Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

  Crowland eyed him with something approaching revulsion. Thomas, not Audley, who appeared just in from a ride, all windblown and roguishly handsome.

  Or so Thomas assumed. It was difficult to know just what the ladies saw in the man.

  “Er, Father,” Amelia said hastily, “may I present Mr. Audley? He is a house guest at Belgrave. I made his acquaintance the other day when I was here visiting Grace.”

  “Where is Grace?” Thomas wondered aloud. Everyone else was in attendance. It seemed almost unkind to leave her out.

  “Just down the hall, actually,” Audley said, eyeing him curiously. “I was walking—”

  “I’m sure you were,” Thomas cut in. He turned back to Lord Crowland. “Right. You wished to know my intentions.”

  “This might not be the best time,” Amelia said nervously. Thomas pushed down a sharp stab of remorse. She thought she was staving off some sort of repudiation, when the truth was far worse.

  “No,” he said, drawing the syllable out as if he were actually pondering the matter. “This might be our only time.”

  Why was he keeping this a secret? What could he possibly have to gain? Why not just get the whole damned thing out in the open?

  Grace arrived then. “You wished to see me, your grace?”

  Thomas’s brows rose with some surprise, and he looked about the room. “Was I that loud?”

  “The footman heard you…” Her words trailed off, and she motioned toward the hall, where the eavesdropping servant presumably still loitered.

  “Do come in, Miss Eversleigh,” he said, sweeping his arm in welcome. “You might as well have a seat at this farce.”

  Grace’s brow knitted with concern, but she came into the room, taking a spot near the window. Away from everyone else.

  “I demand to know what is going on,” Crowland said.

  “Of course,” Thomas said. “How rude of me. Where are my manners? We’ve had quite an exciting week at Belgrave. Quite beyond my wildest imaginings.”

  “Your meaning?” Crowland said curtly.

  Thomas gave him a bland look. “Ah, yes. You probably should know—this man right here”—he flicked a wrist toward Audley—“is my cousin. He might even be the duke.” Still looking at Lord Crowland, he shrugged insolently, almost enjoying himself. “We’re not sure.”

  Chapter 14

  Oh dear God.

  Amelia stared at Thomas, and then at Mr. Audley, and then at Thomas, and then—

  Everyone was looking at her now. Why was everyone looking at her? Had she spoken? Had she said it aloud?

  “The trip to Ireland…” her father was saying.

  “Is to determine his legitimacy,” Thomas said. “It’s going to be quite a party. Even my grandmother is going.”

  Amelia stared at him in horror. He was not himself. This was wrong. This was all wrong.

  It could not be happening. She shut her eyes. Tight.

  Please, someone say that this was not happening.

  And then came her father’s grim voice. “We will join you.”

  Her eyes flew open. “Father?”

  “Stay out of this, Amelia,” he said. He didn’t even look at her when he said it.

  “But—”

  “I assure you,” Thomas put in, and he wasn’t looking at her, either, “we will make our determinations with all possible haste and report back to you immediately.”

  “My daughter’s future hangs in the balance,” her father returned hotly. “I will be there to examine the papers.”

  Thomas’s voice turned to ice. “Do you think we try to deceive you?”

  Amelia took a step toward them. Why wasn’t anyone acknowledging her? Did they think her invisible? Meaningless in this horrible tableau?

  “I only look out for my daughter’s rights.”

  “Father, please.” Amelia placed her hand on his arm. Someone had to talk to her. Someone had to listen. “Please, just a moment.”

  “I said stay out of this!” her father roared, and he threw back his arm. Amelia had not expected this rejection and she stumbled back, crashing into an end table.

  Thomas was immediately at her side, taking her arm and helping her back to her feet. “Apologize to your daughter,” he said, his tone deadly.

  Her father looked stunned. “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “Apologize to her!” Thomas roared.

  “Your grace,” Amelia said quickly, “please, do not judge my father too harshly. These are exceptional circumstances.”

