“I assure you,” Thomas said smoothly, regarding his new cousin with a cool eye, “whatever violent urges I possess, I shall not act upon them.”
Grace turned her temper upon him at that. “That is a terrible thing to say.” And then, more quietly, so that only he could hear. “And after I defended you.”
“But honest,” Audley acknowledged with a nod.
The two men locked eyes, and a silent truce was met. They would travel to the inn together. They would not ask questions, they would not offer opinions…Hell, they would not even speak unless absolutely necessary.
Which suited Thomas perfectly.
Chapter 7
Your eye’s gone black.”
That was the first thing Audley said to him on the journey, nearly an hour after they’d departed.
Thomas turned and looked at him. “Your cheek is purple.”
They were almost to the posting inn where Audley had his belongings stashed, and so they had slowed their gait down to a walk. Audley was riding one of the horses from the Belgrave stables; he was, Thomas could not help but note, an extremely accomplished rider.
Audley touched his cheek, and not with any delicacy. He patted it briskly, the three central fingers of his right hand. “It’s nothing,” he said, apparently assessing the injury. “Certainly not as bad as your eye.”
Thomas gave him a haughty look. Because, really, how could he know? The cheek was purple, quite lividly so.
Audley looked at him with remarkable blandness, then said, “I have been shot in the arm and stabbed in the leg. And you?”
Thomas said nothing. But he felt his teeth clenching together, and he was painfully aware of the sound of his breath.
“The cheek is nothing,” Audley said again, and he looked forward anew, his eyes focusing on the bend in the road, just up ahead.
They were nearly to the posting inn. Thomas knew the area well. Hell, he owned half of it.
Or thought he owned it. Who knew any longer? Maybe he wasn’t the Duke of Wyndham. What would it mean if he was merely another random Cavendish cousin? There were certainly enough of them. Maybe not as first relations, but the country was positively awash with seconds and thirds.
It was an interesting question. Interesting, of course, being the only word he could use that did not make him want to explode in mad laughter. If he wasn’t the Duke of Wyndham, who the hell was he? Did he own anything? Have a stick or stone or rubbly little patch of land to call his own?
Was he even still betrothed to Amelia?
Good God. He looked over his shoulder at Audley, who, damn him, looked cool and unperturbed as he stared at the horizon.
Would he get her? Lands, title, every last penny in his accounts—tally ho, mateys! Let’s toss in the fiancée while we’re at it.
And judging from Grace’s reaction to the annoying sod, Amelia would be head over heels for him at first sight.
He snorted in exasperation. If the day descended any further, he’d reach the seventh level of hell before nightfall. “I’m getting a pint,” he announced.
“Of ale?” Audley asked in surprise, as if he could not imagine the Duke of Wyndham drinking anything so plebeian.
“While you do whatever it is you wish to do,” Thomas said. He glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “I assume you don’t need me to help you fold up your unmentionables.”
Audley turned, his eyebrows arched. “Not unless you have a preference for other men’s undergarments. Far be it for me to put a halt to your jollies.”
Thomas met his stare with cool purpose. “Don’t make me hit you again.”
“You’d lose.”
“You’d die.”
“Not at your hand,” Audley muttered.
“What did you say?”
“You’re still the duke,” Audley said with a shrug.
Thomas gripped his reins with far greater vigor than was necessary. And even though he knew exactly what Audley was saying, he found himself gripped—by a peevish little need to make him spell it out. And so, his tone sharp and clipped—and yes, quite ducal—he said, “By this you mean…”
Audley turned. He looked lazy, and self-possessed, and completely at ease with himself, which infuriated Thomas because Audley was—or looked to be—everything that he himself normally was.
But not now. His heart was pounding, and his hands felt itchy, and more than anything the world seemed somewhat dizzy. It wasn’t him. He did not feel off-balance. Everything else did. He was almost afraid to close his eyes, because when he opened them the sky would be green and the horses would be speaking French, and every time he tried to take a step, the ground would not be quite where he expected it.
And then Audley said, “You are the Duke of Wyndham. The law is always on your side.”
Thomas really wanted to hit him again. Especially since it would prove Audley right. No one would dare cross him here in the village. He could beat Audley to a bloody pulp, and his remains would be swept neatly aside.
All hail the Duke of Wyndham. Just think of all the perks of the title he’d never got around to taking advantage of.
They reached the posting inn, and he tossed the reins to the stable boy who came running out to greet them. Bobby, his name was. Thomas had known him for years. His parents were tenants—honest, hardworking folk, who insisted upon bringing a basket of shortbread to Belgrave every year at Christmas, even though they knew that the Cavendishes could not possibly be in need of food.
“Your grace,” Bobby said, beaming up at him, even as he panted from his run.
“You’ll take good care of them, Bobby?” Thomas nodded toward Audley’s mount as the boy took those reins as well.
“The best, sir.”
“Which is why I would never trust them to someone else.” Thomas tossed him a coin. “We’ll be an…hour?” He looked to Audley.
“If that,” Audley confirmed. He turned down toward Bobby then, looked the lad straight in the eye, which Thomas found surprising. “You weren’t here yesterday,” he said.
