For Better or For Worse

Chapter 4

“Lady Haley?” Robert’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He reacted as if Cedric had given him the wrong answer.

“Don’t you have a child named Haley?” Cedric asked.

“Well, yes,” replied Robert. “But...” He had a strange smile on his face. Cedric only had a moment to think about what that smile meant before Robert picked up the small bell on the table and shook it, summoning a servant.

“Yes, my lord.”

“Call Haley for me.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The door closed behind the servant. It wasn’t long before Cedric heard the footsteps of a person with a heavy stride approaching.

“Did you call for me, Father?” said the newcomer.

“Yes, I have a guest who wanted to see you.”

“Oh, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Cedric had caught a glimpse of Lila Langton’s portrait when he passed through the foyer, so when Haley Langton walked through the door, he could see the striking resemblance. The person had bright blonde hair, green eyes, and bright, glowing skin. They had a beauty that was hard to find even in the capital. But there was just one problem.

“I do have a child named Haley,” Robert said with a small chuckle. “But he’s my son, not my daughter.”

Cedric could see that. He swallowed his answer and forced a polite smile. Haley Langton was an attractive person, but he was not a woman by any means. Haley had a deep, low voice and stood over six feet tall. He was big and burly and would have been impossible to mistake for a woman dressed as a man.

Cedric couldn’t believe how confident his grandfather had been. He clenched his teeth, recalling his grandfather’s face. Sometimes, partially true information was even worse than total inaccuracies.

“Have you two met before?”

“No, this is our first time. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Langton,” Cedric greeted Haley, who was quite confused. He turned to Robert, fixing a smooth smile on his face. “My grandfather must have made a mistake. He is getting on in years, of course.”

He was backtracking over his earlier words about his grandfather’s “impeccable health.” Well, he hadn’t been wrong. It was an honest case of mistaken identity. Haley was commonly used as a girl’s name, and if Cedric’s grandfather had met Haley when he was around six or seven years old, it would have been entirely possible to mistake him for a girl.

In some places, it was even customary for the eldest son to be disguised as a girl until the age of seven, to prevent evil spirits and illnesses from taking the boy before his time. Perhaps the Langtons were from one of those superstitious places. It was absolutely possible for Graham to have assumed that a pretty child, who had a girl’s name and was dressed like a girl, was a girl.

“You may go, Haley.”

“Yes, Father.” Haley left the drawing room without knowing why he had been called there in the first place. Cedric waited until Haley’s footsteps were no longer audible.

“But do you have daughters?”

“Yes, I have two.”

That’s good, Cedric thought in relief. That meant he had options. The tension in his shoulders began to ease.

“My eldest daughter, Dillon, is twenty-three years old. Emily is turning seventeen. She’s the youngest by a wide margin.”

Dillon. Cedric realized where his grandfather’s misunderstanding stemmed from. Dillon was a popular name for boys. Knowing that the Langtons had children around the same age, Graham must have confused their genders; he had probably been talking about Dillon when he said the viscount had a daughter of “marriageable age.”

“They both must be very beautiful. It seems like beauty runs in the family. I would very much like to meet them.”

“Are you here to ask for their hand in marriage?”

Cedric kept his mouth shut. He hadn’t realized the Viscount would be so blunt, but at least this meant he no longer had to beat around the bush. “That is my plan, yes.”

Robert’s face grew troubled at Cedric’s response. Silence fell in the drawing room.

“Emily is still young and a bit of a delicate child. A ten-year age difference isn’t particularly unusual, but...”

After a moment of silence, Cedric raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you just say you had a daughter named Dillon, too?”

“Dillon? Well...” Robert shook his head. It was an unexpected reaction. “Dillon can be a little... eccentric.”

Cedric furrowed his brow, thinking that it was harsh of Robert to say that about his own daughter. It sounded like he was embarrassed to show her to the world. It wasn’t unusual for parents to favor one child over the other, and it was common to have a black sheep in the family. But of course, an honorable family would never mention it to outsiders, and Cedric had thought the Langtons were an honorable family. Then, just when Cedric was beginning to change his mind about the Langtons, it happened. The door to the drawing room burst open with a loud bang, to reveal a young woman standing at the threshold.

