But she jabbed a slice of stewed apple all the same.

“How could you?” Jack accused.

Grace actually turned in her chair, unable to watch.

“What the devil are you talking about?” the dowager demanded. “Miss Eversleigh, why are you facing the window? What is he about?”

Grace twisted back around, hand over her mouth. “I’m sure I do not know.”

The dowager’s eyes narrowed. “I think you do know.”

“I assure you,” Grace said, “I never know what he is about.”

“Never?” Jack queried. “What a sweeping comment. We’ve only just met.”

“It feels like so much longer,” Grace said.

“Why,” he mused, “do I wonder if I have just been insulted?”

“If you’ve been insulted, you shouldn’t have to wonder at it,” the dowager said sharply.

Grace turned to her with some surprise. “That’s not what you said yesterday.”

“What did she say yesterday?” Mr. Audley asked.

“He is a Cavendish,” the dowager said simply. Which, to her, explained everything. But she apparently held little faith in Grace’s deductive abilities, and so she said, as one might speak to a child, “We are different.”

“The rules don’t apply,” Mr. Audley said with a shrug. And then, as soon as the dowager was looking away, he winked at Grace. “What did she say yesterday?” he asked again.

Grace was not sure she could adequately paraphrase, given that she was so at odds with the overall sentiment, but she couldn’t very well ignore his direct question twice, so she said, “That there is an art to insult, and if one can do it without the subject realizing, it’s even more impressive.”

She looked over to the dowager, waiting to see if she would be corrected. “It does not apply,” the dowager said archly, “when one is the subject of the insult.”

“Wouldn’t it still be art for the other person?” Grace asked.

“Of course not. And why should I care if it were?” The dowager sniffed disdainfully and turned back to her breakfast. “I don’t like this bacon,” she announced.

“Are your conversations always this oblique?” Mr. Audley asked.

“No,” Grace answered, quite honestly. “It has been a most exceptional two days.”

No one had anything to add to that, probably because they were all in such agreement. But Mr. Audley did fill the silence by turning to the dowager and saying, “I found the bacon to be superb.”

To that, the dowager replied, “Is Wyndham returned?”

“I don’t believe so,” Grace answered. She looked up to the footman. “Graham?”

“No, miss, he is not at home.”

The dowager pursed her lips into an expression of irritated discontent. “Very inconsiderate of him.”

“It is early yet,” Grace said.

“He did not indicate that he would be gone all night.”

“Is the duke normally required to register his schedule with his grandmother?” Mr. Audley murmured, clearly out to make trouble.

Grace gave him a peeved look. Surely this did not require a reply. He smiled in return. He enjoyed vexing her. This much was becoming abundantly clear. She did not read too much into it, however. The man enjoyed vexing everyone.

Grace turned back to the dowager. “I am certain he will return soon.”

The dowager’s expression did not budge in its irritation. “I had hoped that he would be here so that we might talk frankly, but I suppose we may proceed without him.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Grace asked before she could stop herself. And indeed, the dowager responded to her impertinence with a withering stare. But Grace refused to regret speaking out. It was not right to make determinations about the future in Thomas’s absence.

“Footman!” the dowager barked. “Leave us and close the doors behind you.”

Once the room was secure, the dowager turned to Mr. Audley and announced, “I have given the matter great thought.”

“I really think we should wait for the duke,” Grace cut in. Her voice sounded a little panicked, and she wasn’t sure why she was quite so distressed. Perhaps it was because Thomas was the one person who had made her life bearable in the past five years. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have forgotten the sound of her own laughter.

She liked Mr. Audley. She liked him rather too much, in all honesty, but she would not allow the dowager to hand him Thomas’s birthright over breakfast.

“Miss Eversleigh-” the dowager bit off, clearly beginning a blistering set-down.

“I agree with Miss Eversleigh,” Mr. Audley put in smoothly. “We should wait for the duke.”

But the dowager waited for no one. And her expression was one part formidable and two parts defiant when she said, “We must travel to Ireland. Tomorrow if we can manage it.”

