He had bolted before he could let Letitia see how desperately his temper raged at him. She did not deserve that. She had not deserved the pitiful goodbye that he had given her, either, but he was faced with a choice, and he had chosen the one that let him keep his tenuous grasp on control.
His dear, sweet Letty had looked sobleakwhen she had talked about what Dugley had done to her. Soresigned.
And, hell, he didn’t blame her for that. She had no power to fight the whispers of a viscount.
But Ezra had power. He had connections. He could make discreet inquiries.
He might not be able to ruin the man without breaking Letitia’s confidence, but he could make damn certain that no vulnerable young woman ever fell into his clutches again.
And maybe hecouldruin the man without breaking his word to Letty. Hope sprang eternal and all that. Ezra could dream.
In the interim, though, he was going to stomp around a bit. The walk home took him more than an hour, but it did little more than waste time. His temper was not improved in the slightest.
He went through the door where he found, for his sins, Hugh and Persephone and their thousands of children were waiting for him.
“Why?” he lamented, looking at his overrun parlor. “What are you people doing here? I didn’t invite you here.”
Persephone looked in his direction with a bright smile. Hugh used her distraction to shoot Ezra a rude gesture behind his wife’s back. He wasn’t subtle enough, though; one of thethree triplet nieces that Hugh had adopted—Ezra never could remember which was which—saw him, her eyes going wide with mischief and delight. Hugh would be paying for that later, Ezra realized with pleasure. He was going to have to give the girl tips on how best to blackmail her uncle.
“Well, we have seen a bit of you recently—at the party, and then Hugh mentioned that you had come to the club—so we wanted to return the favor.”
There was something in her face that indicated she understood thatfavorwas stretching things a bit. It was very frustrating that Ezra’s cousins kept finding such charming women to marry. Ezra would have tossed Hugh out on his ass for showing up like this, but Persephone—and the children—were a different matter.
And Hugh’s duchess knew it, damn it all.
“Besides,” she added with put-upon innocence. “The girls wanted to meet their cousin, Iris.”
At the sound of her name, Iris peeked her head up from the center of the knot of children. Ezra had not even realized she was hiding in there.
“Look, Uncle Ezra,” she chirped. “I have cousins! Grace, Lucy, Martha, Corinna, and Nicholas,” she listed, pointing at each one of them in turn.
Ezra had not realized that one of the children in the gaggle was a boy, either. Possibly because he had been covered by ribbons. Lucy—the one who had caught Hugh’s gesture—grinned while she tied another bow around his forehead.
“Are you having fun?” Ezra asked Iris, though he didn’t know why he bothered. He had never seen Iris smiling so broadly.
“Yes, cousins are the best,” she said happily, then giggled as Grace, who had to be about ten years old, grabbed her around the waist and spun her around in a circle.
“Me next!” Corinna cried, clapping her hands together.
As the older girls obligingly lifted the younger children and spun them over and over again, Ezra sighed in defeat.
This was another battle that he had very clearly lost.
All too aware that his disheveled clothing told a story that he did not necessarily want to discuss with his cousin and his wife, Ezra took a seat, resigned.
“Fine,” he said. “You can stay.”
“We didn’t ask for your permission,” Hugh snorted.
“It’smy house,” Ezra shot back before he could catch himself. What was it about this family that made him act like a child?And why did it bother him so much when Hugh looked pleased to have gotten a rise out of him?
“Don’t tease your cousin,” Persephone said, and this time it was Ezra’s turn to look smug. “We just want to be here for you, Ezra,” she said. “You and Iris. And Miss Knightley. Where is she?”
Ezra tried very hard not to let his mind wander back to where he had last seen Letitia, half wrapped in her own bedsheet and gloriously naked beneath.
“She has left my employ,” he said tersely.
Hugh and Persephone exchanged one of those looks only happily married couples shared. This was another issue with the whole ‘likable women’ issue. All his bloody cousins were in love, and they all thought theyknew thingsbecause of that love.
