Chapter 31
Daniel’s house rose out of the darkness like something sulking.
It was a tall, narrow building with a gray stone facade that looked almost sullen in the muffled glow of the single streetlamp.
Most of the windows were dark, and only one glimmered faintly on the upper floor; it was a weak, wavering light of some neglected guest room or uneasy servant.
Blaise paid the hackney and motioned Iris back, letting the vehicle rattle away into the night. He could admire her all night long, but they had no time.
“Remember,” Blaise whispered in her ear quietly. Iris shivered under his touch. “To anyone who sees us, I am Alistair’s man of business. You are under my protection. You say nothing unless I bid you. And if I bid you to run—”
“I run,” she finished. “Yes, I know.”
He shot her a quick, sharp look but said nothing.
He could only pray that she would actually run and not try to save him, too.
They moved up the steps without hurrying, as if they had every right to be there.
Blaise used a key that slid from some hidden pocket; the tumblers answered with a soft, traitorous click.
“You have a key,” Iris whispered. “You broke into his lockbox as well, I suppose?”
“I bought it from his butler,” Blaise muttered back. “Men who serve Daniel are rarely loyal to anyone but themselves.”
He pushed the door open, and the house exhaled cold.
The entry hall smelled of unused polish and old coal smoke. The silence felt different compared to the Brentmere townhouse, less vigilant than neglected. A thin layer of dust dulled the mahogany side table. A hatstand leaned slightly, as if bored.
Iris shivered and took off his cloak and draped it over her.
“Thank you. Where are the servants?” she mouthed.
“Sent home.” Blaise was close to her ear and could almost taste her. “For ‘economy’s sake.’ Only the night porter remains, and he spends his nights in the tavern across the square. We have time.”
“Then why the dramatics about running?”
“Because prudent men prepare for the unlikely,” he said in a serious tone. “And because the unlikely happens to me often enough for it not to feel particularly unlikely anymore.”
Iris smiled, and Blaise did not realize how much he missed her until then.
They moved like shadows. Blaise lit no lamps; he navigated the halls by memory, pulling Iris along with him. His hand briefly and firmly grasped her elbow when she stumbled, and it hurt when he released her.
On the landing, he froze.
“Daniel is a creature of habit,” he murmured. “He keeps his important papers where he believes no one would dare look.”
“That is not very imaginative,” Iris murmured.
“Villains rarely are,” Blaise said. “He thinks himself clever, but he has never had to outwit anyone but rather distracted footmen.”
“Villains usually hide their darkest secrets in a hollow under the hearthstone,” Iris said. “Or in the frame of a family portrait.”
“Then we shall check the hearthstones and the portraits as well,” Blaise replied. “Come.”
The study was first. It smelled of ink and stale triumph.
Heavy velvet curtains hung closed over the windows, suffocating what moonlight might have crept in.
Books lined the walls in tidy rows that looked barely touched; the desk dominated the room, a hulking globe of a thing with drawers on every side and a scattering of papers arranged with that particular brand of disarray that wishes to be mistaken for genius.
“I shall begin with the desk,” Blaise said, already striding toward it. “You take the shelves. Look for any volume that seems unread. Or too recently moved.”
“And if I knock something over?”
“Then you will have the dubious pleasure of watching me see how much you can blush,” he said seductively and watched her skin come to life under his gaze. “Focus, Iris.”
The command was more for himself than for her. The sooner they finished, the sooner this awful prickle between her shoulders would ease.
Blaise searched the drawers behind the frames and under the rugs, but found nothing.
“Here,” Iris whispered excitedly from across the room.
Blaise glanced up from where he was crouched.
“Do not pull it out all the way,” he cautioned. “See if it gives any resistance at half.”
She eased the book forward. At about an inch free, it caught. Definitely not the simple grip of age.
“There is a spring,” she said excitedly, and Blaise could not help but smile. “Something in the binding, perhaps—”
A drawer slammed behind her, and she jumped.
“Damn him,” Blaise hissed. “False backs. Every cursed one. If he had spent half as much energy on being a decent human as he did on building hiding places—”
“Blaise,” she said softly. “Come here.”
He walked immediately behind her, close enough that he felt the heat of her breath against him.
“Push it in,” he murmured.
She pushed the book, and it slid back a fraction of an inch past where it had rested before. There was a faint, almost inaudible click somewhere in the wall.
“Good girl,” he whispered.