Chapter Ten

Jack’s usual response when delivered unpleasant tidings was to smile. This was his response to pleasant news as well, of course, but anyone could grin when offered a compliment. It took talent to curve one’s lips in an upward direction when ordered, say, to clean out a chamber pot or risk one’s life by sneaking behind enemy lines to determine troop numbers.

But he generally managed it. Excrement…moving defenseless among the French…he always reacted with a dry quip and a lazy smile.

This was not something he’d had to cultivate. Indeed, the midwife who’d brought him into the world swore to her dying day that he was the only baby she’d ever seen who emerged from his mother’s womb smiling.

He disliked conflict. He always had, which had made his chosen professions-the military, followed by genteel crime-somewhat interesting. But firing a weapon at a nameless frog or lifting a necklace from the neck of an overfed aristocrat-this was not conflict.

Conflict-to Jack-was personal. It was a lover’s betrayal, a friend’s insult. It was two brothers vying for their father’s approval, a poor relation forced to swallow her pride. It involved a sneer, or a shrill voice, and it left a body wondering if he’d offended someone.

Or disappointed another.

He had found, with a near one hundred percent success rate, that a grin and a jaunty remark could defuse almost any situation. Or change any topic. Which meant that he very rarely had to discuss matters that were not of his choosing.

Nonetheless, this time, when faced with the dowager and her unexpected (although, really, he should have expected it) announcement, all he could do was stare at her and say, “I beg your pardon?”

“We must go to Ireland,” she said again, in that obey-me tone he expected she had been born with. “There is no way we shall get to the bottom of the matter without visiting the site of the marriage. I assume Irish churches keep records?”

Good God, did she think all of them were illiterate? Jack forced down a bit of bile and said quite tightly, “Indeed.”

“Good.” The dowager turned back to her breakfast, the matter good and settled in her mind. “We shall find whoever performed the ceremony and obtain the register. It is the only way.”

Jack felt his fingers bending and flexing beneath the table. It felt as if his blood were going to burst through his skin. “Wouldn’t you prefer to send someone in your stead?” he inquired.

The dowager regarded him as she might an idiot. “Who could I possibly trust with a matter of such importance? No, it must be me. And you, of course, and Wyndham, since I expect he will want to see whatever proof we locate as well.”

The usual Jack would never have let such a comment pass without his own, exceedingly ironic, One would think, but this current Jack-the one who was desperately trying to figure out how he might travel to Ireland without being seen by his aunt, uncle, or any of his cousins-actually bit his lip.

“Mr. Audley?” Grace said quietly.

He didn’t look at her. He refused to look at her. She’d see far more in his face than the dowager ever would.

“Of course,” he said briskly. “Of course we must go.” Because really, what else could he say? Terribly sorry, but I can’t go to Ireland, as I killed my cousin?

Jack had been out of society for a number of years, but he was fairly certain this would not be considered good breakfast table conversation.

And yes, he knew that he had not pulled a trigger, and yes, he knew that he had not forced Arthur to buy a commission and enter the army along with him, and yes-and this was the worst of it-he knew that his aunt would never even dream of blaming him for Arthur’s death.

But he had known Arthur. And more importantly, Arthur had known him. Better than anyone. He’d known his every strength-and his every weakness-and when Jack had finally closed the door on his disastrous university career and headed off to the military, Arthur had refused to allow him to go alone.

And they both knew why.

“It might be somewhat ambitious to try to depart tomorrow,” Grace said. “You will have to secure passage, and-”

“Bah!” was the dowager’s response. “Wyndham’s secretary can manage it. It’s about time he earned his wages. And if not tomorrow, then the next day.”

“Will you wish for me to accompany you?” Grace asked quietly.

Jack was just about to interject that, damn yes, she’d be going, or else he would not, but the dowager gave her a haughty look and replied, “Of course. You do not think I would make such a journey without a companion? I cannot bring maids-the gossip, you know-and so I will need someone to help me dress.”

“You know that I am not very good with hair,” Grace pointed out, and to Jack’s horror, he laughed. It was just a short little burst of it, tinged with a loathsome nervous edge, but it was enough for both ladies to stop their conversation, and their meal, and turn to him.

Oh. Brilliant. How was he to explain this? Don’t mind me, I was simply laughing at the ludicrousness of it all. You with your hair, me with my dead cousin.