Chapter 3 #2
“Your Grace.” He bowed deeply. “Forgive the hour. My name is Calder. I act on behalf of several Ashbourne family interests—the wider family, I should say. Not the estate directly.” He paused.
“I wrote to request a meeting. I’m not certain the letter arrived, given the current state of the correspondence. ”
James looked at the stack of forty-seven letters.
“It may have,” he said. “Sit down, Mr. Calder.”
The solicitor sat, setting his bag with the practiced efficiency of a man accustomed to delivering news in other people’s studies. He folded his hands over the papers in his lap.
“I will be direct, Your Grace, as I think you would prefer it.”
“I would.”
“There is talk.”
The fire popped. James said nothing.
“Regarding the child.” Calder cleared his throat.
“The circumstances of her birth, specifically. There are members of the Ashbourne family… I represent several, as I have said, though I will not name them at this juncture, who have questions about the late Duke’s decision to acknowledge her.
About the circumstances of her birth.” He paused.
“About whether, given those circumstances, she ought to be connected to the family at all.”
James felt something go cold inside him.
“She is one year old,” he said.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“She has lost both parents.”
“Yes.”
“And certain members of this family have decided that this is the appropriate moment to question her right to exist within it.”
Calder had the look of a man who had anticipated this response and prepared himself for it. “I understand the sentiment, Your Grace. I am merely the messenger of the concern, not its—”
“Who?” James asked quietly.
“I am not at liberty to say at present. I would only tell you that the concerns are held by more than one party and are being discussed more widely than you might hope.” Calder shifted his papers. “There is also the matter of your position.”
James motioned for him to continue.
“An unmarried duke,” Calder said carefully, “with a reputation that society has formed certain… opinions about, raising a child born out of wedlock—it invites scrutiny, Your Grace. I say this not as a judgment but as a practicality. The gossip has already begun. In London, certainly, and it will reach the county soon enough.” He paused.
“If the household continues to appear… unstable, some may decide to formally challenge the guardianship.”
The word challenge dropped into the room like a boulder.
“On what grounds?” James asked, his voice very even. In the past two weeks, he had found that he could keep his voice very even when he needed to, regardless of what was happening underneath it.
“Fitness,” Calder said simply, as though it were just a word. “A man of your history, of your previous… er… freedoms, raising a child out of wedlock, in a household without a mistress, without stability—”
“Without a mistress?”
“A duchess, Your Grace. I mean a duchess.” He had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. “The absence of one creates a particular vulnerability. To outside questioning.”
James stood. He did it slowly, without drama, but the movement made Calder stop speaking immediately.
He walked to the fireplace and stood before it, looking at the dead embers. Behind him, Calder waited with stillness; he knew better than to say anything to fill the silence.
“Let me get this straight,” James uttered. “Society intends to punish an innocent child for the circumstances of her birth because the man responsible for her is unmarried.”
“Society,” Calder countered carefully, “rarely concerns itself with the innocence of children in these situations, Your Grace. It concerns itself with appearances and its right standing.”
“And innocence is not an appearance,” James said.
“No, Your Grace. It is not.”
A pause. The clock on the mantel seemed to tick louder.
“What would silence the gossip?” James asked. Not because he didn’t know, but because he wanted to hear the man say it.
Calder cleared his throat. “A marriage, Your Grace. A respectable one, contracted promptly and to a woman of good family and steady character. It would… reframe the household, as it were. Make the situation look considered rather than improvised. It would be considerably more difficult for anyone to question the fitness of a duke with a duchess at his side.” He paused.
“Especially one who showed an interest in the child’s welfare. ”
James laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh. It was the sound of a man confronting the distance between his life as it had been seven weeks ago and his life as it was now, and finding the gap both absurd and entirely real.
“Forgive me,” he said after his laughter died down. “I find I need a moment to appreciate the situation fully.”
Calder waited.
“Yesterday,” James continued, turning away from the fire, “I was a marquess with a comfortable estate, a decent income, and no responsibilities that required my attention before noon. Today, I rule over a duchy, have a ward, and am expected to take a wife before society decides I am unfit for any of them.”
“I appreciate that the timing is—”
“The timing,” James cut in, “is catastrophic.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And if I do not marry?”
Calder looked at his papers. “Then the conversation about the guardianship will continue. And it will grow louder. And eventually… I cannot give you a timeline, but eventually, it will find its way to the courts.” He looked up. “I am sorry, Your Grace. I do not bring this news gladly.”
James looked at him for a long moment.
“You may go, Mr. Calder,” he said.
The solicitor hesitated, then gathered his papers, bowed, and left with quiet discretion.
James stood alone in the study for a few minutes. The clock ticked.
Fitness…
The word sat in his chest like a stone.
He had spent his adult life being many things that society found useful to discuss. Charming. Reckless. Expensive in his habits and careless in his affections and reliably entertaining at other people’s dinner tables.
He had worn most of it lightly because it had cost him very little. A reputation was only a liability if you needed something from the people who held it, and he had been very careful for a very long time not to need anything from anyone.
And now there was a child upstairs who had no one else.