Page 14 of The Forger and the Duke
“Two years older than Derwa, then,” she said.
Grey met her eyes as he held out Amaranthe’s plate, adorned with two tidy slices of ham. He’d saved her the tenderest pieces, and the recognition flustered her.
So did the sight of him at the head of the table, his unpowdered hair drawn back in a queue and showing here and there a streak of gold among the darker brown. A shadow of stubble covered his jaw, giving him a roguish look, and the candlelight sculpted his features into strong lines and intriguing shadows. She turned to the dish of asparagus spears simmered in cream that Davey slid onto the table beside her.
“Tell us about your household, Miss Illingworth,” Grey said. “Your servants seem unusually devoted to you. Almost like friends.”
Davey tensed as he withdrew to his post next to the sideboard, and Amaranthe spoke carefully, sensing a trap.
“Eyde and I left Cornwall six years ago.” She distributed the asparagus among the children’s plates. “We went to stay with Joseph in Oxford until he completed his studies, and then we moved to London. Davey found us shortly thereafter, and Mrs. Blackthorn came to us that first summer as well.” She dished a portion of vegetables onto Grey’s plate and decided to change the subject. “I understand the passing of the duke was fairly recent? My condolences for your loss.”
“It was only a loss for some,” Grey said in a biting tone, and the young duke looked up, hurt.
“He was your father too, Grey.”
Amaranthe sat back at this. “You are brothers?” She looked from Grey to Hugh, wondering why the younger boy had the title.
“Half-brothers,” Grey said. He sank his knife into his ham with a savage motion. “I am not in the line of succession.”
Illegitimate. That might account for the hard shell around him, Amaranthe thought. It did not, however, excuse his poormanners. Plenty of the nobility’s illegitimate children were brought up in polite society, if often in a different home.
She peered into a covered dish and discovered her oysters nestled in a buttery sauce. She portioned them onto plates, trying not to feel covetous. Rich people no doubt ate oysters with every meal, but for Amaranthe they were a rare indulgence once she’d left Cornwall and its bordering sea behind.
“Then the duchess—?” She let the question dangle, fearing she was being intrusive, but she wanted to understand. Grey called the duchess Sybil, and the young duke emphasized that she was not their mother. Still, a stepmother ought to feel some sort of compunction, even if child rearing was much different in the highest circles.
Grey snorted. “Sybil lacks even the slightest maternal impulse.” His voice softened as he looked across the table. “Christine, their mother, died when Camilla was three, I am sorry to say.”
All three children looked at their plates.
Amaranthe slid the oyster around on her tongue. So Sybil was the old duke’s second wife, and Christine the first. Who, then, was the Marguerite, Lady Vernay inscribed in the flyleaf of her Book of Hours? Amaranthe still thought of the book as hers, though she was likely never to see it again while Reuben was alive. Searching it out would require confronting him, and she had no desire to be anywhere in his vicinity.
“My condolences on that loss as well,” Amaranthe said. She wanted to know more of Grey’s mother, but this was not the time to quiz him on his ancestry. “And you, Mr. Grey, are the children’s appointed guardian?”
His face hardened, the candlelight catching the flex of a muscle in his jaw.
“I ought to be, as it’s what the old duke wished, but Sybil challenged the terms of the will. She insisted she was the more fit to oversee the estate and the children.”
His lips thinned as he pressed them together. He had extraordinarily well-shaped lips for a man. “Given that she has not waited for the court case to be resolved, I can only conclude that her primary interest all along has been in the estate’s income.”
“You’ll win the case now, won’t you, Grey?” Ned spoke around the steady progress of transferring food to his mouth. “Or you’ll be able to argue it yourself, once you’re called to the bar?”
“However do you know anything about the case?” Grey wanted to know. “Sybil ought not have been discussing it with you.”
“Why not, if it concerns us?” said Hugh indignantly. “And servants talk, Grey.”
“You’re a barrister?” Amaranthe asked.
She had once thought the law a respectable profession, until Joseph informed her that the Inns of Court admitted too many young men who had no ambition to study and instead found the Inns a source of entertainment replete with masques, revels, and riotous feasts. She had judged him a dandy when Grey arrived at her door, frivolous and not overly intelligent, but here in the company of his family, dining at home, he seemed composed and serious.
Perhaps he was behaving so for her benefit. After his initial belligerence, followed by his forced plea for aid, he had treated her with scrupulous courtesy, as if he thought Amaranthe one of those dull and humorless ladies who always followed the rules.
Better he think that than know the truth.
“I’ll be a barrister if the Benchers ever admit me.” Grey skewered the ham as he cut a fresh slide. “But a solicitor isarguing our case in Chancery, Ned. I imagine the court will rule in our favor once the new evidence is admitted.”
“Then you hold out no hope that Her Grace and your steward are somehow acting in the children’s best interests,” Amaranthe said.
Grey regarded her as if she had just stood up and turned a cartwheel. His harsh expression cracked into a smile.
