The Lost Duke of Wyndham (7 page)

“It's true,” Miss Eversleigh said. And then she delighted him by turning in his direction and saying, “I'm sorry.”

“Accepted, of course,” Jack said graciously.

The duke, however, was not amused. To the extent that poor Miss Eversleigh felt the need to defend her actions with, “She
kidnapped
him!”

Wyndham ignored her. Jack was
really
starting to dislike him.

“And forced me to take part,” Miss Eversleigh muttered. She, on the other hand, was quickly becoming one of his favorite people.

“I recognized him last night,” the dowager announced.

Wyndham looked at her disbelievingly. “In the dark?”

“Under his mask,” she answered with pride. “He is the very image of his father. His voice, his laugh, every bit of it.”

Jack hadn't thought this a particularly convincing argument himself, so he was curious to see how the duke responded.

“Grandmother,” he said, with what Jack had to allow was remarkable patience, “I understand that you still mourn your son—”

“Your uncle,” she cut in.

“My uncle.” He cleared his throat. “But it has been thirty years since his death.”

“Twenty-nine,” she corrected sharply.

“It has been a long time,” Wyndham said. “Memories fade.”

“Not mine,” she replied haughtily, “and certainly not the ones I have of John.
Your
father I have been more than pleased to forget entirely—”

“In that we are agreed,” Wyndham interrupted, leaving Jack to wonder at
that
story. And then, looking as if he very much still wished to strangle someone (Jack would have put his money on the dowager, since he'd already had the pleasure), Wyndham turned and bellowed, “Cecil!”

“Your grace!” came a voice from the hall. Jack watched as two footmen struggled to bring a massive painting around the corner and into the room.

“Set it down anywhere,” the duke ordered.

With a bit of grunting and one precarious moment during which it seemed the painting would topple what was, to Jack's eye, an extremely expensive Chinese vase, the footmen managed to find a clear spot and set the painting down on the floor, leaning it gently against the wall.

Jack stepped forward. They all stepped forward. And Miss Eversleigh was the first to say it.

“Oh my God
.”

 

It was him. Of course it wasn't
him
, because it was John Cavendish, who had perished nearly three decades earlier, but by
God
, it looked exactly like the man standing next to her.

Grace's eyes grew so wide they hurt, and she looked back and forth and back and forth and—

“I see no one is disagreeing with me now,” the dowager said smugly.

Thomas turned to Mr. Audley as if he'd seen a ghost. “Who
are
you?” he whispered.

But even Mr. Audley was without words. He was just staring at the portrait, staring and staring and staring, his face white, his lips parted, his entire body slack.

Grace held her breath. Eventually he'd find his voice, and when he did, surely he'd tell them all what he'd told her the night before.

My name isn't Cavendish
.

But it once was
.

“My name,” Mr. Audley stammered, “my given name…” He paused, swallowed convulsively, and his voice shook as he said, “My full name is John Rollo Cavendish-Audley.”

“Who were your parents?” Thomas whispered.

Mr. Audley—Mr.
Cavendish
-Audley—didn't answer.

“Who was your father?” Thomas's voice was louder this time, more insistent.

“Who the bloody hell do you think he was?” Mr. Audley snapped.

Grace's heart pounded. She looked at Thomas. He was pale and his hands were shaking, and she felt like such a traitor. She could have told him. She could have warned him.

She had been a coward.

“Your parents,” Thomas said, his voice low. “Were they married?”

“What is your implication?” Mr. Audley demanded, and for a moment Grace feared that they would come to blows again. Mr. Audley brought to mind a caged
beast, poked and prodded until he could stand it no more.

“Please,” she pleaded, jumping between them yet again. “He doesn't know,” she said. Mr. Audley couldn't know what it meant if he was indeed legitimate. But Thomas did, and he'd gone so still that Grace thought he might shatter. She looked at him, and at his grandmother. “Someone needs to explain to Mr. Audley—”

“Cavendish,” the dowager snapped.