  “No one knows that more clearly than I.” As Thomas said this to her, his eyes never left her father’s face. “Apologize to Amelia,” he said, “or I will have you removed from the estate.”

  Amelia held her breath. They were all holding their breath, it seemed, except perhaps Thomas, who looked like an ancient warrior, demanding his due.

  “I’m sorry,” her father said, blinking in confusion. “Amelia”—he turned, finally looking at her—“you know I—”

  “I know,” she said, cutting him off. It was enough. She knew her father, knew his normally benign ways.

  “Who is this man?” her father asked, motioning to Mr. Audley.

  “He is the son of my father’s elder brother.”

  “Charles?” Amelia gasped in dismay. The man her mother was to have married?

  “John.”

  The one who’d died at sea. The dowager’s favorite.

  Her father nodded, pale and shaken. “Are you certain of this?”

  Thomas only shrugged. “You may look at the portrait yourself.”

  “But his name—”

  “Was Cavendish at birth,” Mr. Audley said. “I went by Cavendish-Audley at school. You may check the records, should you wish.”

  “Here?” her father asked.

  “In Enniskillen. I only came to England after serving in the army.”

  Amelia’s father nodded approvingly. He’d always wanted to join the military, she remembered. He couldn’t, of course. He’d gained the earldom at the age of seventeen, with no male heirs behind him. Crowland could not risk losing the last earl before he’d had a chance to procreate. As it was, he’d had five daughters. Amelia wondered if he sometimes wished he’d just gone into the army. The outcome would have been the same, as far as the earldom was concerned.

  “I am satisfied that he is a blood relation,” Thomas said quietly. “All that remains is to determine whether he is also one by law.”

  “This is a disaster,” her father muttered, and he walked over to the window to look out.

  All eyes followed him—what else were they meant to look at, in such a silent room?

  “I signed the contract in good faith,” he said, still staring out over the lawn. “Twenty years ago, I signed the contract.”

  Amelia’s eyes widened. She’d never heard her father speak this way. His voice was tense, barely controlled, like a string pulled taut and trembling, just waiting to snap.

  Abruptly, he turned around. “Do you understand?” he demanded, and it was difficult to know just who he was yelling at until his eyes came to rest on Thomas’s face.

  “Your father came to me with his plans, and I agreed to them, believing you to be the rightful heir to the dukedom. She was to be a duchess. A duchess! Do you think I would have signed away my daughter had I known you were nothing but…but…”

  Her father’s face turned red and ugly as he tried to figure out just what Thomas was. Or would be, if Mr. Audley’s claim was authenticated. Amelia felt sick. For herself. For Thomas.

  “You may call me Mr. Cavendish, if you so desire,” Thomas said, his voice terrifyingly calm. “If you think it might help you to accustom yourself to the idea.”

  But her father was not finished. “I will not allow my daughter to be cheated. If you do not prove to be the right and lawful Duke of Wyndham, you may consider the betrothal null and void.”

  No!

  Amelia wanted to shout it. He couldn’t just tear it all up. He
couldn’t do this to her. She looked frantically to Thomas. Surely he would say something. Something had happened between them. They were no longer strangers. He liked her. He cared for her. He would fight for her.

  But no.

  Her heart sank. Crushed under its own leaden weight.

  Apparently he would not.

  Because when her mind cleared enough for her to focus on his face, she saw that he was nodding. And he said, “As you wish.”

  “As you wish,” she echoed, unable to believe it. But no one heard her. It was just a whisper. Just a horror-struck whisper from a woman no one seemed to notice.

  They weren’t looking at her. None of them. Not even Grace.

  And then her father turned, and he looked at Mr. Audley, and he pointed his finger at him. “If that is the case,” he said, “if you are the Duke of Wyndham, you will marry her.”

  Later that night, and every night for many weeks, Amelia relived that moment in her head. She saw her father move, turning, pointing. She saw his lips form the words. Heard his voice. Saw the shock on everyone’s faces.

  Saw the horror on Mr. Audley’s.

