“Where is Miss Wren?” one of the girls asked.
“Why are you wearing a counterpane?” the other queried.
He grimaced. “She is sleeping and I… I am cold.”
Predictably, his nieces began chattering.
“Why are you in her chamber?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Elizabeth pulled my hair.”
“I told you I was sorry,” said that twin to her sister.
And at last, Rafe could tell who was whom.
He blinked, his headache thumping harder.
“Do not tell your papa you saw me in Miss Wren’s chamber,” he said, though he knew it was wrong to encourage his nieces to lie.
As if it were not enough that Rafe was wearing nothing but a counterpane and conversing with his innocent nieces while their governess, whom he may or may not have bedded, slept on, another creature bounded down the hall. His brother’s youngest pup, Motley, approached the girls with a playful bark.
Damn it, what a muddle.
“Take the bleeding hound to see your papa, girls,” he told them as Motley sprang forward and caught the corner of his counterpane in his sharp teeth. “Blast it, arsehole, leave me be.”
“Come, Arsehole,” Elizabeth said cheerfully, using the decidedly improper name the pup had inherited thanks to his poor manners.
Rafe winced. Jasper’s wife would box his ears if she learned he was cursing around the girls. She had already warned not only himself but the rest of his brothers and all the men at his family’s gaming hell, The Sinner’s Palace, as well.
“Perhaps you ought not to repeat everything Uncle Rafe says,” he muttered.
Or perhaps it would be more apt to say the twins ought not to repeat anything Uncle Rafe said. Ever. Most especially no
t anything he did.
Bedding their governess—if he had—would not have been one of his more exemplary moments. But then, did he truly possess exemplary moments? Likely not any suitable for the ears of his innocent young nieces.
“Why are you cold?” Anne asked.
Because I am bloody well bare-arsed underneath this cursed blanket.
“Perhaps I’m ill,” he lied without compunction.
“You don’t look it to me,” Elizabeth pronounced.
“Mayhap he’s cropsick,” Anne suggested to her sister, before turning a considering look back at him.
Twin pairs of hazel Sutton eyes swept over him from head to toe.
“Cropsick,” he repeated, wondering how she knew the word to describe the pronounced affliction affecting a man the day after he had been as drunk as David’s sow. “And where did you hear of that?”
“Uncle Hart and Uncle Wolf,” the girls said in unison, making him wonder what else his brothers had been teaching their nieces. Nothing beneficial, he was sure.
Damn it all, he needed to put an end to this interview.
Now.