“Mr. Cavendish-Audley,” Grace said quickly, because she did not know how to style him without offending
someone
in the room. “Someone needs to tell him that…that…”

She looked to the others for help, for guidance, for something, because surely this was not her duty. She was the only one of them there not of Cavendish blood. Why did
she
have to make all of the explanations?

She looked at Mr. Audley, trying not to see the portrait in his face, and said, “Your father—the man in the painting, that is—assuming he
is
your father—he was his grace's father's…
elder
brother.”

No one said anything.

Grace cleared her throat. “So, if…if your parents were indeed lawfully married—”

“They were,” Mr. Audley all but snapped.

“Yes, of course. I mean, not of course, but—”

“What she means,” Thomas cut in sharply, “is that if you are indeed the legitimate offspring of John Cavendish, then you are the Duke of Wyndham.”

And there it was. The truth. Or if not the truth, then
the possibility of the truth, and no one, not even the dowager, knew what to say. The two men—the two dukes, Grace thought with a hysterical bubble of laughter—simply stared at each other, taking each other's measure, and then finally Mr. Audley's hand seemed to reach out. It shook, quivered like the dowager's when she was attempting to find purchase, and then finally, when it settled on the back of a chair, his fingers grasped tightly. With legs that were clearly unsteady, Mr. Audley sat down.

“No,” he said. “No.”

“You will remain here,” the dowager directed, “until this matter can be settled to my satisfaction.”

“No,” Mr. Audley said with considerably more conviction. “I will not.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” she responded. “If you do not, I will turn you in to the authorities as the thief you are.”

“You wouldn't do that,” Grace blurted out. She turned to Mr. Audley. “She would never do that. Not if she believes that you are her grandson.”

“Shut up!” the dowager growled. “I don't know what you think you are doing, Miss Eversleigh, but you are not family, and you have no place in this room.”

Mr. Audley stood. His bearing was sharp, and proud, and for the first time Grace saw within him the military man he'd said he once was. When he spoke, his words were measured and clipped, completely unlike the lazy drawl she had come to expect from him.

“Do not speak to her in that manner ever again.”

Something inside of her melted. Thomas had defended her against his grandmother before; indeed, he'd
long been her champion. But not like this. He valued her friendship, she knew that he did. But this…this was different. She didn't hear the words.

She felt them.

And as she watched Mr. Audley's face, her eyes slid to his mouth. It came back to her…the touch of his lips, his kiss, his breath, and the bittersweet shock when he was through, because she hadn't wanted it…and then she hadn't wanted it to end.

There was perfect silence, stillness even, save for the widening of the dowager's eyes. And then, just when Grace realized that her hands had begun to tremble, the dowager bit off, “I am your grandmother.”

“That,” Mr. Audley replied, “remains to be determined.”

Grace's lips parted with surprise, because no one could doubt his parentage, not with the proof propped up against the drawing room wall.

“What?” Thomas burst out. “Are you now trying to tell me that you
don't
think you are the son of John Cavendish?”

Mr. Audley shrugged, and in an instant the steely determination in his eyes was gone. He was a highwayman rogue again, devil-may-care and completely without responsibility. “Frankly,” he said, “I'm not so certain I wish to gain entry into this charming little club of yours.”

“You don't have a choice,” the dowager said.

“So loving,” Mr. Audley said with sigh. “So thoughtful. Truly, a grandmother for the ages.”

Grace clamped a hand over her mouth, but her
choked laughter came through nonetheless. It was so inappropriate…in so many ways…but it was impossible to keep it in. The dowager's face had gone purple, her lips pinched until the lines of anger drew up to her nose. Not even Thomas had ever provoked such a reaction, and heaven knew, he had tried.

She looked over at him. Of everyone in the room, surely he was the one with the most at stake. He looked exhausted. And bewildered. And furious, and amazingly, about to laugh. “Your grace,” she said hesitantly. She didn't know what she wanted to say to him. There probably wasn't anything
to
say, but the silence was just awful.

He ignored her, but she knew he'd heard, because his body stiffened even more, then shuddered when he let out a breath. And then the dowager—oh why would she never learn to leave well enough alone?—bit off his name as if she were summoning a dog.

