adairia lived. The pendant proves it.”

He scoffed. “A small girl born to the comfortable, luxurious life of the peerage and then lost in London’s streets would have never survived, Your Grace,” he said with the bluntness his godmother needed, while still sparing her the ugly reality. Lady Adairia would have met a fate undoubtedly too agonizing for his godmother to wrap her brain around.

“There was a time when you came to visit, while Adairia was here,” his godmother said, altering their discussion enough to briefly knock him off-balance. “She was just four. You didn’t like to be tasked with playing with a little girl. You were ten years older. But you were always a good, dutiful boy, and you would entertain her for us anyway.” That earned his shoulder a pat. “One day, you were playing hide-and-go-seek with Adairia. You were, of course, so much older and more adept. You always easily found her. Until one turn, do you remember what she did?”

He’d barely a recollection beyond a child’s annoyance he’d felt as a boy at having to occupy his godmother’s cherished niece. He searched his mind, distantly recalling some of that day.

The duchess’ eyes twinkled. “You remember.” Yes, he remembered, but she continued with her telling, reminding him anyway. “She slipped outside and scaled one of my trees. We searched all day for her. And it wasn’t until night that we visited the gardens and found her, sleeping there.” She gave his arm a squeeze. “And that, Harris, is how we know she survived. She would have found her way. Found a place…”

He bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that she spoke of a child hiding in walled-in, meticulously tended gardens and not the rough and ruthless streets of London.

“Go home,” she said, managing to meld gentleness with a no-nonsense firmness that Harris normally wouldn’t have dared defy.

This time, however, was different.

“I said I am staying, Your Grace.”

He didn’t trust the interloper who’d come here clutching that heart-shaped necklace. Not for a damned moment.

Since the first time a London street tough had shown up, promising information about his godmother’s lost niece if she paid a hefty sum, he’d learned to not trust a single person who’d arrived with word of the duchess’s nieces. Not when that time and all the ones to follow earned her nothing more than a statement of promise that the girl—now a woman—was alive and selling flowers in Covent Garden.

The duchess gave him a long look and then sighed. “How long?”

Until the woman was gone. “Long enough to ensure that you are safe and that she can be trusted.”

“She can,” she said before that last word had fully left his mouth.

“Splendid if she can.” But she couldn’t. “Then there is no harm in me remaining and ensuring that you are looked after.”

His godmother joined her fingertips in a steeple, staring at him over the top. “Do you know, I cannot imagine anything more splendid than you remaining and renewing your acquaintance with the lady and making her time here more comfortable.”

Oh, bloody hell. That was decidedly not what he had a damned intention of doing.

He called after her retreating form, “I did not say I intended to make her time more comfortable.”

“You could and should and will.” The duchess’ was a decree that she didn’t so much as deign to turn back to give. She spoke it as the command it was, one that brooked zero room for dispute or challenge.

With his godmother gone, Harris let free a stream of dark curses that would have gotten his ear snagged and twisted by any one of the women his dearly departed mother called best friend.

When the duchess had her mind on something, there was no swaying her from her course. There was no reasoning with her. She was determined to take in this charlatan.

She’d intended to tell the duchess everything.

Julia had meant to correct the erroneous conclusion the woman had come to about her identity and that necklace, but everything had happened so quickly. She’d been surrounded by the trio of ladies and a small contingent of servants who’d put her in a bath and brought forth new garments, the finest, softest, most luxuriant articles she’d ever seen, let alone worn. A quality suited to the patrons milling outside Covent Garden theaters when she was hawking her flowers.

And then there’d been a tray of food. Roast beef, its scent wafting on the air, and roasted carrots and potatoes and bread.

She’d, of course, eaten, swearing she’d tell them afterward. Just as soon as her mouth wasn’t stuffed with food.

Then they’d brought her