Page 45 of His Improper Lady

“There are all those cousins,” Alex commented.

“Cousin Castor. And his brother.” Con began to list them on his fingers. “I can’t remember his name, except that thank God they didn’t name him Pollux.”

Pollux? What did that mean?

“There’s the one up in Scotland,” Alex added.

“The fellow with the cannons?”

Alex nodded and said to Desiree, “You wouldn’t want to be related to him, really.”

Desiree was beginning to wonder if these two were playing a joke on her.

“Con...you do realize that she could be making up the whole thing, don’t you?” Tom pointed out.

“Well, of course.” Con looked at Desiree. “I don’t mean to be impolite, but one has to consider all sides. It’s possible as well that you might be mistaken, that your brother has the ring for some entirely different reason.”

Alex took up the next part of the conversation, so smoothly that Desiree suspected the twins often spoke this way. “The thing is, you have to settle on who it is before you can prove or disprove it.”

“That’s what Mr. Quick and I are trying to do. We thought if we could locate the house, we might be able to find someone who had knowledge of the past residents.” She thought it would be better if she left out the part about planning to break into it. As pleasant and odd as the twins seemed, most people took a dim view of illegal entry.

“Do you know absolutely nothing about your father?” Con asked.

She shook her head. “My mother left not long after Wells and I were born. We didn’t know either of them. Brock, our older brother, was only six or so.”

“Your mother left?” Con looked astounded. Clearly this was an idea that didn’t fit into his world. “You mean she, well...” He stopped, obviously groping for a polite way to say what he wanted to.

“I mean, she ran away. With my father.”

“He absconded?” Alex and his brother exchanged confused glances. “I’ve never heard of any Moreland who ran off.”

“Who raised you? Mightn’t they know something? Surely your father must have sent them money for your keep,” Con said.

“No. We never had anything from him. From anyone.”

It was clear both men were surprised, even shocked. “That doesn’t sound like—he would have had to be the black sheep of the family,” Con told her.

Alex nodded. “I think perhaps you are wrong about it being a Moreland. Even if one of them was that irresponsible, surely someone would have stepped in.”

“Maybe the family didn’t know about the children,” Con suggested.

Desiree thought they were touchingly naive to think gentlemen provided for their by-blows. They were young, but Desiree didn’t think she’d ever been young enough to have such a rosy vision of life.

“How did you live, then?” Alex asked. “Were you with a relative, an aunt or someone?”

“A friend of their mother’s took them in,” Tom said, and a faint smile touched his lips as he looked at Con and said, “Miss Malone and her brothers were raised in a circus.”

Desiree was hurt that Tom looked so amused and expectant as he revealed something that would make the Morelands recoil from her. She had to tell them eventually, of course, but couldn’t he have waited a bit? And he needn’t have looked gleeful about it.

“The circus!” Con’s eyes widened, and delight flooded his expressive face. He looked over at his brother, and the two of them grinned like little boys. “Really?” He turned to Tom. “I cannot believe you didn’t tell me about all this.”

The dimple in Tom’s cheek popped in as he grinned at the other two. Was this the reaction he’d been expecting? Something in Desiree’s chest warmed as she watched him. It wasn’t just relief that he had meant no cruelty to her. It was the way he looked, so open and at ease, the affection in his eyes. They really were almost like family to him. She better understood his desire to protect them—though they certainly didn’t seem to need any protection.

“What was it like?” Alex leaned forward. “Did you travel from town to town? What did she do? The woman who raised you, I mean.”

“Yes, we traveled sometimes, but a lot of the time we were here in London.” Desiree felt much more comfortable now. “We were acrobats—Bruna the Italian Angel and the Magnificent Malones.”

“The Magnificent Malones!” Con exclaimed, a wide grin on his face. “That’s grand.”