Page 19 of His Duchess of Scandal
Sighing, Charles sat down on the edge of her bed, facing her.
“Phoebe, I know you told the footman to move my painting,” he finally said.
“I do not speak to the footmen, Papa. There are lots of them, and I am only small.”
Her little, innocent voice would have made him laugh if he were not riled up.
Behind her, the sky was already darkening. He had spent all day penning letters to notorious members of the ton to apologize for what they were exposed to, trying to contain the scandal that had broken out in his ballroom the night before.
“If you were angry, I would understand,” he tried gently. “I just want to know the truth.”
She looked at him with suspicion, as if she doubted he could truly understand.
Exhaling wearily, Charles knew he would get nowhere by trying to coax a confession out of her.
“Phoebe,” he said sternly, “I need you to be honest with me because you have hurt not only me with this prank, but somebody else as well. Someone innocent, who should not have been involved. Someone who did not even know the painting existed.”
His daughter said nothing, but she looked down, chewing on her lower lip. The red ribbon at the back of her head had slipped down her tight curls. She got them from her mother, whereas Charles’s hair was black but straight.
“Did you do it, Phoebe?” he asked.
She was as silent as the footmen had been, but he saw her shifting. He saw how she lifted her thumb to her teeth and bit on it as if she had to busy her mouth not to admit her wrongdoing.
“Fine,” he sighed, pushing to his feet. “There will be no outing with Miss Ternan for a fortnight. You may forget the fair in Branmere Village, and there will be no sweets, either. It is a shame, for a new shop recently opened on the high street.”
Perhaps it was cruel to dangle the two things in front of her, but he couldn’t let her keep getting away with her pranks. Groundingher wasn’t a deterrent, ordering her to be watched did nothing, and shouting or silence did very little as well, except make her throw a tantrum.
She never showed remorse and simply did another thing the following day. It was an endless cycle of trying to predict what she would get up to next.
Phoebe’s head snapped up at the threat, and she opened her mouth, her nose scrunching up like it did when she was about to cry or whine.
For a minute, Charles’s frustration abated, but then he remembered the burn of humiliation. Not only for himself, but for the Aphrodite he had taken to bed on that forbidden night.
“Papa,” Phoebe whined. “Papa, I have been looking forward to the fair for so long! Miss Ternanpromised.”
“Well, you should have thought about that before you played this foolish prank,” he chided, shaking his head. “I cannot let you go on not learning that sometimes your actions have bigger consequences than your governess squealing over an insect. This is bigger, Phoebe. Someone innocent will be—likely already has been—implicated. This time, you have gone too far.”
“But—”
Before she could begin howling in protest, voices from downstairs caught his attention.
Charles surged to his feet and marched to the door, ready to demand what was going on.
“I must see the Duke of Branmere at once!” a female voice shouted.
He frowned, glancing back at Phoebe.
“Stay in your room,” he ordered, and then rushed out of the room.
“Where is he?”
That voice… where did he know it from?
He hurried to the landing of the first floor and swung onto the main staircase.
From there, he saw a cloaked woman with her hood up, only a few strands of brown hair hanging around. It was the color of the chocolate his father had always snuck him after dinner as a boy.
She squared off against Mr. Willoby, the butler.