“No, sir,” Bobby replied. “I only works five days each week.”
Thomas saw to it that the innkeeper got a little bonus each month for giving the younger boys an extra day off. Not that anyone save the innkeeper knew about it.
“Have you met Lucy?”
Lucy? Thomas listened with interest.
“The black gelding?” Bobby’s eyes lit up.
“You have a gelding named Lucy?” Thomas asked.
“That’s the one,” Audley said to Bobby. And then to Thomas, “It’s a long story.”
“He’s a beauty,” Bobby said, his eyes round with awe. Thomas could not help but be amused. Bobby had been mad for horses since before he could walk. Thomas had always thought he’d end up hiring him to run the Belgrave stables some day.
“I’m rather fond of him myself,” Audley said. “Saved my life once or twice.”
Bobby’s eyes went round as saucers. “Really?”
“Really. Napoleon doesn’t stand a chance against a fine British horse like that.” Audley glanced over toward the stables. “He’s well?”
“Watered and brushed. I did it myself.”
While Audley made arrangements to have his ridiculously named gelding readied for the ride home, Thomas headed over to the taproom. He supposed he disliked Audley slightly less than before—one had to respect a man who had so much respect for a horse—but still, a pint of ale could not possibly be out of place on a day like this.
He knew the innkeeper well. Harry Gladdish had grown up at Belgrave, the son of the assistant to the stable master. Thomas’s father had judged him to be an acceptable companion—he was so far below Thomas in rank that there could be no arguing who was in charge. “Better a stable hand than a cit,” Thomas’s father had often said.
Usually in front of Thomas’s mother, who was the daughter of a cit.
Harry and Thomas did, however, argue about who was in charge, and quite frequently, too. As a
result, they’d become fast friends. The years had sent them their separate ways—Thomas’s father let Harry share in Thomas’s lessons at Belgrave, but he wasn’t about to sponsor his education any further than that. Thomas had gone off to Eton and Cambridge, and then to the glittering excesses of London. Harry had stayed in Lincolnshire, eventually taking over the inn his father had bought when his wife had come into an unexpected inheritance. And while they were perhaps a bit more aware of the differences in their rank than they had been as children, the easygoing friendship of their youth had proven remarkably enduring.
“Harry,” Thomas said, sliding onto a stool near the bar.
“Your grace,” Harry said, with that wicked smile he always used when using an honorific.
Thomas started to scowl at him for his cheek, then almost laughed. If he only knew.
“Pretty eye, there,” Harry said, quite conversationally. “Always did like the royal purple.”
Thomas thought of ten different retorts, but in the end lacked the energy to bother with any of them.
“A pint?” Harry asked.
“Of your best.”
Harry pulled the pint, then set it down on the bar. “You look like hell,” he said baldly.
“Warmed over?”
“Not even that,” Harry said, shaking his head. “Your grandmother?”
Harry knew his grandmother well.
“Among other things,” Thomas said vaguely.
“Your fiancée?”
Thomas blinked. He hadn’t given Amelia much thought that afternoon, which was remarkable, considering that he’d nearly tupped her in a meadow just six hours earlier.
“You have one,” Harry reminded him. “About this high…” He made an indication in the air.
She was taller than that, Thomas thought absently.
“Blond,” Harry continued, “not too buxom, but—”
“Enough,” Thomas snapped.
Harry grinned. “It is your fiancée, then.”
Thomas took a swig of his ale and decided to let him believe it. “It’s complicated,” he finally said.
Harry immediately leaned against the bar with a sympathetic nod. Truly, he was born to the job. “It always is.”
As Harry had married his sweetheart at the age of nineteen and now had six little urchins tearing through the small house he had behind the inn, Thomas wasn’t completely convinced that he was qualified to offer judgments on matters of the heart.
“Had a bloke in here just the other day…” Harry began.
Then again, he’d surely heard every sob story and sad tale from here to York and back.
Thomas drank his ale as Harry nattered on about nothing in particular. Thomas wasn’t really listening, but it did occur to him, as he sucked down the last dregs, that never in his life had he been more grateful for mindless chatter.
And then in walked Mr. Audley.
Thomas stared at his tankard, wondering if he ought to ask for another. Downing it in under a minute sounded rather appealing just then.
“Good evening to you, sir!” Harry called out. “How’s your head?”
Thomas looked up. Harry knew him?
“Much better,” Audley replied.
“Gave him my morning mixture,” Harry told Thomas. He looked back up to Audley. “It always works. Just ask the duke here.”
“Does the duke often require a balm for overindulgence?” Audley inquired politely.
Thomas looked at him sharply.
Harry did not answer. He’d seen the look that passed between them. “You two know each other?”
“More or less,” Thomas said.
“Mostly less,” Audley added.
Harry looked at Thomas. Their eyes met for barely a second, but there were a hundred questions in the exchange, along with one astoundingly comforting reassurance.
If he needed him, Harry would be there.
“We need to go,” Thomas said, pushing his stool back to stand. He turned to Harry and gave him a nod.
“You’re together?” Harry asked with surprise.
“He’s an old friend,” Thomas said. More of a grunt, really.