  And every time, when it all played out again, she said something different. Something clever, or something cutting. Maybe something witty, or something furious.

  But always something.

  In actuality, however, she said nothing. Not a word. Her own father was trying to foist her onto a man she did not know, in front of people she did know, and she said…

  Nothing.

  She did not even gasp. She felt her face freeze up like some hideous gargoyle, trapped in eternal torment. Her chin fell forward and her lips turned to stone in a hideous, shocked mask.

  But she didn’t make a sound. Her father was probably quite proud of her for that. No female hysterics from this quarter.

  Mr. Audley appeared to have been similarly affected, but he regained his composure far more quickly, even if the first words out of his mouth were:

  “Oh.” and:

  “No.”

  Amelia thought she might be sick.

  “Oh, you will,” her father warned him, and she knew that tone. He did not use it often, but no one crossed him when he spoke like that. “You will marry her if I have to march you to the altar with my blunderbuss at your back.”

  “Father,” she said, her voice cracking on the word, “you cannot do this.”

  But he paid her no mind. In fact, he took another furious step toward Mr. Audley. “My daughter is betrothed to the Duke of Wyndham,” he hissed, “and the Duke of Wyndham she will marry.”

  “I am not the Duke of Wyndham,” Mr. Audley said.

  “Not yet,” her father returned. “Perhaps not ever. But I will be present when the truth comes out. And I will make sure she marries the right man.”

  “This is madness,” Mr. Audley exclaimed. He was visibly distressed now, and Amelia almost laughed at the horror of it. It was something to see, a man reduced to panic over the thought of marrying her.

  She’d looked down at her arms, half expecting to see boils. Perhaps locusts would stream through the room.

  “I do not even know her,” Mr. Audley said.

  To which her father replied, “That is hardly a concern.”

  “You are mad!” Mr. Audley cried out. “I am not going to marry her.”

  Amelia covered her mouth and nose with her hands, taking a deep breath. She was unsteady. She did not want to cry. Above all else, she did not want that.

  “My pardons, my lady,” Mr. Audley mumbled in her direction. “It is not personal.”

  Amelia actually managed a nod. Not a graceful one, but maybe it was gracious. Why wasn’t anyone saying anything? she remembered wondering. Why weren’t they asking her opinion?

  Why couldn’t she seem to speak for herself?

  It was like she was watching them all from far away. They wouldn’t hear her. She could scream and shout, and no one would hear her.

  She looked at Thomas. He was staring straight ahead, still as a stone.

  She looked at Grace. Surely Grace would come to her aid. She was a woman. She knew what it meant to have one’s life torn out from beneath.

  And then it was back at Mr. Audley, who was still fumbling for any argument that would not leave him saddled with her. “I did not agree to this,” he said. “I signed no contract.”

  “Neither did he,” said her father, motioning toward Thomas with a tilt of his head. “His father did it.”

  “In his name,” Mr. Audley practically yelled.

  But her father did not even blink. “That is where you are wrong, Mr. Audley. It did not specify his name at all. My daughter, Amelia Honoria Rose, was to marry the seventh Duke of Wyndham.”

  “Really?” This, finally, from Thomas.

  “Have you not looked at the papers?” Mr. Audley demanded of him.

  “No,” Thomas said. “I never saw the need.”

  “Good God,” Mr. Audley swore, “I have fallen in with a band of bloody idiots.”

  Amelia saw no reason to contradict.

  Mr. Audley looked directly at her father. “Sir,” he said, “I will not marry your daughter.”

  “Oh, you will.”

  And that was when Amelia knew her heart was broken. Because it wasn’t her father who said those words.

  It was Thomas.

  “What did you say?” Mr. Audley demanded.

  Thomas strode across the room, stopping only when he was nearly nose-to-nose with Mr. Audley. “This woman has spent her entire life preparing to be the Duchess of Wyndham. I will not permit you to leave her life in shambles. Do you understand me?”

  And all she could think was—No.