“Shut
up
,” he snapped back.

Grace wanted to reach out to him. Thomas was her friend, but he was—and he always had been—so far above her. And now she was standing here, hating herself because she could not stop thinking about the other man in the room, the one who might very well steal Thomas's very identity.

And so she did nothing. And hated herself even more for it.

“You should remain,” Thomas said to Mr. Audley. “We will need—”

Grace held her breath as Thomas cleared his throat.

“We will need to get this sorted out.”

They all waited for Mr. Audley's response. He seemed to be assessing Thomas, taking his measure. Grace prayed he would realize just how difficult it must have been for Thomas to speak to him with such civility. Surely he would respond in kind. She wanted him so badly to be a good person. He'd kissed her. He'd defended her. Was it too much to hope that he was, underneath it all, a white knight?

J
ack had always prided himself on being able to spot the irony in any situation, but as he stood in the Belgrave drawing room—correction,
one
of the Belgrave drawing rooms, surely there were dozens—he could find nothing but stark, cold reality.

He'd spent six years as an officer in His Majesty's army, and if he'd learned one thing from his years on the battlefield, it was that life could, and frequently did, turn on a single moment. One wrong turn, one missed clue, and he could lose an entire company of men. But once he returned to Britain, he'd somehow lost sight of that. His life was a series of small decisions and insignificant encounters. It was true that he was living a life of crime, which meant he was always dancing a few steps ahead of the hangman's noose, but it wasn't the same. No one's life depended upon his actions. No one's livelihood, even.

There was nothing serious about robbing coaches. It was a game, really, played by men with too much education and too little direction. Who would have thought that one of his insignificant decisions—to take the Lincoln road north instead of south—would lead to this? Because one thing was for certain, his carefree life on the road was over. He suspected that Wyndham would be more than happy to watch him ride away without a word, but the dowager would not be so accommodating. Miss Eversleigh's assurances aside, he was quite certain the old bat would go to extensive lengths to keep him on a leash. Maybe she would not turn him over to the authorities, but she could certainly tell the world that her long-lost grandson was gadding about the countryside robbing coaches. Which would make it
damned
difficult to continue in his chosen profession.

And if he was truly the Duke of Wyndham…

God help them all.

He was beginning to hope that his aunt had lied. Because no one wanted him in a position of such authority, least of all himself.

“Could someone please explain…” He took a breath and stopped, pressing his fingers against his temples. It felt as if an entire battalion had marched across his forehead. “Could someone explain the family tree?” Because shouldn't someone have
known
if his father had been the heir to a dukedom? His aunt? His mother? Himself?

“I had three sons,” the dowager said crisply. “Charles was the eldest; John, the middle; and Reginald the last. Your father left for Ireland just after Reginald
married”—her face took on a visible expression of distaste, and she jerked her head toward Wyndham—“
his
mother.”

“She was a Cit,” Wyndham said, with no expression whatsoever. “Her father owned factories. Piles and piles of them.” One of his brows lifted. Very slightly. “We own them now.”

The dowager's lips tightened, but she did not acknowledge his interruption. “We were notified of your father's death in July of 1790.”

Jack nodded tightly. He had been told the same.

“One year after that, my husband and my eldest son died of a fever. I did not contract the ailment. My youngest son was no longer living at Belgrave, so he, too, was spared. Charles had not yet married, and we believed John to have died without issue. Thus Reginald became duke.” She paused, but other than that expressed no emotion. “It was not expected.”

Everyone looked at Wyndham. He said nothing,

“I will remain,” Jack said quietly, because he didn't see as he had any other choice. And maybe it wouldn't hurt to learn a thing or two of his father. A man ought to know where he comes from. That was what his uncle had always said. Jack was beginning to wonder if he'd been offering forgiveness—in advance. Just in case he decided one day that he wished to be a Cavendish.

Of course, Uncle William hadn't met
these
Cavendishes. If he had, he might've revised that statement entirely.

“Most judicious of you,” the dowager said, clapping her hands together. “Now then, we—”

“But first,” Jack cut in, “I must return to the inn to collect my belongings.” He glanced around the drawing room, almost laughing at the opulence. “Meager though they are.”

