The Firstborn

Chapter Three

She was not at all what he expected.

He had encountered a fair number of his brother's... women over the years, and so he had sketched what he assumed would be a fairly accurate portrait before he had even raised a hand to knock on the door. She would be silly, he had assumed. Silly but with a light of avarice in her eyes, eyes that he hoped would gleam the brighter as soon as he explained what had brought him all the way up to this godforsaken place.

And godforsaken it surely was. All the way at the edge of the country—at the edge of the world, it seemed—in a tumbledown stone cottage, with the smell of the ocean carried in on a breeze that felt as if it would not quit until it had bent every stalk and tree to its will...

And the trip had been long, and there had been nothing but rain and mud and bad roads and worse inns between here and London. His body ached, and he wished for nothing more than to shut his eyes and find himself back in his own home, preferably facing the prospect of sleeping in his own bed for the night. But after he left here, he knew it would be another night in some vermin-infested inn, picking at food that he wouldn't dump into a trough for the pigs, and all before climbing back into his coach to travel over roads that were as comforting to his joints as being tossed about on the waves during a storm.

After he dealt with this woman, he reminded himself. This woman who had turned his thoughts upside down from the moment she'd met him at the door.

He watched her as she set down the tea tray, her hands careful but every movement driven by purpose. There were no wasted flutters, nothing of a performance in her ministrations. And then she passed a cup to him, smoothed her hands down the flour-covered apron she still wore, and took a seat in a high-backed wooden chair across from him.

"Your brother..." she began, and picked up her own cup before taking a tentative sip.

Haughton watched her. He had never seen the likes of her on his brother's arm. Her build was wrong, too broad across the shoulders and wider in the hips than David preferred. And the hair...

No, David detested redheads. And here was this woman, her strawberry hair bound back from her face in a braid that was decorated with myriad wisps and curls that had worked their way out of it. And aside from all of this, there was something else, a boldness that David would not have cared for, would in truth have most likely been repulsed by.

Because David wanted to be flattered. He wanted a woman who would gaze up at him with adoration in her eyes and tell him in the most irritatingly coquettish voice possible that he was her moon and her stars, more often than not while the creature pressed her ample bosom against his arm in an effort to better pick his wallet straight from his pocket.

Haughton closed his eyes as a rather loud curse slipped out of his mouth. Of course. He was surprised at himself for not realizing it earlier. This woman, the elder sister, must have claimed the babe as her own in order to save her sister from the scandal of raising a child out of wedlock. What remained to be seen was whether or not Mrs. Brixton had ever been married at all, or if that too was also a deceit.

But he should have known. From the moment he saw Sophia, he knew there had been some trickery at play. David would never have gone for such a woman, and Haughton was strangely relieved to know that his younger brother had not suddenly altered his preferences. At least that was one thing on which he could still depend.

"Mrs. Brixton," he said, smiling at her over the rim of his own cup—a chipped thing, decorated with rows of poorly rendered periwinkles. "Perhaps we should start again, don't you think?"

"Start again?" Her fine eyebrows drew together. "How so?"

"I am afraid I have arrived here under some misapprehension."