To her surprise he colored. “Er, yes. Yes, someone from Boston.” A pause. “You are a duke’s daughter, and so I thought you would know. I have been out of the country far too long and cannot recall the intricacies.”
His tone was calm enough, yet he looked at her with an intensity that the subject should not warrant. She flushed hot, clearing her throat, and leaned forward to prepare her own cup.
“If I am correct, one may simply not claim the title, and not refer to himself as such. That does not mean, however, that the title is not his. No one else may claim the title while he’s alive.”
“But if he doesn’t want it—” Frustration laced his voice.
“It doesn’t matter, I’m afraid,” she murmured, doing her best to appear disinterested as she stirred her beverage, though her insides burned with curiosity. Such an odd line of questioning, and such an intense reaction if his disheartened sigh was anything to go by. She glanced at him through her lashes as she settled back and saw that his shoulders were tense, his knuckles white as he gripped tight to the teacup. She imagined the delicate bone china shattering in his grip, so tightly did he seem to hold it.
“And so, despite his wishes, the title would just go on to his descendants after his death, should he have them,” he muttered almost to himself. “Which was why Peter was so damn adamant about remaining without issue before our previous visit. Ah, but pardon me.” He colored, his eyes apologetic as he glanced at her. The look quickly passed, his expression going distant again. “And to take up the title? If he wants it. Which I am sure he does not,” he said with a surprising amount of heat.
She took a sip of her hot beverage, not a little confused by his swift shifts in mood. “I suppose,” she said as she placed the cup carefully back on its saucer, “he must do as Peter did when he took up the title. He must apply for a Writ of Summons to the House of Lords.”
He looked positively ill. Then, bringing the cup to his lips, he drank it down to the dregs on one long swallow. Surely he must have burned his tongue, yet he didn’t so much as flinch.
An incredible thought came to her. Casting a quick glance at the open drawing room door, making sure no servants were within view, she leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Mr. Nesbitt, is it…are you the man in question?”
He blanched, looking at her with wide, pained eyes. Suddenly his expression shifted. He leaned toward her, his hands braced on his thighs. Tension swirled in the space between them, a space that now seemed incredibly close and intimate. She found herself swaying closer. He appeared about to speak—
A commotion in the front hall shattered the moment. She dragged in a shaking breath and sat back, putting as much distance between herself and the man before her as she could, brutally squashing the disappointment that sparked in her.
Mr. Nesbitt seemed to have forgotten her presence completely. He stood, not noticing his shin connect with the low table and rattle the tea set, his entire focus on the door to the drawing room. As Peter’s voice drifted to them he seemed to snap back into himself. “Pardon me,” he murmured. Then, with nary a glance her way, he strode from the room.
* * *
There had never been a time in Quincy’s life when he had needed Peter more. So much so that, as he barreled down the stairs to the ground floor, he conveniently forgot that his friend would not be alone.
He stopped in the middle of the gleaming marble floor, staring in incomprehension at the group of people before him. They were in conversation with the butler, handing over their outerwear, their voices a cacophony of cheerful sound. Not a one of them had noticed him. Thank goodness. Perhaps he could escape without being seen and return when his thoughts were not tangled like so much thread.
In the short time since leaving—no, fleeing—his mother’s house, he had been too shocked to fully make sense of his new reality. His brothers were dead? All of them? And he was the new duke? His mind could not contain the enormity of that. Surely his mother had been lying. This was some nightmare he would soon wake from, the coalescing of all his worst fears. Now that his life was finally his own, the very last thing he wanted was to be saddled with the responsibilities of a dukedom.
But no, the one small sane speck of his mind whispered as he inched back, trying to remain unobtrusive, this was all too real. In all his imaginings, he could never come up with something as heinous as this reality.
The group across the hall continued to chatter on, blessedly unaware of his presence. He would locate the servants’ entrance, run all the way back to Mivart’s, and not return until he was in full possession of his faculties.
