Page 119 of The Lost Duke of Wyndham

“I don’t know anything else.”

Jack placed his fingers to his forehead and rubbed. He had a blistering headache and no reason to suppose it might improve. “It’s going to be hideous today.”

Thomas nodded.

Jack closed his eyes. It was easy to picture the scene. The dowager would insist upon reading the register first, and Crowland would be right over his shoulder, cackling away, ready to sell his daughter off to the highest bidder. His aunt would probably want to come, and Amelia, too—and who could blame her? She had as much at stake as anyone.

The only person who would not be there was Grace.

The only person he needed by his side.

“It’s going to be a bloody circus,” Jack muttered.

“Indeed.”

They sat there, doing nothing, and then they both looked up at precisely the same moment. Their eyes met, and Jack watched Thomas’s face as his gaze slid over toward the window.

Outside.

“Shall we?” Jack asked, and he felt the first glimmerings of a smile.

“Before anyone—”

“Right now.” Because really, no one else had a place at this table.

Thomas stood. “Lead the way.”

Jack rose to his feet and headed out the door, Thomas right behind. And as they mounted their horses and took off, the air still heavy with night, it occurred to him—

They were cousins.

And for the first time, that felt like a good thing.

Morning was well under way when they reached the Maguiresbridge church. Jack had been there several times before, visiting his mother’s family, and the old gray stone felt comfortable and familiar. The building was small, and humble, and in his opinion, everything a church ought to be.

“It does not look as if anyone is about,” Thomas said. If he was unimpressed by the plainness of the architecture, he did not indicate as much.

“The register will likely be at the rectory,” Jack said.

Thomas nodded, and they dismounted, tying their horses to a hitching post before making their way to the front of the rectory. They knocked several times before they heard footsteps moving toward them from within.

The door opened, revealing a woman of middling years, clearly the housekeeper.

“Good day, ma’am,” Jack said, offering her a polite bow. “I am Jack Audley, and this is—”

“Thomas Cavendish,” Thomas cut in, nodding in greeting.

Jack gave him a bit of a dry look at that, which the housekeeper would surely have noticed if she hadn’t been so obviously irritated by their arrival.

“We would like to see the parish register,” Jack said.

She stared at them for a moment and a half and then jerked her head toward the rear. “It’s in the back room,” she said. “The vicar’s office.”

“Er, is the vicar present?” Jack asked, although the last bit of the last word was covered by a grunt, brought on by Thomas’s elbow pressing into his side.

“No vicar just now,” the housekeeper said. “The position is vacant.” She walked over to a well-worn sofa in front of the fire and sat down. “We’re supposed to get someone new soon. They send someone from Enniskillen every Sunday to deliver a sermon.”

She then picked up a plate of toast and turned her back on them completely.

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