She knew this, and she asked it of him anyway. It was shameless manipulation. A woman of good breeding would not have asked him to do so. But he was the one who had agreed to owe a favor.
“Very well,” he said coldly.
He would instruct his butler to allow visits and correspondence until this debt was paid.
Her lips curved. “Thank you.”
Miss Wynchester should consider herself fortunate to have risen as much as she had. Although she was not Baron Vanderbean’s daughter by blood, she had enjoyed and continued to enjoy his home and his generosity.
Lawrence’s chest gave a familiar little hiccup at the tempting image of a big family. He was not jealous of Miss Wynchester—the thought was absurd—but after a fever had taken his mother, growing up all alone in a house like this one had been very lonely, indeed.
He never wanted his heir, or any child, to feel as adrift as he had. If Miss York wished to relinquish the child rearing to nursemaids and tutors, that was her prerogative. But Lawrence would ensure his children never doubted their father’s love. Nor would they want for anything.
But first he had to be done with Chloe Wynchester.
He gave her his harshest glare. “If there’s nothing else?”
She lifted a large woven basket. “Do you want to see Tiglet before I go?”
He did. “I do not.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Do you dislike pets?”
“We are not friends, Miss Wynchester. My feelings on the matter are inconsequential to you.”
His feelings were intense. Lawrence not only hoped to fill his home with childrenandanimals, he intended to let each child pick out his or her own pet. None of which was Miss Wynchester’s concern.
She tilted her head. “I think you’d like Tiglet.”
“Alas, we shall never know.” He gestured for her to precede him from the parlor.
She glanced at the unadorned walls instead. “Do you dislike art?”
Lawrencelovedart.
This house had once been filled with it. For generations the Dukes of Faircliffe had added masterpiece after masterpiece to the family collection.
And then came his father.
The duke had been great fun—and unrepentantly frivolous. How Lawrence had looked up to the gregarious man who had far too many friends to show favor to any one in particular, including his starry-eyed son. Not when there were parties to attend and wagers to be made.
One by one the portraits that had kept Lawrence company when he had no one to talk to, the landscapes he’d escaped into when he could go nowhere else, had vanished from the walls to pay his father’s increasing debts.
Lads at school mocked him for his father’s excesses and embarrassing scandals. Everything Lawrence cared about was ripped away.
The parlor was bare. Although his father was no longer here to wrest the last scraps away, Lawrence could not help but hoard the little he had left. He had collected twenty-three dusty paintings from the failing Faircliffe country seat and gathered them in the town house library, which he now kept under lock and key. Its beauty was his refuge. Only his housekeeper was allowed inside.
“Ienjoy art,” Miss Wynchester continued, as though Lawrence had not rudely ignored her question.
A quicksilver, seductive impulse tempted him to show her his collection. Just to see how she reacted. To see if she could appreciate his collection even a fraction as much as he did.
He tamped down the desire. Impulsiveness was how his father had ruined himself and his family. The damnable trait was also the reason Lawrence was in his current scrape with Miss Wynchester.
“Good afternoon,” he told her firmly. “Hastings will see you out.”
She dipped a curtsey.
“Oh,” Lawrence said, “do not take your disruptive baby jaguar back to the Yorks’.”