That plan died a swift and complete death, however, when Lady Tesh turned and spied him.
“Mr. Nesbitt,” she called out in strident tones, her cane thumping like the beat of a death knell as she made her way toward him, “you are come at last. I must say, it took you long enough.”
Every eye in the hall turned his way. And chaos ensued.
Lady Phoebe and Margery reached him first, their excitement at his appearance something that should have given him happiness. But he could not find joy in it. Instead, with those ladies on one side, Lady Tesh on the other demanding his attention, and Peter approaching with Lenora, he felt the last tentative hold he had managed to keep on his emotions begin to snap. They congregated about him, closing him in. Making him feel as if he would break on the spot.
“Goodness, give Mr. Nesbitt some space.”
Lady Clara’s voice was like a balm over the group. Immediately they settled some, stepping back a fraction. It was as if a stormy sea had suddenly calmed, as if the furious rocking of the boat he was in had been put to rights. As if the sun had arrived.
And she was sunshine. She stood poised in the middle of the staircase, all slender grace and sable curls, a serene smile lifting her full lips ever so slightly. Yet her eyes were filled with concern as she glanced at him.
Those eyes saw too much, beckoning him into her confidence like the sirens of old. And heaven help him, just moments ago he had been prepared to gladly drown in their depths.
A dangerous thing, indeed. His future was too much in flux. He could ill afford to be tempted by anything, let alone by someone who affected him as Lady Clara did.
The momentary lull in sound, however, was short-lived. “Poppycock,” Lady Tesh scoffed. “The man has been gone far too long and would have expected such a welcome, I warrant.” She turned her sharp brown eyes on him. “I am quite put out with you for not taking Peter and Lenora up on their offer to stay here at Dane House. How else shall I relieve myself from boredom, I ask you?”
“Boredom?” Peter demanded. “Please. There has not been a moment of boredom since we arrived.”
“So says the one person in this household who has absented himself from a good portion of our time here.” She waved one heavily beringed hand in dismissal. “How often does one need to disappear into his study, I ask you?”
Quincy’s head was beginning to pound. “Peter?” he tried in an effort to gain his friend’s attention.
“What exactly do you think I’m doing in there, madam?” Peter questioned his great-aunt with a coolness that would have sent any full-grown man running.
Lady Tesh, however, was not one to be cowed. Quincy had every confidence that she could frighten off a bull elephant in full charge. Or rather, she would gladly flag it down to torment it, just as she was doing with Peter if the barely concealed mischief in her eyes was any indication. Such a thing would normally delight Quincy to no end, but not today.
“You are not spending time with your family, that’s what you’re doing,” she taunted.
Which, of course, drew Peter’s complete ire. As his friend straightened to his full, impressive height and stared the viscountess down with all the force of his Viking ancestors, Quincy’s frustration increased. It would be no easy thing getting his friend off alone. “Peter—” he tried again.
“Do you think the books balance themselves?” Peter snapped, unab
le to hear Quincy in his growing outrage. “That correspondence answers itself? That the estate is managed with magic from the very air?”
“Please. All the noblemen I know have people to do those things. You needn’t work yourself to the bone if you delegate.”
“I am not most noblemen,” he bit out.
Her answer was drier than day-old toast. “I’d gathered that.”
Lenora finally stepped in. “Please, you two,” she said with an exaggerated patience that told of many such fights halted in their tracks.
“I won’t stand for it, Lenora,” her husband growled. “As if I would hire someone to do what I can do in my sleep.”
“I know,” she soothed.
“Ah, I see the way of it,” Lady Tesh said with an injured air. “You are taking his side.”
“Once again, there are no sides,” Clara interjected, moving beside her aunt to lay a calming hand on her arm.
“Like hell there aren’t,” Peter muttered.
“You see?” Lady Tesh said, pointing to Peter with her cane.
