Page 31 of Her Scandalous Pursuit

Con laughed and joined his brother in slamming a pretend staff against the carpet. “Bam! Bam!”

“Yes, dear, we understand,” the duchess interjected. “What happened then? Your grandmother didn’t strike her, did she?”

This question startled the men in the room, though the duchess’s children took it in stride.

Con shook his head. “No. But Nanny cried.”

“She said, ‘I cannot live here,’” Alex added in the twins’ back-and-forth style of storytelling.

“‘This place is a madhouse,’” Con went on.

“And she ran upstairs.”

“What did your grandmother do?” Emmeline asked.

“She slammed the door.” The boys let out another chorus of bams as they mimicked their grandmother.

“They both just left you alone?” The duchess rose to her feet, her eyes shooting sparks. “Really! Has the woman no sense?” She swept out of the room.

“Do you suppose she was talking about the nanny or Grandmother?” Thisbe asked drily.

“Probably both,” Kyria responded.

Alex and Con gazed at each other for a long moment, then turned their eyes toward Thisbe and Desmond, then to Kyria and her swains.

“Alex? Con?” Thisbe’s suspicions were aroused.

Con gave Alex a nudge, and Alex reached into his pocket. He held out his hand to Desmond. In the center of his palm was an exquisitely detailed, tiny enameled bird sitting on a short round staff.

“Oh, my.” Desmond sucked in an appreciative breath and pick up the tiny bird to study it. “This is lovely.”

“Is this why Grandmother was angry?” Thisbe asked.

Alex nodded, tears beginning to well. Con stepped closer to his twin so that they were shoulder to shoulder, tears glimmering in his eyes, too.

“Did you find this?” Desmond asked gently, and they shook their heads.

Alex reached into his other pocket and drew out a very small box. It was made of lapis lazuli, with gold trim all around it and golden hinges on the lid. Desmond opened the box. Inside was a sheet of chased gold, and in the center sat an oval indentation, covered in a tangle of golden wires so that it resembled a nest. In the center of the nest was a small hole.

“I broke it,” Alex said sadly.

“The bird tweeted,” Con explained, humming a bit of a tune.

“It’s a music box,” Desmond said. “It looks like the spindle came off. Wait a bit.” He set the bird back in Alex’s palm and reached inside his jacket to pull out a slender leather case. Taking a miniature screwdriver from the case, he carefully unfastened the tiny screws holding the golden plate in place.

“I say,” said one of the men authoritatively. “You shouldn’t be fooling about with that. Bad enough the boys broke it, but—”

“Hush,” Kyria snapped, frowning at him. “If you can’t say anything helpful, perhaps you should leave.”

The man looked affronted, but closed his mouth. Desmond handed the metal plate to Con to hold and set the tiny screws on the table beside him. He studied the mechanism for a moment. “Aha, here—see, this became disconnected.”

He showed the twins, pointing with the end of the screwdriver, and they peered down into the box, their former unhappiness gone. Desmond pulled a set of long tweezers from the same slim case, and delicately poked about inside the machine. Fascinated, the twins watched him pick up the spindle and put it back where it belonged. Carefully, he replaced the plate and set the short hollow stem on which the bird sat back onto the spindle.

“There. Now, you have to be careful with it,” he admonished the boys, and they nodded their heads emphatically. “It’s not on there as securely as it was—it needs to be soldered, but it’ll do.”

He closed the lid, then wound the key and opened the box again. The bright little bird popped up and a tinkling tune played. The twins gazed at him in awe, then began to laugh and jump about wildly.

Thisbe’s heart swelled within her chest as she looked at Desmond, who was watching the twins indulgently and chuckling. Kyria’s callers, on the other hand, stiffly took their leave. Thisbe looked at Kyria. “Sorry. I’m afraid we ran your guests off.”