Page 128 of The Lost Duke of Wyndham

Grace leveled a stare. “You, on the other hand, are in supreme danger of—”

“Children!” Jack cut in. “Listen to your mother.”

“She didn’t say anything,” John pointed out.

“Right,” Jack said. He frowned for a moment. “John, leave your sister alone. Mary, next time don’t step on the orange.”

“But—”

“I’m done here,” he announced.

And amazingly, they went on their way.

“That wasn’t too difficult,” he said. He stepped into the room. “I have some papers for you.”

Grace immediately set aside her correspondence and took the documents he held forth.

“They arrived this afternoon from my solicitor,” Jack explained.

She read the first paragraph. “About the Ennigsly building in Lincoln?”

“That’s what I was expecting,” he confirmed.

She nodded and then gave the document a thorough perusal. After a dozen years of marriage, they had fallen into an easy routine. Jack conducted all of his business affairs face-to-face, and when correspondence arrived, Grace was his reader.

It was almost amusing. It had taken Jack a year or so to find his footing, but he’d turned into a marvelous steward of the dukedom. His mind was razor sharp, and his judgment was such that Grace could not believe he’d not been trained in land management. The tenants adored him, the servants worshipped him (especially once the dowager was banished to the far side of the estate), and London society had positively fallen at his feet. It had helped, of course, that Thomas made it clear that he believed Jack was the rightful Duke of Wyndham, but still, Grace did not think herself biased to believe that Jack’s charm and wit had something to do with it as well.

The only thing it seemed he could not do was read.

When he first told her, she had not believed him. Oh, she believed that he believed it. But surely he’d had poor teachers. Surely there had been some gross negligence on someone’s part. A man of Jack’s intelligence and education did not reach adulthood illiterate.

And so she’d sat with him. Tried her best. And he put up with it. In retrospect, she couldn’t believe that he had not exploded with frustration. It was, perhaps, the oddest imaginable show of love—he’d let her try, again and again, to teach him to read. With a smile on his face, even.

But in the end she’d given up. She still did not understand what he meant when he told her the letters “danced,” but she believed him when he insisted that all he ever got from a printed page was a headache.

“Everything is in order,” she said now, handing the documents back to Jack. He had discussed the matter with her the week prior, after all of the decisions had been made. He always did that. So that she would know precisely what she was looking for.

“Are you writing to Amelia?” he asked.

She nodded. “I can’t decide if I should tell her about John’s escapade in the church belfry.”

“Oh, do. They shall get a good laugh.”

“But it makes him seem such a ruffian.”

“He is a ruffian.”

She felt herself deflate. “I know. But he’s sweet.”

Jack chuckled and kissed her, once, on the forehead. “He’s just like me.”

“I know.”

“You needn’t sound so despairing.” He smiled then, that unbelievably devilish thing of his. It still got her, every time, just the way he wanted it to.

“Look how nicely I turned out,” he added.

“Just so you understand,” she told him, “if he takes to robbing coaches, I shall expire on the spot.”

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