Margery moved into the eye of the storm then, Lady Tesh’s small pup, Freya, cradled in her arms. “Clara is right, Gran. And besides, you are oversetting yourself.”
“And overstepping,” Peter added under his breath.
Quincy watched it all with mounting frustration and desperation. He could see no end to the domestic battle being waged gleefully before his very eyes. As the general din increased, Lady Tesh sputtering as her nieces and granddaughter jumped in to calm her, he finally snapped.
“Damn it, Peter, I just learned I’m a duke and I need your help.”
Chapter 4
Well, Quincy thought dazedly as a thick silence descended on the hall, that didn’t go quite as planned.
At least he had Peter’s undivided attention. As well as that of everyone else present.
They looked at him as if he’d just opened his mouth and bayed at the wall sconce. Even the damn dog stared in some kind of canine disbelief. All save for Lady Clara, whose expression of dawning understanding nearly undid him.
As usual, Lady Tesh was the first to react. “I knew it!” she crowed, her lined face rearranging itself into triumphant glee. She turned to her granddaughter. “You recall when he first came to the Isle, and I questioned him on his last name? You all looked at me as if I were a doddering, forgetful old fool. But I was right. Our Mr. Nesbitt is the Duke of Reigate!”
Not a soul responded. Peter’s eyes did not leave Quincy. “I don’t understand.”
As his friend looked at him in shock, Quincy remembered: Peter didn’t have a clue that Quincy was aristocracy.
He blanched. Ah, God, how had he forgotten? In all the years they had known each other, he had never once told Peter who his family was. He had told him everything else, of course, such as where he was from, about his parents and siblings, and his dreams of traveling. Yet he’d never said to Peter, his closest friend, I’m the son of a duke.
Why? What had prompted that glaring omission? In a flash he saw it, that uneasy night spent aboard The Persistence while a storm battered the merchant ship. It had been mere days after sailing from London, the first crossing for either of them. He and Peter had huddled together belowdeck, confiding in one another to keep their minds from the fear of sinking to a watery grave. It had been on the tip of Quincy’s tongue to tell Peter the truth of his birth.
But Peter had begun telling his own story, of his hate for his cousin, the duke, who he blamed for his mother’s death. Of his disgust for anything or anyone noble. And in Quincy’s fear that he might lose his first and only friend, he had conveniently left that aspect of his past out. It wasn’t imperative, he’d reasoned. Peter knew everything about him that was important, and as Quincy never intended to return to his family, he might as well cut himself off from them completely. As the years passed that omission had blended into reality until he had forgotten he was aristocracy. He was a self-made man and owner of his own destiny, and nothing else.
But the poisonous truth of what he had been born into was already erasing that life he’d built from nothing. Fourteen years of hard work undermined in a single moment.
Peter’s face was still slack with stunned incomprehension. Guilt reared up in Quincy, that he had kept something so very important from this man who had shared everything with him.
“I’m sorry,” he managed. As apologies went, it was the bare minimum, yet it was all he could think of to say.
If anything, Peter looked more confused. “It’s true then? This is not some prank on your part?” He shook his head, his heavy brows drawing down in the middle. “But how can you be a duke?”
The words formed in Quincy’s mind, excuses as to why he’d kept such a thing from his best friend. But they froze on his tongue. To his grief-numbed mind they sounded ridiculous. In the end he could only stare at him miserably.
A soft voice shattered the thick, cloying silence. “I do believe he was as shocked as you by the news, Peter,” Lady Clara said, laying a hand on her cousin’s arm, giving Lenora a meaningful look. “If you had only seen his face when he arrived here, you would know how deeply he was affected.”
Lenora took the hint, snapping out of her stunned muteness. “Of course he was. Mayhap it would be best if the two of you talked in private. I’m certain he can explain everything to you then.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Lady Tesh interjected, waving her cane about, nearly clipping Lady Phoebe’s nose in the process. “You shan’t leave me in suspense.”