Heat sprang under her cheeks at the quiet praise, like a match struck to dry tinder.
This is not the time. Not the place. He reminded himself.
A panel to the right of the shelves sprang out a hair’s breadth.
“Well,” she said drily. “That is not even subtle.”
Blaise stepped around her and slipped his fingers into the gap, drawing the panel open. Behind the false wall, a narrow cavity yawned, barely wide enough for a man’s arm.
“Empty,” he said after a moment, his voice flat. “Damn him again.”
He withdrew his hand and held up… nothing.
“Perhaps he moved it,” Iris said. “If he was planning to act against you, he may have shifted things to be ready.”
“Or destroyed it at last,” Blaise said, and for the first time, worry truly darkened his eyes.
“No,” she said at once, with a confidence she could not defend. “If he truly destroyed it, he would have told you so when he offered his bargain. He would have dangled that over you like a prize. Men like Daniel do not waste an opportunity to be cruel.”
His gaze flicked to her for a heartbeat, and he felt grateful for her.
“Onward, then,” he said.
Iris moved to the corner where a large painting hung over the hearth: some stern ancestor glaring down his nose, hand resting on a hound’s head. The gilded frame was ostentatious even by Daniel’s standards.
“This is exactly where a villain would hide a blood-stained will in Moonlight on the Moor.”
“Read fewer novels, Iris,” he jested.
But she ignored him and slid her fingers along the underside of the frame.
“Blaise.”
He turned. Their eyes met, and he knew that this time she truly found something.
“There is something here,” she found herself whispering.
Iris reached in until her fingers closed around something. She withdrew a packet, wrapped in oiled paper, tied with a simple bit of string. Dirt and plaster dust smudged the edges, but the knot was fastidiously neat.
Iris held the packet out.
“You found it,” he said. “You should open it.”
“Are you sure?” She seemed shy, but Blaise had never been surer in his life.
Iris pulled on the string, and it came away with surprising ease, as if it had been tied for a long time and grown tired.
The oiled paper crackled. Inside lay another folded sheet, thicker, with an embossed seal broken along one edge.
She unfolded that, too, until they saw the old-fashioned, elegant, and precise handwriting.
The words swam for a moment, then sharpened before Blaise’s eyes.
On this day, the fifteenth of May in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, in the Parish Church of St.—
His eyes moved down, heart hammering.
Benjamin Arthur Vale, Duke of Knoxford, and Miss Diana Jane Hapwell, both of this parish, were married in this church by banns…
Below are the signatures. Benjamin’s, bold and clean. Diana’s, smaller, a little shaky as if written with a hand that trembled. Then the witnesses: Daniel Arthur Vale, Viscount.
* * *
“You are alive?” Daniel roared as he sat comfortably in Blaise’s chair in the Knoxford with Alistair opposite him.
Blaise threw the marriage certificate at Alistair, who studied it carefully. Iris waited just outside the door for him, and he could not wait to get back to her.
“You cannot prove that it is the original,” Daniel said. His voice trembled, but he lifted his chin with stubborn pride. “Any clerk could have forged Vale next to her name. You think judges do not see such tricks?”
Blaise had never seen Daniel look so small. He tapped the page with one finger, just beside Benjamin’s unmistakable signature. The ink, browned by time, had bled in a familiar way at the tail of the V.
“No,” Blaise said, keeping his tone even. “Any clerk could not have imitated my brother’s hand.”
Daniel’s eyes darted to the book and away again. He folded his arms, but the movement lacked its usual languor.
“You broke into my house,” he argued.
“You lied and hid my brother’s certificate to try and steal a title that does not belong to you,” Blaise accused him, almost lazily.
Alistair shifted between them, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. He had been silent thus far, playing the watchful second, but his Blaise knew he was observing and noting.
Blaise’s blood thrummed with a satisfaction so cold it bordered on relief. This was what he had promised his brother—justice for the boy who believed himself a bastard. For Iris, too, though Daniel did not yet know the extent of that debt.
“We have what we came for.” He turned the book around so that its spine faced Daniel, the two signatures spread between them like judgment.
“Here is what will happen,” he continued threateningly.
“Tomorrow, I will present this to my solicitor. The certified copies will be deposited with my own lawyers, with the bishop’s registrar, and with the headmaster of Oxford.
