Page 70 of Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

“I can. I can do almost anything in a coach. Or with a coach,” he added with an odd smile.

Thomas took her arm with a rather surprising firmness and pulled her to her feet.

“It was lovely meeting you, Mr. Audley,” Amelia said.

“Yes,” he murmured, “it does seem that you are leaving.”

“Amelia,” Thomas said curtly, leading her away.

“Is something wrong?” she asked him once they had reached the hall. She looked about for Grace, but she had disappeared.

“Of course not,” he said. “Merely matters to which I must attend.”

Amelia was about to ask about the upcoming trip to Ireland, but for some reason she did not. She wasn’t sure why; it was not a conscious decision, more of a feeling than anything else. Thomas seemed so distracted. She did not wish to upset him further.

And aside from that, she rather doubted he would answer her honestly if she did ask. He would not lie; that would be entirely out of his character. But he would brush off the query with something vague and condescending, and she would lose all the lovely feelings she had gained that morning.

“Might I take with me one of the atlases?” she asked. The trip home would be less than an hour, but she had so enjoyed looking at the maps. It was something they had done together, their heads bowed over the books, their foreheads nearly touching.

The outline of a continent, the pale blue shading of an ocean on the page—these would forever make her think of him.

As she was riding home, the carriage bumping gently over the ruts in the road, she turned the pages until she found Ireland. She rather liked the shape of it, all flat in the east, then seeming to reach out its arms toward the Atlantic in the west.

She would ask Thomas about the trip the next time she saw him. Surely he would not leave the country without telling her.

She closed her eyes, picturing his face, conveniently editing out his blackened eye. They had entered a new chapter in their relationship. Of this she was certain.

She still did not know why Thomas had been drinking the night before, but she told herself that she did not care. All that mattered was that it had led him to her, and perhaps her to herself.

She’d woken up. After years of sleepwalking, she’d woken up.

Chapter 13

Four days later

After his initial shock, Thomas realized that his grandmother had been right about one thing. A trip to Ireland was the only solution to their dilemma. The truth must come out, no matter how unpleasant. Mr. Audley might, with the proper encouragement, be willing to forgo his claim on the title (although Thomas doubted the dowager would allow that to happen). But Thomas knew that he could never find peace if he did not know who he really was. And he did not think he could continue in his position if he knew it rightly belonged to another.

Had his entire life been a lie? Had he never been the Duke of Wyndham, never been the heir to it, even? This would mean—well, truly, this was the only amusing part of it all—his father had never been the duke, either. It was almost enough to make him wish his father alive again, just to see his reaction.

Thomas wondered if they would have to change the inscription on his gravestone. Probably.

He wandered into the small saloon at the front of the house and poured himself a drink. He might actually enjoy erasing the title from his father’s marker, he thought. It was good to know there might be some amusement in all this.

Thomas walked to the window and gazed outside. He came here quite frequently when he wished for solitude. He could get that in his office, of course, but there he was surrounded by ledgers and correspondence—reminders of tasks still incomplete. Here, he could simply think.

He supposed he disliked his cousin slightly less than he had before—in the four days since he’d found him in the drawing room with Amelia, their conversations had been perfectly civil—but he still found him hopelessly unserious. He knew that Audley was once a military officer, and as such must have had to exercise caution and judgment, but Thomas still had grave doubts about his ability to apply himself with the diligence necessary to run a dukedom.

Would he understand that the livelihoods and indeed the lives of hundreds of people depended upon him?

Would he feel the history in his position? The heritage? The unspoken covenant with the soil, the stones, the blood that had fed the ground for generations? Wyndham was more than a title one appended to one’s name, it was…

It was…

Thomas sat down in his favorite leather chair, closing his eyes in anguish.

It was him. He was Wyndham, and he had no idea who he would be when it was all taken away. And it would. He was growing more certain of this by the day. Audley wasn’t stupid. He would not lead them all the way to Ireland, for God’s sake, if proof of his legitimacy was not waiting at their destination.

Audley had to know that he would still have been showered with privilege and money even if he’d declared his mother a dockside whore, known to his father for all of three minutes. Their grandmother was so desperately infatuated with the idea of her favorite son having produced a son of his own that she would have provided him with an income for life, regardless.

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