Harry did not ask from where. Harry always knew which questions not to ask.
He turned to Audley. “You didn’t mention you knew the duke.”
Audley shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”
Harry appeared to consider this, then turned back to Thomas. “Safe journeys, friend.”
Thomas tipped his head in response, then headed out the door, leaving Audley to follow in his wake.
“You’re friends with the innkeeper,” Audley stated once they were outdoors.
Thomas turned to him with a broad, false smile. “I’m a friendly fellow.”
And that was the last thing either of them said until they were just minutes from Belgrave, when Audley said, “We’ll need a story.”
Thomas looked at him askance.
“I assume you don’t wish to set it about that I am your cousin—your father’s elder brother’s son, to be precise—until you have verification.”
“Indeed,” Thomas said. His voice was clipped, but that was mostly because he was angry at himself for not having brought the same thing up earlier.
The look Audley gave him was blindingly annoying. It started with a smile but quickly turned to a smirk. “Shall we be old friends, then?”
“From university?”
“Eh, no. Do you box?”
“No.”
“Fence?”
Like a master. “I’m passable,” he said with a shrug.
“Then that’s our story. We studied together. Years ago.”
Thomas kept his eyes straight ahead. Belgrave was looming ever closer. “Let me know if you wish to practice,” he said.
“You’ve equipment?”
“Everything you could possibly need.”
Audley glanced at Belgrave, which now hung over them like a stone ogre, blotting out the last dusky rays of the sun. “And everything one doesn’t need, too, I imagine.”
Thomas didn’t comment, just slid off his mount and handed the reins to a waiting footman. He strode inside, eager to put his back to the man behind him. It wasn’t that he wished to cut him, exactly. It was more that he wished to forget him.
Just think how lovely his life had been, merely twelve hours earlier.
No, make that eight. Eight, and he’d have had a bit of fun with Amelia as well.
Yes, that was the optimal cut-off point between his old life and new. Post-Amelia, pre-Audley.
Perfection.
But ducal powers, far-reaching though they were, did not extend to the turning back of time, and so, refusing to be anything but the sophisticated, utterly self-contained man he used to be, he gave the butler a quick set of orders about what to do with Mr. Audley, and then entered the drawing room, where his grandmother was waiting with Grace.
“Wyndham,” his grandmother said briskly.
He gave her a curt nod. “I had Mr. Audley’s belongings sent up to the blue silk bedroom.”
“Excellent choice,” his grandmother replied. “But I must repeat. Do not refer to him as Mr. Audley in my presence. I don’t know these Audleys, and I don’t care to know them.”
“I don’t know that they would care to know you, either.” This, from Mr. Audley, who had entered the room on swift but silent feet.
Thomas looked to his grandmother. She merely lifted a brow, as if to point out her own magnificence.
“Mary Audley is my late mother’s sister,” Audley stated. “She and her husband, William Audley, took me in at my birth. They raised me as their own and, at my request, gave me their name. I don’t care to relinquish it.”
Thomas could not help it. He was enjoying this.
Audley then turned to Grace and bowed. “You may refer to me as Mr. Audley if you wish, Miss Eversleigh.”
Grace bobbed an idiotic little curtsy then looked over at Thomas. For what? Asking permission?
“She c
an’t sack you for using his legal name,” Thomas said impatiently. Good God, this was getting tedious. “And if she does, I shall retire you with a lifelong bequest and have her sent off to some far-flung property.”
“It’s tempting,” Audley murmured. “How far can she be flung?”
Thomas almost smiled. As irritating as Audley was, he did have his moments. “I am considering adding to our holdings,” Thomas murmured. “The Outer Hebrides are lovely this time of year.”
“You’re despicable,” his grandmother hissed.
“Why do I keep her on?” Thomas wondered aloud. And then, because it had been a bloody long day, and he’d lost whatever comfort he’d gleaned from his ale, he walked over to a cabinet and poured himself a drink.
And then Grace spoke up, as she frequently did when she thought she was required to defend the dowager. “She is your grandmother.”
“Ah yes, blood.” Thomas sighed. He was beginning to feel punchy. And he wasn’t even the least bit soused. “I’m told it’s thicker than water. Pity.” He looked over at Audley. “You’ll soon learn.”
Audley just shrugged. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe Thomas just imagined it. He needed to get out of here, away from these three people, away from anything that screamed Wyndham or Cavendish or Belgrave or any one of the other fifteen honorifics attached to his name.
He turned, looking squarely at his grandmother. “And now my work here is done. I have returned the prodigal son to your loving bosom, and all is right with the world. Not my world,” he could not resist adding, “but someone’s world, I’m sure.”
“Not mine,” Audley said with a slow, careless smile. “In case you were interested.”
Thomas just looked at him. “I wasn’t.”
Audley smiled blandly, and Grace, God bless her, looked ready to jump between them again, should they attack each other anew.
He dipped his head toward her, in an expression of wry salute, then tossed back his liquor in one shockingly large swallow. “I am going out.”
“Where?” demanded the dowager.
Thomas paused in the doorway. “I have not yet decided.”
Truly, it didn’t matter. Anything was fine. Just not here.