Marcus will be recognized as Benjamin’s legitimate son and as the true Duke of Knoxford. ”
“If you do any of that,” Daniel said hoarsely, “the scandal will explode across every drawing room in London. A hidden marriage and a child denied his title for years. Do you think society will look kindly on your brother? On you, for hiding the boy? They will call you complicit!”
“They may,” Blaise said. “But their outrage will not change the law. I have never relied on society’s kindness, Daniel. Only on its greed and its boredom. The scandal will amuse them for a fortnight. The title, however, will remain where it belongs.”
He watched that sink in.
“And what of me?” Daniel asked in a low, shameful voice. “You imagine you can simply disinherit me from any standing, toss me aside like refuse?”
“You disinherited yourself,” Alistair said. “When you destroyed that certificate and when you let a boy grow up believing he was a mistake so that you might, one day, sign your name over a title you did not earn.”
Daniel’s mouth tightened, and Blaise smirked.
“I made my choices,” Daniel said. “You made yours. You were content to play the benevolent uncle without bearing the cost of what that boy’s legitimacy would mean. Had you produced proof years ago, your brother would have—”
“Faced his responsibilities?” Blaise cut in.
“Perhaps. Or not. My brother stepped away from his son out of grief and weakness; that is a failing I cannot mend and will carry to my grave. But you—” His hand closed around the back of his chair until the carved wood bit into his palm.
“You took a man’s grief and turned it into leverage.
You waited for everyone stronger than you to die. ”
“Blaise,” Alistair said quietly behind him. It was a warning, the kind he used when Blaise’s temper loomed too near the surface.
Blaise inhaled once, slowly, as the rage burned through him, but he did not intend to give Daniel the dignity of seeing him lose control.
“You want to know what happens to you now?” he asks at last. “Very well. Here is your future, cousin. You will pack your belongings. You will sell your house, your horses, your investment shares, and your damned cufflinks if you must, and you will leave England.”
Daniel stared. “Leave—”
“For good,” Blaise cut him off as he continued to tower over him.
Color drained from Daniel’s cheeks. His throat worked.
“The law cannot compel me to—”
“No,” Blaise agreed. “But I can.”
Daniel gulped.
“Understand me: if I ever hear your name whispered anywhere near my nephew again. If I hear so much as a rumor that you are stirring up talk of his parents’ elopement in any way disadvantageous to him, I will not go to the courts. I will come directly to you.”
He saw the moment Daniel believed him, and his bravado withered.
“Alistair and I have taken the liberty of preparing a list of ports that see frequent traffic to the Continent and beyond. You will leave within the week. You may take your pick of destinations, so long as they are not on English soil. Write to your solicitor with instructions for the sale of your estate, and that he must be discreet. I have seen to it that he now understands the value of discretion?”
“Y…yes,” Daniel whispered in a small voice.
“If you ever step near English soil again, you will not live another day. Now, get out of my seat and out of my house.”
Silence stretched as the fire sputtered.
For a moment, Blaise thought Daniel might actually attempt to brazen it out, to fling some final insult. But perhaps even he could recognize when the board was cleared. He got up unsteadily and walked to the door, shutting it without a second glance.
Alistair cleared his throat as a sense of relief filled the room.
“I should go,” he said. “Before our dear cousin changes his mind and attempts some dramatic leap out of a window.”
Blaise squeezed his shoulder and let him go. “Thank you, Alistair. This would not have been possible without you.”
“And that lovely widow of yours,” Alistair whispered and winked at Blaise.
Blaise glanced at the door. He hoped that Daniel had not said anything to her, but Iris proved her strength, and she handled weak men well.
Alistair watched him with that speculative gaze that always made Blaise feel both seen and uncomfortably exposed.
“You realize,” he said, “that you have just handed away a dukedom most men would kill for.”
“Yes, our own cousin would have,” Blaise murmured.
“Daniel would have killed for a well-cut waistcoat,” Alistair said. “But you are not most men.”
“No,” Blaise said. “I am tired; that is what I am.”
Alistair raised a brow. “You cannot be tired now when there is a beautiful woman waiting for you.”
Blaise was thoughtful for a minute. “How can I drag that woman into a battle she did not start?”
Alistair’s eyes glinted. “I suggest you begin rehearsing some truly extraordinary apologies, and if you make a thorough hash of this, I shall step in and charm your widow out of her sulks.”
Blaise scowled. “Do not talk about her like that.”
Alistair blinked, then smiled slowly.
“Look at that. Protective of your future wife already!”
Blaise’s heart jolted, and he did not correct Alistair.