“Nonsense,” the dowager said briskly. “Your things will be replaced.” She looked down her nose at his traveling costume. “With items of far greater quality, I might add.”

“I wasn't asking your permission,” Jack said lightly. He did not like to allow his anger to reveal itself in his voice. It did put a man at a disadvantage.

“Nonethe—”

“Furthermore,” Jack added, because really, he didn't wish to hear her voice any more than he had to, “I must make explanations to my associates.” At that he looked over at Wyndham. “Nothing approaching the truth,” he added dryly, lest the duke assume that he intended to spread rumors throughout the county.

“Don't disappear,” the dowager directed. “I assure you, you will regret it.”

“There's no worry of that,” Wyndham said blandly. “Who would disappear with the promise of a dukedom?”

Jack's jaw tightened, but he forced himself to let it pass. The afternoon did not need another fistfight.

And then—bloody hell—the duke abruptly added, “I will accompany you.”

Oh, good God. That was the last thing he needed. Jack swung around to face him, lifting one dubious brow. “Need I worry for my safety?”

Wyndham stiffened visibly, and Jack, who had been
trained to notice even the smallest of details, saw that both of his fists clenched at his sides. So he'd insulted the duke. At this point, and considering the bruises he was likely to find staining his throat, he didn't care.

He turned to Miss Eversleigh, offering her his most self-effacing smile. “I am a threat to his very identity. Surely any reasonable man would question his safety.”

“No, you're wrong!” she cried out. “You misjudge him. The duke—”

She shot a horrified look at Wyndham, and they all were forced to share her discomfort when she realized what she'd said. But she plowed on, determined girl that she was.

“He is as honorable a man as I have ever met,” she continued, her voice low and fervent. “You would never come to harm in his company.”

Her cheeks had flushed with passion, and Jack was struck by the most acidic thought.
Was
there something between Miss Eversleigh and the duke? They resided in the same house, or castle, as it were, with only an embittered old lady for company. And while the dowager was anything but senile, Jack could not imagine that there was any lack of opportunity to engage in a dalliance under her nose.

He watched Miss Eversleigh closely, his eyes falling to her lips. He'd surprised himself when he kissed her the night before. He hadn't meant to, and he certainly had never done such a thing before whilst attempting to rob a coach. It had seemed the most natural thing in the world—to touch her chin, tilt her face up toward his, and brush his lips against hers.

It had been soft, and fleeting, and it had taken him until this moment to realize just how deeply he wanted more.

He looked at Wyndham, and his jealousy must have shown on his face because his newly discovered cousin looked coolly amused as he said, “I assure you, whatever violent urges I possess, I shall not act upon them.”

“That is a terrible thing to say,” Miss Eversleigh responded.

“But honest,” Jack acknowledged with a nod. He did not like this man, this duke who had been brought up to view the world as his private domain. But he appreciated honesty, no matter the source.

And as Jack looked him in the eye, there seemed to develop an unspoken agreement. They did not have to be friends. They did not even have to be friendly. But they would be honest.

Which suited Jack just fine.

 

By Grace's calculations, the men ought to have returned within ninety minutes, two hours at most. She had not spent much time in a saddle, so she was not the best judge of speed, but she was fairly certain that two men on horseback could reach the posting inn in something less than an hour. Then Mr. Audley would need to retrieve his belongings, which could not take very long, could it? And then—

“Get away from the window,” the dowager snapped.

Grace's lips tightened with irritation, but she managed to return her expression to one of placidity before she turned around.

“Make yourself useful,” the dowager said.

Grace glanced this way and that, trying to decode the dowager's order. She always had something specific in mind, and Grace hated it when she was forced to guess.

“Would you like me to read to you?” she asked. It was the most pleasant of her duties; they were currently reading
Pride and Prejudice
, which Grace was enjoying immensely, and the dowager was pretending not to like at all.

The dowager grunted. It was a
no
grunt. Grace was fluent in this method of communication. She took no particular pride in this skill.

