Page 130 of The Ladies Least Likely
“I imagine our solicitor would have told him anytime he asked,” Joseph said, puzzled. “He had to handle the transfer of my funds when I came of age, you know, and he’ll have to do the same for you again next year when you turn five and twenty.”
That had never occurred to her, that the solicitor who handled the trust from their parents would have contact with Reuben and could tell him where they were. She wasn’t safe, and never had been.
Reuben knew where she lived. He could find her at any moment. He could show up at her house, at her sweet and quiet home, and make his obscene demands, insist that?—
No. She reached for sense. She had Joseph to protect her, and servants about. Reuben couldn’t hurt her, not anymore. He had already done the worst thing, which was steal her manuscript. But her flesh crawled nonetheless at the thought of his heavy hand upon her in the stables of Penwellen, and despite the application of common sense, her heart darted in her chest like a frightened hare bolting for its den.
“Miss Illingworth. I gather you do not anticipate good news in that letter.” Grey stood before her, holding out a steaming cup of tea. His gaze moved over her face, reading her again.
She stuffed the letter into her pocket and took the tea. Her hands trembled.
“It’s from our cousin, the baronet,” Joseph said. “He has little to do with us.”
“Sir Reuben Illingworth. I’ve not heard of him.” Grey regarded Joseph with the same perceptive look that made Amaranthe shy from him.
“A baronet,” the young duke said. “How did he gain his title, if I might ask?”
“An Illingworth stood for the Royalists during the Civil War and was granted the baronetcy by Charles II for his service,” Joseph said. “Cornwall was the scene of much fighting between the Royalists and the Roundheads. We ought to study the history. I’m afraid that since then the Illingworths have done little to distinguish themselves.”
“The Hunsdon title goes back to the time of Queen Elizabeth,” the young duke said. “Hugh Delaval was one of her favorites, they say, so she made him a lord.”
“He was one of Henry VIII’s bastards, and the queen made him a baron so he had to come to court where she could keep an eye on him,” Grey said, his tone deceptively mild. “It was the first George who made your great-grandfather a duke.”
“I know that.” Young Hugh’s cheeks turned faintly red.
A brief silence followed this. The dukes of Hunsdon did not seem very long-lived nor prolific, Amaranthe thought. And the knowledge had to grate on Grey that, while a royal bastard could be granted titles, men like him could elevate themselves only through great virtue or great luck.
“If his cousin is a baronet, then Mr. Joseph is not so far below us as you said, Hugh,” Camilla remarked.
“Yes, you’ll need to take back a few of your petty remarks, won’t you, Huey?” Ned grinned.
His elder brother flushed a bright red. “I am sure I could have said nothing derogatory about Mr. Illingworth. You must have mistaken me.”
“Yes, mistaken you for someone who isn’t a complete prat,” Ned exclaimed. “Miss Illingworth, while you’re here, I want your help deciphering a curious manuscript I found.”
“I want her!” Camilla demanded. She darted to the table and withdrewThe Pythagorean Diet of Vegetables Only. “The translator keeps popping off Greek phrases, and I’m sorry, Mr. Illingworth, but you admitted you’re rubbish at Greek.”
“I don’t read it near as well as my sister does, very true,” Joseph said.
“Children, far be it from me to pull rank on you,” Grey interposed, “but I need to speak with Miss Amaranthe about the household accounts, and?—”
The rest of his words were lost to Amaranthe’s ears as Ned moved to one of the built-in bookshelves and bent to rummage through a drawer at its base. He hauled out a quarto-sized volume upon which Amaranthe recognized at once the worm-eaten edges of sheep leather. A strange gilt stamp looked up at her from the cover when Ned thunked it on the table. There had to be hundreds of pages crammed inside the bulging volume, and from the look of the spine, it had been torn apart and rebound, not carefully and not well.
Blood pounded in her ears, and she heard nothing of the conversation around her as she moved to the table, drawn by instinct. What Ned had discovered among the old duke’s cache of medically inclined and medically adjacent texts was either worthless or very, very valuable. Of incalculable worth, she guessed.
She wiped her fingertips on her gown before gingerly lifting the cover to look at the title page, plain and unadorned, covered in faded brown scrawls.
It wasn’t theBook of SecretsMr. Karim had heard rumors that the old duke held. It was something incomparably better.
It was the ticket, potentially, into the future she had dreamed of and worked toward for years.
She looked up, her ears still clogged with the rush of thoughts, to find everyone watching her. The children were curious, Joseph surprised, and Grey stood transfixed. He watched her closely, and Amaranthe felt as she had when she was small and Joseph dared her to walk out onto the surface of the small pond behind the village church that froze perhaps once a winter. The smooth cold ice, laced with crystals, only looked solid, and at any moment the fragile surface might splinter and a trespasser find herself tumbling into the freezing cold below.
Incomprehensibly, unlooked-for, the thing she most desired had just been handed to her. And in plain sight of Malden Grey. This book held the key to her livelihood, and now, with those cool blue eyes watching her far too closely, she couldn’t do a thing about it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
By the end of the week, Amaranthe had a far deeper understanding of how the grand lived than she’d ever thought to have. She had also, once or twice, spared a forgiving thought for Sybil, the Duchess of Hunsdon, for running away to France instead of staying to rule her tiny empire in Britain.
