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The bishop released him to an arm’s length. “You’re looking well, my boy.”
Adrian felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “I’m twenty-two. I’m hardly a boy.”
“No.” Denmore let go of his shoulders and gave him another appraising look. “No, you are not. You’ve grown to be so much more.”
Knowing they were uncle and nephew, not employer and employed, had left a mark. Denmore had pretended not to know Adrian when they met by chance at an exhibition a year ago. He had, in fact made an elaborate inquiry as to how a man like him had come to run a china-works near Bristol, so that the friend who accompanied him would not guess at their relationship.
The next time Adrian visited, he had given his uncle an ultimatum.
“Someday,” his uncle had said sadly. “I will. I promise.”
Someday had not yet arrived.
The bishop turned away. “You’ve arrived not a moment too soon. You always seem to know precisely when I need you.”
“That would be because you asked me to come.”
Over the last year, Adrian had had ample time to consider his situation in life. He knew how lucky he was. His family had money from their various business endeavors. His mother had inherited property, which had been added to his great-great-uncles’ holdings.
Adrian had a loving, overbearing brother and a massive extended family.
He didn’t need Denmore, not for anything.
Still, he had asked Denmore for that one thing, and he’d asked for it repeatedly. He’d asked when he was fifteen, and when he was sixteen, and again and again for years and years. His uncle had never said no; he had always said later. Not now.
Not now, not with the war in America still raging. Not now; Denmore needed time to bring his older brother, the duke, into the scheme. Not now; Denmore was being considered for elevation to bishop, and he could do so much more once he was appointed.
Not now; he was too new in his position; he did not dare make waves.
Not now, not now. But…someday. Someday, he had promised. Of course the time would come someday.
“So,” Adrian said, eyeing his uncle. “Last time we talked, I asked you to acknowledge my family. My mother, me, my brother. Is it time yet?”
His uncle smiled slowly. “It’s time.”
Oh, thank God. Adrian could just imagine the look on Grayson’s face when he brought this news back. He could not hold back his delighted smile; he felt as if his whole face would crack with joy. He hadn’t precisely been estranged from his uncle this last year over this very issue, but he’d pulled back. He hadn’t visited. His letters had been a little cold. He hated being cold.
“I always said the time would come,” his uncle said, patting Adrian’s hand. “I always said I would acknowledge you one day, and never mind the consequences. You know I love you, do you not?”
Adrian’s nose twitched on that word: consequences. They hadn’t really argued about consequences last time.
When he’d been his uncle’s amanuensis-slash-nephew–in–hiding, he had needed to construct arguments in letters on his uncle’s behalf. Denmore had taught him to hide his passion behind rational argument. Adrian always tried to meet people on the ground they knew best. Last time Adrian had met his uncle, they had debated the matter as if it were a question set before Parliament and they were indifferent observers hashing out the benefits and detriments.
“So.” Adrian folded his arms. He imagined the rationality his uncle preferred settling over his shoulders like a cloak, hiding the furious joy that threatened to break through his calm. “How have you planned the announcement? Have you consulted with your brother the duke yet?”
“Ah…” Denmore blinked.
“Will you tell them that your sister did not perish, as your father claimed so many years ago?” Adrian had thought about this for so long; he had so many ideas as to how to proceed. “Or would you rather start by introducing my father and brother? I know you worry about the connection with trade, but the trade my family engages in is of a particularly honorable sort. My father is a respectable gentleman who has devoted his life to a just cause—”
“Adrian.”
Ah. He hadn’t sufficiently hidden his enthusiasm. Adrian bit back his excitement.
“There is no way to soften the blow our family’s reputation will suffer when the news is out,” his uncle said. “A duke’s daughter ran off with a black abolitionist thirty-five years ago. My father told everyone she was dead rather than admit the truth. It will be a scandal no matter how it’s announced.”
Adrian took a deep breath. No point getting angry at the truth, even if his own uncle was the one saying it in that way. Except…it was not entirely the truth.
“My mother did not run off,” Adrian said mildly. “My mother was a widow. It took my parents three years working together on the matter of abolition before they decided to marry, which they did—legally, properly.” Rational; that was the way to convince his uncle. “You of all people know it matters how an issue is presented. My mother married a man who cared about a cause. How does that pose a problem?”
“It won’t matter that they were married.”
“As for my father, he—”
“Nor that your father was a man of property.”
“That’s not the point.” Adrian lived in his own skin, damn it. His father could have been supreme emperor of the entire world for all that British society cared. The fact that his father was black would be a scandal, no matter how it was laid out. He knew that, but still—“I know it won’t matter to some people, but it should, and if we are to have any chance of changing the way things are, we must talk of my parents as people first.”
His uncle just looked at him briefly, then turned away.
From his uncle’s point of view, this must seem a frightening step. It hurt a little, that this man who had been so kind still saw Adrian as an object of fear and not just a nephew—but Adrian had been lucky in his life. He could handle a little more personal hurt, if it led to the right result. His uncle had agreed to acknowledge him, and that was a good step forward. Adrian could acknowledge the hurt once the joy had come.
“Very well, then. If you’ve decided to do it, then it’s a matter of accepting the consequences as inevitable. I suppose Lassiter is no longer a problem?”
Bishop Lassiter was his uncle’s rival in the church. He had been Denmore’s excuse for the last two years. There was no rivalry so bitter as one between two men equal in rank and seniority, who opposed each other on every principle.
Adrian’s uncle brightened. “I’m so glad you mentioned him. That’s the very thing I need to discuss with you. He won’t be a problem…soon.”
Adrian looked over. There was a light in his uncle’s eyes.
His uncle leaned in excitedly. “Do you by any chance recall that favor you did for me on accident several years ago?”
“No,” Adrian said swiftly. No, he wouldn’t do it, he meant, but his uncle took it as simple denial.
“When th
ose men took you for a servant and divulged those very embarrassing details in your presence. Well.” His uncle slipped a piece of paper across the table with a self-satisfied smile. “Here,” he said. “Lassiter is advertising for a valet.”
It took Adrian a moment to process those words. To understand what his uncle was asking him to do.
He shook his head. “Impossible.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of obtaining references on your behalf,” the man said, as if Adrian had spoken of a practical impossibility instead of the fact that his soul rebelled against the thought of entering service to spy on another man. “Lassiter won’t connect the letters to me at all. And there’s a fashion for black servants in London at the moment. Lassiter is vain enough to indulge.”
Adrian turned his head away as much as he could without being rude. “I could not possibly pose as a valet.”
“My Henry will give you tips,” his uncle said. “And you won’t need to fool Lassiter for long. You’re so bright—you’ll pick up anything you need to know in no time at all.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“You don’t have faith in your own intelligence?”
“It’s not that. It’s this: I’m not a servant. And I really don’t like lying.”
“Of course you aren’t. I’m not asking you to be one. I’m just asking you to pose as one. Be rational about this, Adrian.”
Rational. It was always rationality with Denmore, and the word was only brought out when his uncle proposed something that left a bad taste in Adrian’s mouth.
“I have business that requires my attention,” Adrian said. It was not a lie. He had four weeks until production had to start on his series of plates, and there were still no designs.
“Isn’t Grayson around now? He can handle it.”
“Yes, but—” But Grayson has no artistic sense, Adrian didn’t say, because it was one thing to make fun of your brother to his face, and another entirely to do it to someone outside the immediate family. “But Grayson is only in England because he’s overseeing the final production of the cable-laying ship and securing the contracts for the business to proceed. He hasn’t time to handle what is going on at Harvil, too.”
