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Her sharp brown gaze strayed toward Dain’s door. “A joke. Well, that would explain. I discerned a resemblance—that remarkable stare—but I thought my imagination had run away with me.” Her attention returned to Bertie. “It’s been a most exciting day. And this makes a splendid conclusion, do you not think? That Miss Grenville—that is to say, Her Grace—turns out to be a relative of the duke’s good friend.”
“Best of friends,” Bertie corrected. “Which is why I were so surprised when Dain said I was to be groomsman, not him, and told Ainswood we drew straws, when we never did. It were Dain who decided he’d give away the bride, and no one argues with him usually—except Ainswood, but he weren’t there at the moment.”
Behind the spectacles, Miss Price’s enormous eyes glistened ominously. “I thought she hadn’t anyone and was quite alone in the world, but she wasn’t, was she? Her kinsman gave her away.” She blinked a few times and swallowed. “I’m glad I didn’t know. I should have made a watering pot of myself. It is so…affecting. Such a kind gesture, to give her away. And she deserves it, you know. She is the kindest, m-most generous…” Her voice broke.
“Oh, I say.” Bertie gazed at her in alarm.
She withdrew a scrap of a handkerchief from somewhere in the voluminous froth of her wrapper and hastily wiped her tears away. “I beg your pardon,” she said shakily. “It is simply that I am happy for her. And…relieved.”
Bertie was also relieved—that she’d stopped short of waterworks. “Yes, well, like you say, it were an exciting day and I reckon you could do with some rest. Not to mention there’s a draft, and even if there wasn’t no danger of you takin’ a chill you oughtn’t be wandering about in your unmentionables at this hour. Most of the fellows’re half-seas over at the very least, and no tellin’ what ideas they could take into their heads.”
She stared at him for a moment, then her mouth turned up and parted and a soft laugh came out. “Oh, you are so droll, Sir Bertram. Ideas in their heads. Those tipsy fellows should grow faint with exhaustion trying to find me in all these yards and yards of…unmentionables,” she finished with another small chuckle.
Bertie wasn’t tipsy, and he was sure he could find her easily enough, considering she stood well within easy reach. Her eyes were sparkling with humor now, as though he were the wittiest fellow on earth, and a pink glow was forming in her cheeks, and he thought she was the prettiest girl on earth. Then, realizing he was the one with ideas in his head, he told himself to make a bolt for it.
Only he moved in the wrong direction and somehow there was a great deal of white froth in his arms and a soft mouth touching his and then colored lights were dancing about his head.
At this same moment, Lydia was strongly tempted to make her cousin see stars. He had flummoxed her utterly.
“Dain could lecture on family history for weeks,” Lady Dain was saying. She and Lydia sat in chairs by the fire, glasses recently filled with champagne in their hands. “He pretends to find it boring or makes a joke of it, but it is one of his hobbyhorses.”
“It isn’t as though I can escape it,” said Dain. “We’ve rows upon rows of books, boxes of documents. The Ballisters never could bear to discard anything of the slightest historical value. Even my father could not bring himself to wipe your mama’s existence altogether from the records. Still, Jess and I wouldn’t have known to look if Sellowby hadn’t whetted our curiosity. He’d spotted you after our wedding and noted the resemblance to my sire and his ancestors. It wasn’t until after your Vinegar Yard encounter with Ainswood made the gossip rounds, though, that Sellowby wrote to us. Everything he’d heard, coupled with his occasional glimpses of Grenville of the Argus, inclined him to suspect a Ballister connection.”
“If you only knew how careful I was to avoid Sellowby,” Lydia said. “And all for naught. I vow, he must be part bloodhound.”
“By gad, Grenville, was that why you climbed up to the first floor of Helena’s house instead of going in by the door, like a normal person?” Ainswood said in soft incredulity. “You risked your neck to avoid Sellowby?”
“I didn’t want the past raked up,” Lydia said.
