Page 80 of My Deceitful Duchess
“Insufferable?” The word brought a tiny smile creeping onto her lips.
“Pompous,” he corrected. “Quite an inflated sense of their own consequence. I won’t complain if you choose to knock them down a peg or two.” Another heavy, expressive sigh. “Or seven.”
“Seven!”
“Nine? Twelve might be a bit beyond the pale, but surely as many as ten or eleven.”
“That’s quite a lot of pegs.”
“They’ve got quite a lot of pomposity between them.”
A strange little bubble of amusement rose up from somewhere deep in her chest. Unearthed at last from where it had lain buried for so many weeks. “And yet,” she said, with a gesture of her free hand toward Charlie, who had trotted on a few paces ahead, “you have named your dog for your brother.”
“It irritates the very devil out of him,” Sebastian said. “You just wait and see.”
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“Norton, the butler,” Sebastian whispered to Jenny as Norton ushered them inside, Charlie trailing along behind. “He’s been with the family longer than I’ve been alive. I’m certain he must be ninety by now.”
“Sixty,” Norton corrected blithely, as he collected Sebastian’s coat. “And if I appear older, sir, it is only because you set my hair to greying before its time.”
“And he’s got ears like a fox, same as Mum,” Sebastian muttered as Jenny smothered a laugh into her palm.
“However did you manage to so severely terrorize your butler?” she asked of him, though her attention was firmly placed upon Norton.
A canny little smirk settled over Norton’s wrinkled face. “Well—”
Oh,no. “Now, Norton—”
“There was the time he set my coattails afire, madam.”
Sebastian scrubbed at his face. “Theonetime!”
“Once was rather enough, sir.”
“No.” Jenny’s eyes had rounded owlishly, her expression one of horrified intrigue. “He didn’t!”
“And then there was the incident with the snake—”
Sebastian groaned. “A common grass snake. There was nothing at all dangerous about it.”
“Except,” Norton supplied, “that it ended up in the larder.”
Throwing up his hands, Sebastian declared, “It was harmless! And how was I to know it would escape its enclosure?” To Jenny he confided, “Father switched me for that one.”
“But not for the fire?”
“Oh, he would have, had he learned of it. But I confessed my crime to Mum, and instead she put me to work in the garden as punishment. Which, incidentally, is where I found the snake.” He breathed a sigh of relief as Mum came sailing into the foyer, unintentionally saving him from a humiliating recitation of every last one of his childhood foibles—which would no doubt have kept both Jenny and Norton occupied for quite some time.
“Sebastian, my darling!” Mum rushed at him in a froth of blue silk, squeezing his cheeks in both hands. “And dear Jenny. How lovely to see you again.”
“Mary.” Jenny accepted the buss to her cheek that Mum offered, as if they had been the dearest of friends for years. “I hope you will pardon the intrusion.”
Mum waved away the polite words with both hands. “Nonsense, nonsense. You are to be family, after all.” She glanced down. “And this fine fellow must be Charlie,” she said, extending her hand to the dog who was nosing at her skirts. “Norton, would you please take Charlie to the garden? I’m afraid the dining room isn’t well suited for dogs.” Her voice pitched to a delicate coo as she scratched Charlie beneath his chin. “Even terribly handsome—if a bit scruffy—ones.”
“Right away, ma’am. Come, Master Charlie.” Norton had such an authoritative air that Charlie trotted along after him straight off. And Jenny smiled. Sebastian only hoped that dinner wouldn’t dim it.
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