Chapter 22
“The left one.”
Reeves looked up from the coat he was holding. “Your Grace?”
“The left. The darker one.” James gestured toward the wardrobe. “The other one makes me look like I’m attending a funeral.”
“You wore the other one to the Ashfields’ dinner, Your Grace. It was very well received.”
“The Ashfields’ dinner was four weeks ago. Tastes change.” He held out his arm for the sleeve. “The left one.”
Reeves produced the left one with the diplomatic silence of a man who had been valet to James Harcliffe for seven years and had learned to identify the moods that were worth arguing with. This, he had apparently determined, was not one of them.
James shrugged into the coat and looked at himself in the mirror.
Better. Considerably better.
The darker coat had always suited him. He had simply not had sufficient reason to care about this before eight o’clock on a Tuesday.
He straightened his cuffs.
He was in a very good mood. This was not, in itself, unusual. He was generally a man of reasonable temperament, capable of good humor when the occasion required. But this was different, the kind that made the morning look more promising than it had any right to.
He began to whistle, and Reeves stopped moving entirely.
James caught that in the mirror.
“What?” he prompted.
“Nothing, Your Grace.”
“You were doing the cravat, and now you are staring.”
“I was merely—”
“You’re looking at me.”
“I am looking at the cravat, Your Grace.”
“You were looking at me.” James turned from the mirror and regarded his valet with a smirk. “You look as though you’ve witnessed something that requires a moment to process.”
Reeves blinked slowly, and James almost laughed.
“I was simply… You were whistling, Your Grace.”
“I was.”
“You do not generally whistle.”
“I do not generally—” James paused. “Have I never whistled?”
“Not to my recollection, Your Grace.” A pause. “Not once.”
James considered this.
“Well,” he said. “There it is then. A man can change.”
He turned back to the mirror and adjusted the cravat himself, which he was perfectly capable of doing and which Reeves usually prevented him from doing because their standards were not the same. This morning, Reeves seemed too unsettled to intervene.
“Never seen a man whistle before, have you?”
“I have seen many men whistle, Your Grace. But not this man,” Reeves muttered under his breath.
James pretended not to hear him.
“Then it’s good for you,” he said pleasantly. “Broadens the experience.”
He took one more look at his reflection in the mirror, decided the coat was exactly right, and moved toward the door with the energy of a man who had somewhere he wanted to be.
He wanted to be at breakfast. More specifically, he wanted to be at breakfast before Isadora came down, so that he would already be there when she arrived.
Which would appear entirely unremarkable, when in truth the prospect of watching her come through the breakfast room door this particular morning, on this particular day after a most particular evening, stirred within him a warmth that had absolutely nothing unremarkable about it.
He had kissed his wife.
He had kissed her thoroughly, in the dark, with her hands gripping the front of his coat, and she had kissed him back.
He had spent a considerable part of the night thinking about very little else. He intended to kiss her again at the earliest reasonable opportunity.
He was, by any honest measure, in an excellent mood.
He was halfway down the east corridor, moving at a pace that could generously be described as purposeful, when he heard the carriage.
He stopped.
It was not one of his carriages—he knew the sound of his horses’ hooves on the gravel well enough by now, the particular rhythm of them coming around the drive. This was different. Heavier. Multiple horses, moving with the deliberate pace of a journey recently concluded.
James went to the window at the end of the corridor.
A carriage had drawn up before the front steps. Well-appointed. Three horses, not two.
Two men descended. The first James recognized immediately, and something inside him went very still.
Lord Nathaniel Mortimer.
Sixty-two, silver-haired, the bearing of a man who had been telling himself for thirty years that he belonged in rooms he had not been invited to.
He stood on the drive and looked up at the house with an expression James could not fully read from this distance, but which had nothing deferential in it.
The second man was smaller, darker-coated, and wearing a frown. A solicitor.
James watched them for a moment from the window, the good mood of four minutes ago not quite gone but replaced by a clarity that was considerably colder.
He was already moving before Briggs appeared at the bottom of the stairs with the expression of a man delivering news he had not enjoyed receiving.
“Your Grace—”
“I saw them,” James cut him off. “Where is the Duchess?”
“The nursery, Your Grace. The morning feed.”
“Do not disturb her yet.” He went down the stairs without hurrying, because hurrying would communicate something he had no intention of communicating. “Put them in the small drawing room. Tell them I will be five minutes.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And Briggs?”
“Your Grace.”
“Whatever they ask for, give them nothing before I arrive. Not tea, not information, not pleasantries. Certainly not access to any other part of the house.” He paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I want to know what they were told to wait for before I speak to them.”
Briggs inclined his head and went to manage the situation.
Isadora was in the nursery, exactly as Briggs had said, sitting in the chair by the window with Violet in her lap, the morning light filtering in at the angle that made the room look like something from a painting.
She looked up when he came in, and something in her expression shifted—the warmth of it, the ease, a smile beginning at the corner of her mouth that he intended to address properly at some point in the near future.
Not now.
“James.” She registered his expression before he said anything. Her smile faded. “What’s happened?”
She reads me. She always reads me.
“Lord Nathaniel Mortimer has just arrived,” he announced. “With Calder, his solicitor.”
The nursery went very quiet.
Isadora looked at him with an expression that showed she was processing it quickly. Her hand, he noticed, had settled more firmly over Violet’s back.
“Unannounced?” she asked.
“Completely.”
“And a solicitor.”
“He came with a satchel.” He met her eyes. “I need you downstairs.”
She was already moving.
