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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.
