Page 45 of A Duke in Disguise
“Why did you come here today?”
“You have a place in the world, something all your own. I envy you. Being anything at all to Ash—wife, mistress, even friend—will mean giving up some of that, and perhaps taking something from him in return. I wouldn’t blame you for not wanting to do it. I came to remind you that the man you know hasn’t changed. But he is rightfully the next Duke of Arundel, and if the court finds otherwise next week, it will be unjust. It is his place in the world and he’s starting to accept that.”
Verity felt the implied rebuke that at the very least she ought to do the same.
Ash had hoped that his uncle’s absence would allow the servants to stop slinking about in terror lift the sepulchral gloom that blanketed Arundel House. When that didn’t happen, he realized that the servants had as much at stake in the upcoming trial as he did: if Ash lost, his uncle would surely either dismiss the servants without references for their disloyalty or find some more dire way to retaliate.
With this in mind, he visited his grandfather’s apartments for the second time.
“Do you enjoy dragging this family into disrepute, boy?” the old man croaked from his bed. The Duke of Arundel did not seem interested in forging a friendly relationship with his long-lost grandson.
Ash forbore from responding that any dragging into disrepute had occurred some decades since, and short of getting tried for treason and murder he could hardly outdo his uncle. “Exceedingly,” he said. The duke let out a wheezy laugh. “But I came to ask you about the servants. They must be in your employ, not my uncle’s. If I lose this suit, I want to know that you’ll ensure they have references. And I want your promise that in your will you’ve left enough for my aunt to be independent.”
A malicious gleam lit up the old man’s eyes. “That’s what you’re worried about? Just goes to show you aren’t a proper Talbot, no matter what blood you have in your veins.”
“Because I exert myself on behalf of other people?”
“No, because references and incomes will be the least of their problems if you lose. If you win, too, come to that.”
A shiver coursed down Ash’s spine. “What do you mean by that?”
“Come now. You know what kind of man my son is. What do you think he’ll do to you and anyone who has helped you? Do you think he’s going to quietly disappear? He burnt down the conservatory at Weybourne Priory to punish Caro for allowing supper to be served cold.”
Ash remembered the burnt pages of his aunt’s herbarium. “How could you stand idly by while this happens? She is your daughter.”
“And he is my son.”
This man—possessed of title, fortune, and connections—had more power than anyone Ash had ever met, and he couldn’t see his way to using it to protect his daughter. That amount of power was precious, rare, and the Duke of Arundel did nothing with it. He just let it molder and go to waste. Ash climbed the stairs to his own bedchamber and spent a sleepless night, thinking he heard footsteps in the darkened corridors or smelled smoke wafting from the attics.
Chapter Seventeen
In the windowless box room, Verity could see her breath and smell distinct signs of a mouse infestation.
“It’s too cold to rummage through the attics,” Nan said, clutching her apron in her hands. “You’ll catch your death up there.”
“It shouldn’t take me more than a few hours,” Verity assured her. “And if the trial is to begin next week, there’s no time to spare.” She had thought there would be months before the judge agreed to hear Ash’s suit, and could only imagine that the duke had pressed the powers that be to expedite matters.
She stared at the pile of detritus in the box room. Nobody had ever cleared it out in the five and twenty years she had lived here; more and more things got added, shoved into spaces between trunks and cracked bedsteads and piles of what could only be rubbish. Before Roger left for Bath, he asked Verity to stow some of his belongings up here. Verity hoped to find a journal or perhaps whatever correspondence had existed between himself and the headmaster of Ash’s school. She didn’t like to think that Roger might have known the truth of Ash’s origins and failed to tell Ash, but she had known Roger. The man had been fiercely protective of the boy who had come to him as a friendless invalid. If Roger had thought Ash was better off not knowing, if he had suspected—correctly—that Ash would be in danger should his identity become known, then he might have deliberately withheld that information.
It took hours to even find Roger’s belongings, the contents of the room having gotten quite jumbled when Nate and Charlie rummaged through while packing for their journey. Eventually her eyes landed on a crate labeled in Roger’s neat hand. She shoved it out onto the landing to examine it in better light. There was also a battered old trunk, too ratty to withstand an ocean voyage, and she dragged that to the landing as well.
Verity had hoped to find journals, but if Roger had ever kept a journal, he had not sent them to be stored in this attic. What she found instead were a pair of galoshes, an opera hat, several engravings that she would remember to send on to Ash, and a bible. This last object was perplexing, because Roger was as vehement an atheist as Nate was. It was a costly volume, bound in red calfskin with gilt on the edges. A red ribbon that had been intended for use as a bookmark was tied to another ribbon, and then wrapped around the entire book. Verity untied the ribbons, partly because she was loath to see a volume that had been produced with such care treated so badly, and partly because she had to know why Roger—fussy, fastidious Roger—had done such a thing. She worked the knot loose and gingerly opened the cover, careful not to damage the binding. In between the front cover and the first page was a stack of letters, still folded. She delicately unfolded the top one and read the date. November 1799. And it was addressed to Roger from a man who signed himself Adrian.
It took only a single glance to determine why Roger had kept this letter. This was a love letter. There was nothing actionable, and if she hadn’t known Roger well enough to be familiar with his inclinations she might not have noticed the sentiment, but it was a love letter nonetheless. She might have put the letter back into the bible, bound the book once again, and returned it to the shadowiest corner of the attic, if she hadn’t seen the wordpupiltowards the end. Might Roger’s Adrian have been one of Ash’s schoolmasters?
She opened the next letter so quickly she nearly tore it. The date was two weeks after the first letter, and after a lengthy disquisition on the subject of chilblains, Adrian mentioned that his school had a new student who had arrived in the chaperonage of a rector from Ashby, in Norfolk. The clergyman had privately told the schoolmaster that the local rumor, passed on from a woman who fostered the child some years ago, was that the boy was the scion of a noble family who was put into hiding after his uncle made an attempt on his life. Adrian had asked whether the child knew of his origins, and the rector said that he did not. Adrian then asked what family the child belonged to, and the vicar said he did not know, but that it was one of the oldest in the land.
Verity realized she held in her hand the key to Ash’s case, the piece of evidence that connected Ash with the child who had been brought to that village in Norfolk. She could throw it into the fire and hope that the Court of Common Pleas found Ash’s claim to be without merit. But she knew she wouldn’t. Ash had made his choice; he had found what Lady Caroline called his place in the world. Verity would support him in that, even if she didn’t like it, even if it meant that any future they had together would bring about an irretrievable change for Verity.
She shook the dust out of her hair and sent a note to Arundel House.
Some hours later there came a knock on the shop door. She ignored it at first, but when the rapping persisted she ran downstairs, dressing gown wrapped tightly around her, ready to give a piece of her mind to whoever couldn’t understand what dark shop windows meant. “We’re closed,” she called. “Been closed for hours. Bugger off.”
“Plum,” said a voice she would have recognized anywhere. “That’s not how you run a business.”
She flung the door open. Ash’s hat was low on his forehead, the collar of his coat turned up high against his face, presumably so he’d avoid notice. “Come in before we have newsmen at the door,” she said, and let him up to her office. “I didn’t expect you to come in person,” she said.
He stepped into the shop and she closed the door behind him. “You said you found papers in Roger’s belongings that shore up the evidence for my suit, and you thought I wouldn’t come in person?”