Their keenly alert expressions told her they expected more of an explanation, but she couldn’t bear to say more. Those who’d known about her mother’s elopement and its sordid consequences were dead and buried. Anne Ballister’s was a lowly cadet branch of the family tree. To the Great World, they were virtually unknown. Her sad story had commenced and ended out of the glare of the Beau Monde’s stage, where more sensational dramas with more important principals—most notably, the Prince of Wales—riveted attention.
Lydia had kept the secret, determinedly, because she did not want her mother’s folly thrust upon that stage, her degradation the topic of tea table conversations.
“Some of it must come out now,” Ainswood said. “I’m amazed Sellowby held his tongue for this long. We can’t expect him to keep quiet forever.”
“He doesn’t know the details,” said Dain. “Grenville is hardly an uncommon surname. It’s enough to say her parents quarreled with the family, and no one knew what had become of them or had the least idea they’d produced a daughter until now. Even that is more explanation than the world deserves.”
“I should like something explained,” said Lady Dain to Lydia. “We still haven’t learned how His Grace made his amazing discovery.”
“It followed directly upon his discovering my birthmark,” Lydia said.
Her Ladyship’s lips quivered. She looked up at Dain, who had gone very still.
“It isn’t possible,” he said.
“That’s what I told myself,” said Ainswood. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”
Dain’s dark glance darted from his cousin to his friend. “You’re sure?”
“I should know that mark from a furlong away,” Ainswood said. “The ‘mark of the Ballisters,’ you told us at school—the one incontrovertible proof that your mother did not play your father false. And when Charity Graves started pestering you about the brat Dominick, I was the one who went down to Athton to make sure he was yours, not mine. There it was in the same place, the same little brown crossbow.”
He glowered at Dain.
“I had no idea my cousin bore that mark, I assure you,” said Dain. “I was under the impression that it appeared only in males of the family.” He smiled faintly. “A pity my dear papa didn’t know. The holy badge of the Ballisters appearing on a female—product of the union between a nobody and a young woman he doubtless assisted in permanently ejecting from the family. He’d have gone off in an apoplexy the instant he heard—and I should have been one delighted young orphan.”
He turned to the duke. “Well, then, are you done working yourself into a lather over my little joke? Or are you appalled to find yourself connected with me? If you don’t want a Ballister for your wife, we shall be happy to take her.”
“The devil you will.” Ainswood drained his glass and set it down. “I haven’t endured five weeks of trials unimaginable in their horror only to turn her over to you, long lost family or not. As to you, Grenville,” he added irritably, “I’d like to know why you haven’t offered to break his big nose. He played you for a fool as well—and you were upset enough a while ago about your peasant blood contaminating mine. You’re taking this precious calmly.”
“I can take a joke,” she said. “I’ve married you, haven’t I?” She set down her nearly empty glass and rose. “We must not keep Lady Dain up all night. Mothers-to-be require a reasonable amount of sleep.”
Lady Dain rose. “We’ve scarcely had a chance to talk. Not that one could hope to carry on an intelligent conversation with a pair of noisy males at close hand, competing for precedence. You must return to Athcourt with us tomorrow.”
“Certainly you must,” said Dain. “It’s the ancestral home, after all.”
“I have an ancestral home as well.” Ainswood advanced to place a possessive arm about Lydia’s shoulders. “She’s on
ly your cousin, Dain, and a distant one at that. And she’s a Mallory now, not a Ballister, no matter what’s stamped upon her—”
“Another time, perhaps,” Lydia cut in smoothly. “Ainswood and I have a great deal to sort out—and I have work to complete for the Argus, which—”
“Yes, as you said, a great deal to sort out,” her spouse said, his voice tight.
He made quick work of the good nights, and they’d started down the hall when Lady Dain called to them. They paused. She hurried up to them, pressed a small oblong package into Lydia’s hand, kissed her cheek, then hurried away.
Lydia waited until they’d reentered their own room to unwrap the parcel.
Then a small, startled sob escaped her.
She heard Ainswood’s voice, alarmed. “Good God, what have they—”
She turned in his arms, felt them close, warm, and strong about her. “My mother’s diary.” The words were muffled in the folds of his dressing gown. “They’ve given me back Mama’s d-diary.”