“I could pen a letter,” she suggested. “Weren't you planning to respond to the recent missive from your sister?”

“I can write my own letters,” the dowager said sharply, even though they both knew her spelling was atrocious. Grace always ended up rewriting all of her correspondence before it was posted.

Grace took a deep breath and then let it out slowly, the exhale shuddering through her. She did not have the energy to untangle the inner workings of the dowager's mind. Not today.

“I'm hot,” the dowager announced.

Grace did not respond. She was hoping none was necessary. And then the dowager picked something up off a nearby table. A fan, Grace realized with dismay, just as the dowager snapped it open.

Oh, please, no. Not now.

The dowager regarded the fan, a rather festive blue one, with Chinese paintings in black and gold. Then
she snapped it back shut, clearly just to make it easier for her to hold it before her like a baton.

“You may make me more comfortable,” she said.

Grace paused. It was only for a moment, probably not even a full second, but it was her only means of rebellion. She could not say no, and she could not even allow her distaste to show in her expression. But she could pause. She could hold her body still for just enough time to make the dowager wonder.

And then, of course, she stepped forward.

“I find the air quite pleasant,” she said once she had assumed her position at the dowager's side.

“That is because you are pushing it about with the fan.”

Grace looked down at her employer's pinched face. Some of the lines were due to age, but not the ones near her mouth, pulling her lips into a perpetual frown. What had happened to this woman to make her so bitter? Had it been the deaths of her children? The loss of her youth? Or had she simply been born with a sour disposition?

“What do you think of my new grandson?” the dowager asked abruptly.

Grace froze, then quickly regained her composure and resumed fanning. “I do not know him well enough to form an opinion,” she answered carefully.

The dowager continued to look straight ahead as she answered, “Nonsense. All of the best opinions are formed in an instant. You know that very well. ‘Else you'd be married to that repulsive little cousin of yours, wouldn't you?”

Grace thought of Miles, ensconced in her old home. She had to admit, every now and then the dowager got things exactly right.

“Surely you have something to say, Miss Eversleigh.”

The fan rose and fell three times before Grace decided upon, “He seems to have a buoyant sense of humor.”

“Buoyant.” The dowager repeated the word, her voice curious, as if she were testing it out on her tongue. “An apt adjective. I should not have thought of it, but it is fitting.”

It was about as close to a compliment as the dowager ever got.

“He is rather like his father,” the dowager continued.

Grace moved the fan from one hand to the other, murmuring, “Is he?”

“Indeed. Although if his father had been a bit more…
buoyant
, we'd not be in this mess, would we?”

Grace choked on air. “I'm so sorry, ma'am. I should have chosen my words more carefully.”

The dowager did not bother to acknowledge the apology. “His levity is much like his father. My John was never one to allow a serious moment to pass him by. He had the most cutting wit.”

“I would not say that Mr. Audley is cutting,” Grace said. His humor was far too sly.

“His name is not Mr. Audley, and of course he is,” the dowager said sharply. “You're too besotted to see it.”

“I am not besotted,” Grace protested.

“Of course you are. Any girl would be. He is most handsome. Pity about the eyes, though.”

“What I am,” Grace said, resisting the urge to point out that there was nothing wrong with green eyes, “is overset. It has been a most exhausting day. And night,” she added after a thought.

The dowager shrugged. “My son's wit was legendary,” she said, setting the conversation back to where she wished it. “You wouldn't have thought it cutting, either, but that was simply because he was far too clever. It is a brilliant man who can make insult without the recipient even realizing.”

Grace thought that rather sad. “What is the point, then?”

“The point?” The dowager blinked several times in rapid succession. “Of what?”

“Of insulting someone.” Grace shifted the fan again, then shook out her free hand; her fingers were cramped from clutching the handle. “Or I should say,” she amended, since she was quite sure the dowager could find many good reasons to cut someone down, “of insulting someone with intention of their not noticing it?”

The dowager still did not look at her, but Grace could see that she rolled her eyes. “It is a source of pride, Miss Eversleigh. I wouldn't expect you to understand.”

“No,” Grace said softly. “I wouldn't.”