“Gran,” Margery said in an overloud manner, stepping in front of the viscountess, holding the frazzled dog before her face, “Freya is looking a bit peaked. I do think the trip to Lord and Lady Crabtree’s quite did her in. We’d best see about finding her something to eat.”
The diversion worked. Lady Tesh’s attention was successfully snagged, for there was little the dowager viscountess loved more than her pet. “Oh, my darling Freya,” she cooed to the dog, who took the attention with all the grace of a queen. “Are you hungry? Let’s see about feeding you, my love.” With that she shuffled off without a word to her granddaughter, her cane thumping. Margery, with an apologetic look to Quincy, trailed after her with the dog.
“There,” Lady Clara declared as her great-aunt disappeared from view. “Now there is nothing to stop you from sitting down together.”
Quincy looked to his friend. “Will you hear me out?”
For a long, horrible moment Quincy thought his friend might refuse. Peter’s pale blue eyes bored into him with all the intensity of a flame. Finally he gave a terse nod, turning on the ball of his foot and heading in the direction of his study.
Of their own volition, Quincy’s eyes found Lady Clara in silent thanks. She gave him an encouraging smile that he felt clear to his toes. Dragging in a deep breath, he turned and followed Peter.
* * *
By the time Quincy reached the study Peter was stationed by the window. He stood staring out into the back garden, looking for all the world as if something outside interested him greatly. Yet Quincy, who had known him half his life, could plainly see the lines of tension scoring his broad back.
“Peter,” he began, “I’m sorry—”
Peter held up one meaty hand and turned to face him. “I will admit, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.” He frowned, looking more confused than Quincy had ever seen him. “Please forgive me for repeating myself, but you are the Duke of Reigate?”
Quincy swallowed hard. “Yes,” he rasped.
Peter nodded and began to pace. Each movement was deliberate and slow, as if he might gain control over this insane moment by pure intent. “And who was the previous duke?”
It occurred to Quincy that he wasn’t certain which of his brothers had taken the title before him. Had Gordon, his father’s heir, passed first? Did Kenneth or Sylvester don the mantle before their untimely demises?
For the first time since learning of his brothers’ deaths, he
was filled with a cloying, bitter grief. He and his siblings had not gotten along. Yet they had been of his blood. They had been family.
“I don’t know,” he managed.
Peter must have heard something in his voice, for in a moment he was at Quincy’s side, steering him to a chair. And then a glass was being pressed into his hands.
Quincy could only stare at it in incomprehension. With a gentle nudge Peter lifted it to his lips.
The first sip seared him from the inside, finally jarring him back to the present. He blinked, looking to Peter, who had seated himself across from him and was looking at him in worried expectation.
“I don’t know where to start,” Quincy said haltingly.
Peter shrugged. “Start at the beginning.”
It was so simple, wasn’t it? He nodded, fighting the urge to drop his gaze, forcing himself to look in Peter’s eyes as he finally revealed a truth that should have been spoken long ago.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he began slowly. “Or rather, I’m more than what I led you to believe. And while I never explicitly stated that I was a commoner, I never once admitted otherwise. It was a lie by omission.”
That pronouncement was met with a careful nod. “And so you are an aristocrat?”
“Yes.” Quincy hesitated before, with a quick, desperate motion, he threw back the remainder of his drink in a bid for courage. “In fact,” he continued in a rush, pressing the empty glass to his chest as if he could dig out the guilt that filled him, “I am not Mr. Quincy Nesbitt at all, but rather Lord Quincy Nesbitt. Youngest son of the Duke of Reigate. Or, rather”—his lips twisted painfully—“I was.”
“Now you are Duke of Reigate.” It was no longer a question, but still plain as day that Peter was trying his hardest to comprehend this new turn of events.
Regardless, Quincy answered him. “Yes.” As Peter remained quiet, Quincy continued. “Peter, I am more sorry than I can ever say. I should have told you on that very first day—”
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