Quincy stood, letting loose a relieved laugh. “To reluctant heirs,” he replied, clinking his own glass against Peter’s, his chilled heart warming with the knowledge that, in this, he was not alone.
* * *
Peter and Mr. Nesbitt—er, the duke—closeted themselves up for the remainder of the afternoon and into the early evening. In that time Clara learned one new thing about herself: her curiosity, while not as blatant as Aunt Olivia’s, was just as potent. Her mind swirled with questions, each one spinning round and round Mr. Nesbitt’s new dukedom like dancers around a maypole. The man had been pale as a sheet when he’d first arrived at Dane House, and in shock. That, combined with the strange questions he had put to her regarding the refusal of a title, made it plain as day the man had not expected or wanted his sudden dukedom.
She would never forget the haunted look in his eyes when he had first told Peter. Her heart ached even now, just recalling it. She rubbed at her chest absentmindedly, as if to ease the small pain there. Beside her, Aunt Olivia tapped her gnarled fingers with impatience on the arm of her chair. The rest of the women were grouped tightly together, their seats facing the wide-open door of the smaller downstairs sitting room, the better to catch sight of Peter and Mr. Nesbitt—the duke! Goodness, this was going to be difficult—when they finally emerged from the study.
“What is taking so blasted long?” Aunt Olivia muttered. She craned her neck, peering with a scowl to the hall beyond the door, as if she could magic the two men into being by sheer will.
“I’m sure they have much to discuss,” Clara said in as cheerful a voice as she could manage. Which was not very cheerful at all, as the same phrase had been repeated in myriad ways over the past hours.
“I just wish I could recall the particulars of the Duke of Reigate’s family,” the viscountess grumbled. “Truly, it is beyond ridiculous that no one in this house remembers.”
As Dane House had kept a skeleton staff over the past several decades of sitting empty, and the rest of the staff had either come with them from the Isle or been hired on for the season, there was no one to glean information from—much to Aunt Olivia’s disgust. And she had tried to wheedle information from any staff she could. Which explained the obvious lack of footmen in the hall, seeing as they were now keeping as far from Aunt Olivia as was possible.
“I’m certain Peter and Quincy shall be able to answer your questions in short order,” Lenora soothed.
Her calming words were met with a glare by the older woman.
Phoebe, who had been diligently sketching beside Lenora to the duchess’s quiet instruction, laid her pencil aside and stretched her arms over her head, sighing. “It is frustrating, I admit. Perhaps, Aunt Olivia, you might go over the details you do remember once more. Revisiting it might jar some forgotten memory.”
Clara, Lenora, and Margery let loose low groans. There was little they wanted less than to be forced to listen to the dowager’s musings on the “Reigate Conundrum,” as she had begun to call it.
Aunt Olivia, however, either did not hear their collective—albeit quiet—protests or chose not to heed them. Knowing her great-aunt, Clara rather thought it was the latter. “It is tragic, to be sure,” she said with a frown. “The elder duke passed away a decade and a half or so ago of apoplexy or ague or something similar.”
The two diseases were not at all alike. But just as she had done when Aunt Olivia had last recited her limited knowledge of the Duke of Reigate’s tragic family history, Clara refrained from pointing that out.
“He had four sons. The eldest inherited the dukedom, very quickly becoming the greatest wastrel the world has ever seen, and was dead within a few years at the hands of a jealous husband. Lord Kenneth took on the title and gambled away most of what was left of a once expansive fortune before he, too, died, this time in a drunken carriage race. Lord Sylvester did attempt to recoup his brothers’ losses by aligning himself with the daughter of some neighbor of theirs. But he was not the brightest, and while picking wildflowers for his prospective bride he stepped off a cliff.”
As it had before, the simple retelling of that long list of lives cut short made a chill sweep over Clara. She wrapped her shawl more firmly about her shoulders as if to ward off the remnants of the tragedy that surrounded the family.
“But for the life of me,” Aunt Olivia continued, her tone turned sharp in her frustration, “I cannot recall a single thing about the fourth son. It was like he disappeared into thin air after his father’s death. Neither the duchess nor his brothers ever mentioned him.”
Again that ache in Clara’s chest for Mr. Nesbitt—er, the duke. She blew out a frustrated breath, her fingers playing over the calfskin cover of the book she had picked up to read yet had left unopened. If she were at all brave, she would just call the man Quincy and be done with it.
But the thought of speaking his name made her shiver once more, this time with a disconcerting heat. She moved the shawl away from her neck, suddenly overwarm as she thought of her lips and tongue caressing his name. Such an intimate thing she could not think of doing. Not with him.
To distract herself, she focused on the cold facts of the perplexing case. She did not doubt her great-aunt’s memory of the Duke of Reigate’s family. The woman had the sharpest mind Clara knew, and could recall the smallest, most unimportant details with frightening ease.
And the timing of it all matched perfectly with the history she recalled hearing from Peter. He had first met his friend upon his own escape from England fourteen years before. Both men, mere boys at the time, had found places with an American sea captain, had sailed for Boston, and had quickly grown close. What had followed was years of friendship, with the two not only growing up together, but later becoming business partners in a lucrative real estate endeavor.
It was entirely possible His Grace was indeed the missing fourth son. If so, why had he left? And why did it appear as if his family had erased him from their minds as easily as the tide erases writing in the sand?
All of a sudden Freya, who had been napping beside her mistress, stirred. She lifted her head, her over-large ears swiveling toward the hall. The women stilled, even Aunt Olivia going quiet. In the silence they could hear the faint sound of boots on the polished floor.
“Finally,” Aunt Olivia muttered.
Before Clara could think to quiet her great-aunt, the two men filled the doorway.
That they appeared tired was an understatement. Both were slightly disheveled, dark smudges beneath their eyes. But there were smiles about their mouths, proof that their talk had done some good.
Too late, however, Clara registered that Peter’s was decidedly lopsided and almost—silly?
“Lenora,” Peter said with a husky intimacy that had Clara’s cheeks flaring with heat. “Damnation, you’re beautiful. Quincy, look at my beautiful wife.”
“I see her,” his friend murmured with amusement. He grinned as Peter went to Lenora on slightly uneven feet.
“I would ask you to forgive Peter,” he said as he took the chair indicated by Aunt Olivia—one much closer to Clara than she was comfortable with. “But I am the one who needs your forgiveness. I’m well aware of his disinclination for strong drink, yet I did not dissuade him from imbibing with me.”