* * *
Mortimer stood at the window, which James suspected was intentional, with the posture of a man establishing his presence in a space before its rightful occupants arrived. He turned when they entered with a warmth that arrived on his face too quickly to be genuine.
“Your Grace.” He bowed to James, then to Isadora with a fractionally lesser degree that communicated his opinion of her position. “Your Grace. I apologize for the hour. I would not have intruded if the matter were not urgent.”
“Lord Mortimer,” James said, his voice level. “This is unexpected.”
“Unexpected, yes, but regrettably necessary.” Mortimer’s eyes flicked to Isadora with a curiosity that dressed itself as courtesy. “I hoped to call under more pleasant circumstances. I offer my belated congratulations on your marriage.”
“Thank you,” Isadora said. Her voice was entirely composed. James felt it beside him like something solid to stand against.
“Please.” He gestured toward the chairs because the longer he kept them standing, the more it looked like fear rather than authority. “Sit down, My Lord. I understand you came here to discuss something.”
Mortimer’s eyes moved to Isadora as he sat. “I had hoped to speak with you privately, Your Grace. However…” A pause that performed generosity. “Perhaps it is better that the Duchess is present.”
They arranged themselves—Mortimer in the chair nearest the window; Calder sat beside him with his satchel across his knees. James and Isadora sat opposite.
James was acutely aware of the precision of the space between them, of the satchel not yet opened, of the particular quality of Mortimer’s smile.
“You have traveled a considerable distance,” he remarked. “I find that people do not generally travel to Ashbourne without a clear purpose. What is yours?”
“I will be direct,” Mortimer said. “I believe you would prefer that.”
“I would,” James confirmed.
Mortimer folded his hands. The gesture of a man who had rehearsed his speech.
“I have come out of concern,” he began. “For the child.”
The room held its breath.
“Out of concern,” James repeated evenly.
“She is family, after all. Whatever the circumstances of her birth, one feels a… uh… a responsibility.” Mortimer’s expression arranged itself into something that resembled care, and James clenched his fist over his knee.
“Which is precisely why, when certain information came to my attention, I felt I could not remain silent.”
James said nothing. He had learned that silence was frequently more useful than any question.
“I have come into possession of certain letters.” Mortimer nodded to Calder, who produced them from the satchel. “Written by Miss Clara Bennett, the child’s mother, in the months before the child’s birth.”
Isadora looked at the letters.
“Where did you obtain them?” she asked.
Mortimer looked at her with mild surprise, as if he had not expected her to speak directly. James wanted to wipe that look off his face.
“They came to me through Miss Bennett’s family. Her aunt, specifically, who felt that the contents were… relevant to the current situation.”
“Relevant in what way?” James probed.
“Her aunt,” Isadora repeated. “Who has come forward now. Some months after the deaths of both Miss Bennett and the former Duke. With letters?”
“As I said, she felt the contents were relevant.”
“I imagine she did,” Isadora said pleasantly. “Please continue.”
Irritation flickered across Mortimer’s expression, and James almost smiled.
“The letters suggest,” Mortimer continued carefully, “that Miss Bennett was involved in another relationship in the months before the child was born.”
James rubbed his jaw. “Another relationship?”
“Another gentleman. The letters are quite clear on the matter.” Mortimer’s tone did not change.
It remained concerned, warm, precisely calibrated.
“I understand how difficult this is. I want you to know that I raise it only because the implications are significant. If the child is not my cousin’s daughter—”
“If?” James frowned.
“—then the inheritance he left her must be challenged. A sum of that magnitude, settled on a child who may have no connection to the family—”
“Stop.”
Mortimer’s expression did not change. “That is not the spirit in which I raise this.”
“I know exactly the spirit in which you raise it,” James bit out.
Mortimer looked at him for a moment. Then he nodded to the solicitor again, who produced a second set of documents.
“Regardless, we have filed a petition requesting that, until the child’s parentage is properly established, her current placement at Ashbourne be reviewed.”
“Reviewed?” Isadora repeated.
“She would be placed temporarily under church supervision,” the solicitor said smoothly. “Or an appropriate charitable institution. Until the investigation—”
“No,” Isadora blurted out.
She looked at him, her eyes watery. Then she turned to look at Mortimer, her back rigid. The room went very still.
“No,” she said again, firmly. “No one is taking that child anywhere.”
“Your Grace—” Mortimer tried.
“She is still a baby,” she cut him off. “She has lost both her parents. She has spent the last several weeks learning that this house is safe and that the people in it will not leave her, and you are proposing to remove her from it based on letters obtained from a woman who cannot confirm their contents, about a woman who cannot refute them.” She glared at him. “I will not allow that.”
“The child may not belong to the late Duke at all,” Mortimer said, with the patience of a man who had anticipated this and prepared for it. “If that is true—”
“It changes nothing,” Isadora gritted out.
He blinked.
“The child’s parentage,” she continued, “does not change the fact that she is a child. It does not change the fact that she is innocent of every circumstance surrounding her birth. It does not change the fact that she has done nothing—nothing—to deserve being removed from a home where she is loved and placed in an institution.” She held his gaze.
“Whatever those letters contain, she remains a child who deserves protection. I will not allow you to use her as a financial instrument and dress it as concern for her welfare.”
Mortimer eyed her carefully.
“Your concern for the child does you credit,” he said. “It is precisely that concern I would expect you to exercise by ensuring the matter is properly resolved.”
That was when James lost his temper.
“Do not speak to my wife again in that tone,” he snapped.