“I don’t object.” She looked up. “I told you at breakfast that I didn’t feel safe here without you. An eccentric old woman with strong opinions and your uncle’s guards are not the same as you, but it’s considerably better than staying here and waiting.” A slight, careful pause. “And I like your grandmother.”
“She likes you too. She told me so, which she almost never does about anyone.” Oliver held her gaze. “I’m sorry. About this morning. You were right that I didn’t ask you. I decided whatwas best and told you instead. It’s a habit I’m apparently still learning to break.”
Something in her expression shifted, not quite a smile, but adjacent to one. “Apparently.”
“I’m working on it.”
“I can see that.” She stood, smoothing her hands against the russet skirt. “Two nights on the road. I’ll need a maid’s dress. Annie might know where to find one.”
“Annie,” Oliver agreed, already moving through the logistics, “and we’ll need a story about which rooms Megan is occupying in the east wing, and someone to carry trays there convincingly for the duration.” He was still talking when he pulled the door open and found, on the other side of it, his uncle.
The Duke of Saxton was not a man who hovered, and yet there he was, in the corridor, with the particular expression of a person who has been standing still for some time and is actively pretending otherwise.
Oliver looked at him.
“I was passing,” said the Duke.
“You never pass this corridor. Your rooms are in the west wing.”
“I was passing,” the Duke repeated with great dignity. “I couldn’t help but overhear?—”
“The door was closed.”
“My mother,” the Duke said, with the long-suffering air of a man invoking a force of nature, “has a carrying voice.” He straightened to his full height, which was Oliver’s height, which was considerable. “London.”
“Yes.”
“Your grandmother intends to go to London.”
“She does.”
The Duke was quiet for a moment. Something moved through his expression—not the calculating assessment he deployed in the study, but something older and less managed.He looked, for just a moment, like a man working through a private arithmetic that had nothing to do with the family’s political standing.
“Then I am coming too,” he said.
Oliver stared at him. “Uncle?—”
“You will require a degree of weight in these conversations that a marquess alone may not carry.” The Duke’s voice had returned to its full, formal authority. “A duke carries more.” A pause, almost imperceptible. “And if my mother is getting into a carriage for London at her age, in the middle of winter, without telling anyone why, then someone with sense needs to be present.”
Oliver opened his mouth. Closed it, glanced at the ceiling.
“The carriages will be crowded,” he said.
“We’ll take two.”
“The roads are terrible.”
“We’ll go slowly.”
“We’ll need three nights on the road at a minimum. Possibly four.”
“Then we leave tomorrow,” said the Duke, with the air of a man solving the problem, “and stop arguing about it.”
Oliver looked at Megan. Megan looked at Oliver, and in her expression was something she had the grace not to say out loud, but which was perfectly legible, nonetheless.
He turned back to his uncle.
“Fine,” he said. “Seven o’clock tomorrow morning. And you’re managing your own carriage and luggage. I had best get on and make the arrangements. You do realize that Penharrow’s men might attack the castle without you here?”
