Page 15 of A Lord's Chance
“It was anything but simple. For what it’s worth, the story begins in 1763, when my father fell in love with a sixteen-year-old village girl. He was twenty and unmarried.” That Winchester clarified his father’s age was good because Nobbie glanced at Adam who looked like he was going to hurt the Duke’s dead father for preying on a sixteen-year-old girl.
“Jane worked for our estate’s jeweller, Mr Hobart—” His Grace’s pronouncement made Lawndry gasp and Nobbie’s mouth filled with a bitter taste, like vinegar.
“Hobart?” Lawndry whispered but Nobbie waved his hand in the air.
“Carry on, your grace. I find myself fascinated by this tale of young love.” Sarcasm dripped off his tongue because he’d heard this story before. The young Duke had knocked up a village girl and they’d dumped the baby so that no one would know.
“Mr Gilbert. It is not a typical tale. Please indulge me.” Winchester waited until Nobbie nodded before continuing. “My grandmother decided that this potential love affair was completely unsuitable for a Duke’s son. She arranged for Jane to marry Mr Hobart and my father found himself engaged to an Earl’s daughter. Without Jane’s marriage, he might have ignored my grandmother, but she was too quick and clever for him. She paid for Mr and Mrs Hobart to move away, ostensibly to removemy father from temptation and make him focus on creating an heir for the Dukedom. Two years later, the first Hobart watches were taken to auction, and my father purchased them, knowing that his Jane had probably helped create them.” Winchester paused, and Nobbie tried to just breathe. Why was breathing so difficult? Every scrap of air burned. Jane. The small blanket he’d been left with had a J embroidered in the corner.
“My father’s first wife died of consumption without having children, and my father had finally come to terms with Jane being married, so he married again, and I was born in 1778 and then a sibling every two years after that. My mother, bless her soul, died in childbed eight years later. My father grieved for my mother, who he’d loved, and it was my grandmother who finally relented. He’d done his duty and she let him know that Jane’s husband had been lost at sea. My father visited her, and they conceived a baby. The boy was born in—” Winchester looked up at Nobbie. “—as you are aware, the boy was born in 1788. My father proposed to Jane, but just as they were making arrangements for the wedding, Mr Hobart returned to England. He hadn’t been lost at sea. He had delayed his visit to India to purchase jewels for their jewellery business, and he’d sent a letter on the ship he had planned to travel on. When the ship was lost at sea, Jane assumed he had been lost too, but it was only his letter.”
“I’m guessing he wasn’t pleased about arriving home to find his wife with a baby.” Adam summed it up succinctly.
“I don’t know. My father was heartbroken that Jane’s husband had reappeared, but he hoped that Mr Hobart would do the right thing and raise you as his own. He sent money for the boy every year and it wasn’t until Jane was on her death bed that she wrote a letter to him saying that she’d been forced to send the baby away, but she had left watch 79 with you, so that you’dknow how to find out who your mother was, and that my father could find you.”
Nobbie wanted to thump Mr Hobart and he wanted to hug Jane and he wasn’t even sure what he felt about the previous Duke of Winchester. “We are half-brothers?”
“Yes. I didn’t know you existed until last year when my steward found the letter while looking for some other papers, and I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t know what to do about it.” His grace sat stiffly in his chair. “My father loved my mother, but he loved Jane more. She’d been his first love and his last love and it destroyed him when her husband reappeared. He locked his collection away, but every year, he would go to Sotheby’s for the auction. Most years, he bought something and then he’d come home and drink heavily before locking it up in the rest of the collection.”
“That must have been tough, growing up with a father like that?” Adam asked.
Winchester shrugged. “I was at school most of the time, so I was unaware of most of it. When he died six years ago, and I inherited, I had the collection valued thanks to the stellar efforts of Mr Milson here.”
“You’ve never married?” Adam asked and Nobbie almost grinned as Adam tried to figure out a business option for them. He needed the distraction.
“No. I saw what my father’s obsession with Jane did for my mother, and for my father’s first wife, who suffered through being married to a man who loved someone else. My mother at least enjoyed a few good years with my father when he knew Jane was married and he tried to get on with his own life as best he could. I probably need to marry for the sake of the estate, but I’m not sure I could do that to a woman.”
“What about a woman who needs marriage before the ton discovers her father is broke?”
Nobbie should stop Adam but he had far too much to think about and he needed time to contemplate it all.
“It would be a noble reason to marry.” Adam laid it on thickly and Nobbie would normally say something to counter that, to make the charm offensive from Adam appear less obvious.
“Lawndry, you have your answer now. Your grace, it was nice to meet you.” Nobbie needed fresh air. The last thing he heard as he bolted from the room was his name being called out in a questioning fashion.
Chapter 11
Lloyd chased Nobbie through the house, out into the garden, and eventually caught up to him in the mews. Nobbie was leaning back against the brick wall, eyes closed.
“Nobbie. I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“I started this whole mess by insisting that I wanted to know about your watch.”
Nobbie pushed himself away from the wall. “No one could have guessed this.”
“Truer words were never spoken. I would never have guessed Hobart was a woman, and yet it was foolish of me not to consider it given my own mother’s skill as a watchmaker.” Lloyd suddenly found himself pressed against the opposing wall of the mews with hard cold bricks at his back and Nobbie’s warm body pushing him into the wall.
“I meant about being a Duke’s son.”
“Oh, yes, I imagine that is something of an adjustment too.”
Nobbie laughed, a hysterical bitter sounding laugh. “Something of an adjustment. What use is it to me to know this?”
He had no idea. “I don’t know.” He found people complicated at the best of times. A situation like this was far beyond his ability to understand. “I remember feeling a similar unease when my parents died and Uncle Baldric sold my entire collection and all my mother’s collections.”
“Is this your attempt at empathy?” Nobbie growled.
