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rear attack, the intruder stumbled sideways, caught Cook’s chair to steady himself, and knocked over a steaming teapot. He gracefully managed to catch the pottery before it crashed to the brick floor, but not before scalding his hand with the contents.
    Abigail winced and waited for the flow of colorful, inappropriate invectives that the child had to have learned somewhere.
    The gentleman’s throttled silence was more evocative. Dragon green eyes glaring, he returned the pot to the table, clenched his burned wrist and ruined shirt cuff, and, ignoring Abigail’s admonitions, again crouched down to check on the runaway.
    If she had not already noted the family resemblance of matching forelocks that tumbled hair in their faces, Abigail would have known the two strangers were related by the identical mulish set of their mouths.

    Bumping his head against a kitchen table while holding his scalded wrist, Fitz tried to recall why he’d thought learning to be an earl required turning over a new leaf. The moldy, crumbing old foliage he’d lived under all his life had been perfectly adequate for the lowly insect he was, although he must admit his impulsive actions in the past might occasionally give the flighty appearance of a butterfly. He snorted. In the past? If kidnapping his own daughter wasn’t flighty, it was the most ill-conceived, most absurd, and possibly stupidest thing he’d ever done, as even the child seemed to recognize.
    “I want my mommy.” Beneath the table, Penelope stuck out her lower lip.
    He peered in exasperation at the whining, scrawny six-year-old bit of fluff he’d accidentally begot in his brainless years, when he’d thought women would save his wicked soul.
    The child had his thick brownish hair and green eyes, so he knew she was his, right down to the unruly swirl of hair falling across her forehead. The petulant lip and constant demands obviously belonged to her actress mother—may the woman be damned to perdition.
    And yet, he was stupidly drawn to this imp of Satan who so resembled his neglected childhood self. He suffered an uncomfortable understanding of her rebelliousness. After all, she’d been ignored for years by a mother who had run off to marry a rich German and a father who thought good upbringing required only servants. He still preferred servants, but he obviously needed to find more competent ones.
    “I will find you a better mother,” he recklessly promised, if only to coax her from beneath the table.
    “I want my mommy!” Big round eyes glared daggers at him.
    “You have a daddy now. That ought to be enough until we have time to look around and pick a pretty new mommy for you.” What in hell did she expect him to say? That her mother didn’t want her? That was one truth that wouldn’t pass his tongue, even though the damned woman hadn’t seen her child since infancy.
    “Mommy says you’re a worthless toadsucker. I don’t want you for a daddy,” she declared.
    Her real mother would never have lowered herself to such a common expression. Understanding dawned. “If you mean Mrs. Jones, she is a slack-brained lickspittle,” he countered, “and she is not your mother. Do you think I’d pick dragon dung like that for your mother?”
    He ignored the choking laughter—or outrage—of his audience in his effort to solve one problem at a time. The child’s mother had chosen the nanny. He should have paid closer attention when he’d approved her choice, but at the time, Mrs. Jones had seemed affable and maternal, with all those qualities he imagined a good mother ought to have. Not that he had any experience with mothers or children, good or bad.
    He couldn’t remember even being a child. An undisciplined hellion, yes, but never an innocent. What the devil had he been thinking? That he wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of his father? And his grandfather. They hadn’t been called Wicked Wyckerlys for naught. Berkshire was littered with his family’s bastards. Given the