Page 30 of The Duke of Kisses
“It did. Are you excited to get started?”
“I am.” She couldn’t stop thinking about the question regarding how she’d come up with this idea. “When Lady Satterfield asked—”
Ivy didn’t even let her finish the thought. “I could tell it gave you a start. It did me too, but I’ve stopped worrying about whether people will find out.”
“You wouldn’t care?”
“I would, but only insofar as it would reflect poorly on Leah and her sibling.” She cradled her daughter gently and looked down with a loving gaze that pulled at Fanny’s heart. She never recalled her mother looking at any of them that way. Ivy speared Fanny with a confident stare. “The only people who know of my background are you, West, and a small number of my dearest friends. And Bothwick, of course, but he’s too afraid of West to ever say anything.”
Viscount Bothwick was the man who’d stolen Ivy’s innocence, promising to marry her and getting her with child, then abandoning her. “He’s all but gone from Society,” Fanny said.
Ivy nodded. “Ever since West called him out in Bath a year and a half ago. Everyone thinks he simply insulted me and the fact that I was a paid companion. Our…history remained secret and will continue to be so.”
Fanny was still relatively new to Society, but she knew if a duchess were found to have been a former inmate at a workhouse and had given birth to a bastard, the resulting scandal would shake the ton to its core. Thankfully, it seemed that would never come to pass.