“Dillon, what’s the meaning of this?”

“Oh, my apologies.” The woman apologized in a tone that didn’t sound apologetic in the least. If she was trying to come off as courteous, she was failing miserably.

Cedric had a sense of déjà vu like maybe he had met someone similar earlier today.

“I didn’t know we had a guest,” Dillon said.

It was only when the woman lifted her chin that Cedric realized who she was.

“Have a safe trip.”

She was that brat, the boy from earlier, with the rolled-up trousers! Now, the brat was standing there in a plain dress with her hair pinned up. She hardly looked like a woman, much less a noblewoman.

“I’m truly sorry.” The boy—no, Dillon Langton, Cedric corrected himself—looked at Cedric with hostility. Her piercing brown eyes only tore themselves away from Cedric when Robert spoke up.

“What is it, Dillon?”

At that moment, Dillon gathered the hem of her dress and gave a deep curtsy. Cedric suddenly wondered how he had ever mistaken her for a boy in the first place.

“I’m sorry, Father. I was so excited about the rabbits I caught today that I simply had to tell you. I didn’t know you were expecting guests.” She spoke in a low and rather husky voice that didn’t suit her small frame.

Naively, Cedric attempted to introduce himself to the woman by jumping into the conversation. “Rabbits are adorable, aren’t they? I’m rather fond of them.”

Dillon responded by looking at Cedric like he had sprouted an extra head. “They’re for dinner.”

Oh, Cedric thought, raising an eyebrow.

She turned away from Cedric to continue speaking to Robert. “I trapped them out in the western part of the forest. Three of them! And they’re all rather plump. I don’t think we’ll be able to salvage their pelts though.”

“Dillon.”

She continued. “But I’m glad we have some fresh meat to serve to our guest.”

“Dillon.”

It was rude to interrupt someone while they were entertaining a guest. The appropriate thing would have been to apologize for the disruption and leave right away, but Dillon kept talking on and on, despite Robert’s repeated attempts to stop her.

It hit Cedric that she was doing this on purpose, not because she was uneducated or lacked manners. And that wasn’t all. It was also highly likely that she had purposely given Cedric the wrong directions when they first met. Cedric leaned back on the sofa, trying to guess her intentions.

Was she trying to get him to notice her? If Cedric wasn’t Cedric Hayworth, heir to the Duke of Southerwick, the notion would have been utterly ridiculous. But given his history with women, it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility.

He wouldn’t want to brag about it, but Cedric knew that if he were to collect all the handkerchiefs ladies had “accidentally” dropped in front of him, he could patch together a rug that would cover the entire foyer. If he collected all the wine that had been spilled on him by bumping into him “by mistake,” he could fill a pond.

Turning all these past incidents over in his mind caused Cedric to completely miss the obvious conclusion, which was that Dillon Langton hated Cedric Hayworth. But either way, any interest Cedric might have had in Dillon was gone in an instant—he was tired of unimaginative con women.

“What’s wrong, Father?” Dillon responded to her father with determination in her voice. There was no way of knowing if she knew what Cedric was thinking about.

“I’m in the middle of a conversation with my guest. Please leave us.”

“Of course, Father.” Dillon turned to leave at her father’s command, but right before she opened the door to leave, Dillon turned around with a bright “smile” on her face. “I’ll make sure to wring the rabbits’ necks and drain their blood properly. I hope you look forward to dinner.”

It was that same ominous expression from before: Her lips were curved into the shape of a smile, but there wasn’t a hint of joy in her narrowed eyes. It made it hard to tell whether she was referring to the rabbits’ necks or Cedric’s. Was that the only way she was capable of smiling?

If this was her attempt to woo him, she was way off the mark. At the sound of her fading footsteps, Cedric clicked his tongue without realizing it, then coughed in an attempt to cover it up in case Viscount Langton heard.

“I adore Dillon very much,” Robert began. For the first time, he looked embarrassed. “But she has no interest in being a proper lady.”

So it wasn’t that she couldn’t be a lady, but that she had no intention of being one. The viscount was just a good father trying to defend his daughter.

“I understand,” Cedric replied sympathetically.