glared at his office door. Chaos had taken over his foyer. In the old days, he would have marched outside and put an end to the crisis, but experience had taught him that the sight of his face would only augment whatever was going on. Gnashing his teeth, he settled for an account. “Phipps!” he growled, startling Mr. Brooks.
The broker smiled timorously, pushed his spectacles back onto the bridge of his nose, and reburied his face in his papers. Since his injury, Ashby felt that few people could look him in the eye and ignore the scars on his face. Mr. Brooks was not one of them.
Phipps came in, and Ashby’s jaw fell open. “What’s this?” he asked, gawking at the pretty pink bundle in his butler’s arms. It couldn’t be what he thought it was. During the course of his thirty-five years of life, a number of women tried to saddle him with babies, but his hired runners disproved their claims. This time what stumped him was a crystallizing realization that he would not mind learning the child was his. Only it was impossible. He hadn’t been with a woman in over two years and the little girl Phipps held couldn’t be much older than twelve months.
“This is Miss Danielli,” Phipps announced, smiling with pleasure at the infant clinging to his neck. “She has come to call on you, my lord.” The rosy bundle was busy surveying his office.
Pushing his chair back, Ashby rose to his feet. He approached them. The baby girl’s wispy golden hair was tied atop her head in a pink ribbon that matched her clothing; her wide, curious eyes reminded him of a cloudless sky in Spain; her small pink lips curled up in a smile. Oh, God. Black depression choked him. “Who brought her here?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
“The, eh”—Phipps glanced at the broker’s back hunched over the massive desk—“same individual who was here the day before yesterday and the day before that.”
Ashby shut his eyes. So this was what the Greeks called “divine retribution, the vengeful judgment of the gods.” Losing so many of his men, his best friend among them, and his hopes for a future was not enough; he had to walk among the living and keep paying for his sins until the day he died.
Mr. Brooks collected his belongings. “Perhaps I should leave these with you, my lord, to review in your own time, and I shall return to take down further instructions next week.”
“Very well, Brooks. You may go.” His head wasn’t in it anyway. Ordinarily, handling his lucrative assets was a pastime he enjoyed and that also kept the mold from his brain. Isabel’s visits had set him completely off kilter. As during the first six, hellish months of his self-imposed incarceration, he could scarcely sleep or eat. He spent long nights in the cellar, trying to convince himself that seeing her again had had no effect on him whatsoever. But the sad truth was he had never felt more alone than he did now. Even his nightmares were different: Instead of reenacting Waterloo and Sorauren and failing each time anew to rescue either Will or his own person, in his new recurring dream he was standing alone in the smoky-black aftermath of battle, surrounded by miles of corpses, not knowing in which direction lay England.
He had also had a very erotic dream of Isabel, but that was something he really didn’t want to brood over. Suffice it to say he’d experienced a very rude awakening. Just knowing she was here, in his house, and that he was about to see her, stirred the mutinous part of his anatomy to life again. Damn the woman. The woman… Not girl. It was significant, even in his dreams.
“Good day, my lord.” Mr. Brooks nodded stiffly and hastily escaped the office.
Ashby extended his hands and lifted Danielli into his arms. If Isabel trusted his butler with the infant, he safely assumed she wouldn’t mind if he held Danielli a bit. A vanilla-scented cloud descended upon him. The plump bundle was light, delicate, and soft, suffusing his veins with unbidden tenderness. “My God,” he murmured. “My God.” This he would never know—holding his own child in his arms. The sensation was humbling, uplifting. “Where’s Isabel?”
“Downstairs with Mrs. Nelson.” Phipps tickled Danielli with his finger, making her giggle, but she quickly returned her attention to Ashby. She seemed utterly fascinated by him.
Ashby scowled. “With the housekeeper? What the devil happened?”
“Hector jumped on her when she came in through the door and covered her with drool. She went to wash it off. She mentioned something about his being a pup when she found him…”
“She gave him to me.” Disregarding his butler’s curious gaze, Ashby kept his eyes on the bubbly girl. Her blue eyes dancing with mirth, Danielli raised her hands and smacked her palms onto his cheeks. At his shocked expression, a shriek of laughter left her lips. He didn’t scare her.
“I believe she likes you, my lord.”
Amazing. Cradling her against his chest with one arm, Ashby peeled one tiny hand off his cheek and brought it to his nose. The effect nearly dissolved him altogether. He understood how men fell in love with infants at first sight. She looked so much like Isabel, his heart clenched.
Someone scratched the door. “Phipps, are you in there? May I come in?” Isabel called.
Bloody hell. Ashby wasn’t prepared to expose his private hell to her. Nor was he about to dive underneath the desk. “Phipps, take the girl and go to her.”
His butler reached inside his coat and produced the black mask. “I’ll expect a considerable increase in wages, my lord.”
Good old Phipps. “How does a ten percent increase sound?” Grabbing the mask, Ashby returned to his chair and settled Danielli in his lap. Tying the mask on proved tricky as she kept sticking her tiny fingers in the eye-holes. Nevertheless he wasn’t ready to relinquish his treasure yet. “Come in,” he finally called, startled by the sudden acceleration of his heartbeat.
“There you are, my darling.” Isabel sashayed in and didn’t stop until she reached his side. Her muslin morning gown was the color of pale lavender with a high crepe collar and a purple ribbon sewn beneath her full, pert breasts—of which he received an alluring view as she bent over to lift Danielli into her arms. His torture didn’t end with that—she, too, smelled of vanilla.
Ashby went hard. He stood, wishing he were shorter, or that his desk were taller. “Get out, Phipps.” At least he was still alive, he mused morbidly, tipping his head to inhale more of her, of Isabel. Her soft, full lips were attached to Danielli’s rounded ivory cheek. The sight twisted his insides. One thought possessed him: These two beautiful girls could have been his—if only he had played his cards right, if only he had waited until she grew up and spoken to Will, if only he hadn’t been an abject idiot…“I thought I told you to stay away from me,” he rasped softly.
“Did you think you could scare me off so easily?” As her head swerved to meet his gaze, a soft, loose curl brushed his lips, making his mouth water. Her bright smile was his final undoing.
He moved closer, his gaze focused on her cherry lips. Abruptly, she hoisted Danielli to a firmer embrace, shattering his lustful stupor. Christ, he felt like a lapdog being led on a leash.
“I told my charity board about your donation.” She grinned at him. “You should have seen their faces. Five thousand pounds! They were eager to thank you in person. I had to lie through my teeth and claim you were an anonymous donor. Sophie insisted it was the very definition of charity—giving in secret so as not to shame the poor. She said our benefactor was remarkable.”
And there it was—the adoring glow in her beautiful eyes. His chest constricted. His hoarse voice sounded foreign to his own ears. “But you know who