  No. She didn’t want to be the duchess. She didn’t care one way or the other. She just wanted him. Thomas. The man she’d spent her whole life not knowing.

  Until now.

  Until he’d stood with her, looking down at some meaningless map, and explained to her why Africa was bigger than Greenland.

  Until he’d told her that he liked her bossy.

  Until he’d made her feel that she mattered. That her thoughts and opinions were worth something.

  He had made her feel complete.

  But here he was, demanding that she marry someone else. And she didn’t know how to stop it. Because if she spoke out, if she told them all what she wanted, and he rejected her again…

  But Thomas wasn’t asking her if she understood. He was asking Mr. Audley. And Mr. Audley said, “No.”

  Amelia took a gulp of air and looked up at the ceiling, trying to pretend that two men were not arguing over which of them had to marry her.

  “No, I don’t understand,” Mr. Audley continued, his voice insultingly provoking. “Sorry.”

  She looked back. It was hard to look away. It was like a carriage accident, except it was her own life being trampled.

  Thomas was looking at Mr. Audley with murder in his eyes. And then, almost conversationally, said, “I believe I will kill you.”

  “Thomas!” The cry sprang from her throat before she could stop to think, and she flew across the room, grabbing his arm to hold him back.

  “You may steal my life away,” Thomas growled, pulling on her arm like an angry, aggrieved animal. “You may steal my very name, but by God you will not steal hers.”

  So that was it. He thought he was doing the right thing. She wanted to cry with frustration. There would be no changing his mind. Thomas had spent his entire life doing the right thing. Never for himself. Always for Wyndham. And now he thought he was doing the right thing for her.

  “She has a name,” Mr. Audley retorted. “It’s Willoughby. And for the love of God, she’s the daughter of an earl. She’ll find someone else.”

  “If you are the Duke of Wyndham,” Thomas said furiously, “you will honor your commitments.”

  “If I’m the Duke of Wyndham, then you can’t tell me what to do.”

  “Amelia,” Thomas said with deadly calm, “release my a
rm.”

  Instead, she tightened her grip. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Her father chose that moment to intercede—finally. “Er, gentlemen, this is all hypothetical at this point. Perhaps we should wait until—”

  “I wouldn’t be the seventh duke, anyway,” Mr. Audley muttered.

  Her father looked somewhat irritated at the interruption. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I wouldn’t.” Mr. Audley looked over at Thomas. “Would I? Because your father was the sixth duke. Except he wasn’t. If I am.” And then, if that weren’t confusing enough: “Would he have been? If I was?”

  “What the devil are you talking about?” Amelia’s father demanded.

  “Your father died before his own father,” Thomas said to Mr. Audley. “If your parents were married, then you would have inherited upon the fifth duke’s death, eliminating my father—and myself—from the succession entirely.”

  “Which makes me number six.”

  “Indeed,” Thomas said tightly.

  “Then I am not bound to honor the contract,” Mr. Audley declared. “No court in the land would hold me to it. I doubt they’d do so even if I were the seventh duke.”

  “It is not to a legal court you must appeal,” Thomas said quietly, “but to the court of your own moral responsibility.”

  Amelia swallowed. How like him that was, how upstanding and true. How did one argue with a man such as that? She felt her lips begin to tremble, and she looked to the door, measuring how many steps it would take to remove her from this place.

  Mr. Audley stood stiffly, and when he spoke, his words were rigid as well. “I did not ask for this.”

  Thomas just shook his head. “Neither did I.”

  Amelia lurched back, choking down the cry of pain in her throat. No, he’d never asked for any of this. He’d never asked for the title, for the lands, for the responsibility.

  He’d never asked for her.

  She’d known it, of course. She’d always known he hadn’t picked her, but she’d never thought it would hurt this much to hear him say it. She was just another of his many burdens, foisted onto him by virtue of his birth.

  With privilege came responsibility. How true that was.

  Amelia inched back, trying to get as far away from the center of the room as she could. She didn’t want anyone to see her. Not like this, with eyes that threatened tears, hands that shook.