Page 82 of Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

“I wouldn’t be the seventh duke, anyway,” Mr. Audley muttered.

Her father looked somewhat irritated at the interruption. “I beg your pardon?”

“I wouldn’t.” Mr. Audley looked over at Thomas. “Would I? Because your father was the sixth duke. Except he wasn’t. If I am.” And then, if that weren’t confusing enough: “Would he have been? If I was?”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Amelia’s father demanded.

“Your father died before his own father,” Thomas said to Mr. Audley. “If your parents were married, then you would have inherited upon the fifth duke’s death, eliminating my father—and myself—from the succession entirely.”

“Which makes me number six.”

“Indeed,” Thomas said tightly.

“Then I am not bound to honor the contract,” Mr. Audley declared. “No court in the land would hold me to it. I doubt they’d do so even if I were the seventh duke.”

“It is not to a legal court you must appeal,” Thomas said quietly, “but to the court of your own moral responsibility.”

Amelia swallowed. How like him that was, how upstanding and true. How did one argue with a man such as that? She felt her lips begin to tremble, and she looked to the door, measuring how many steps it would take to remove her from this place.

Mr. Audley stood stiffly, and when he spoke, his words were rigid as well. “I did not ask for this.”

Thomas just shook his head. “Neither did I.”

Amelia lurched back, choking down the cry of pain in her throat. No, he’d never asked for any of this. He’d never asked for the title, for the lands, for the responsibility.

He’d never asked for her.

She’d known it, of course. She’d always known he hadn’t picked her, but she’d never thought it would hurt this much to hear him say it. She was just another of his many burdens, foisted onto him by virtue of his birth.

With privilege came responsibility. How true that was.

Amelia inched back, trying to get as far away from the center of the room as she could. She didn’t want anyone to see her. Not like this, with eyes that threatened tears, hands that shook.

She wanted to fly away, to leave this room and—

And then she felt it. A hand in her own.

She looked down first, at the two hands entwined. And then she looked up, even though she knew it was Grace.

Amelia said nothing. She didn’t trust her voice, didn’t even trust her lips to mouth the words she wanted to say. But as her eyes met Grace’s, she knew that the other woman saw what was in her heart.

She gripped Grace’s hand and squeezed.

Never in her life had she needed a friend as much as she did in that moment.

Grace squeezed back.

And for the first time that afternoon, Amelia did not feel completely alone.

Chapter 15

Four days later, at sea

It was an uncommonly peaceful crossing, or so the captain told Thomas as dusk began to fall. Thomas was grateful for that; he’d not quite been made physically ill by the rise and fall of the Irish Sea, but it had been a close thing. A bit more wind or tide or whatever it was that made the small ship go up and down and his stomach would surely have protested, and in a most unpleasant manner.

He’d found that it was easier to remain on deck. Below, the air was thick, the quarters tight. Above, he could attempt to enjoy the tang of the salt air, the crisp sting of it on his skin. He could breathe.

Farther down the railing he could see Jack, leaning against the wood, gazing out at the sea. It could not have escaped him that this was the site of his father’s death. Closer to the Irish coast, Thomas supposed, if his mother had managed to make it ashore.

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