But she ignored him and slid her fingers along the underside of the frame.
“Blaise.”
He turned. Their eyes met, and he knew that this time she truly found something.
“There is something here,” she found herself whispering.
Iris reached in until her fingers closed around something. She withdrew a packet, wrapped in oiled paper, tied with a simple bit of string. Dirt and plaster dust smudged the edges, but the knot was fastidiously neat.
Iris held the packet out.
“You found it,” he said. “You should open it.”
“Are you sure?” She seemed shy, but Blaise had never been surer in his life.
Iris pulled on the string, and it came away with surprising ease, as if it had been tied for a long time and grown tired. The oiled paper crackled. Inside lay another folded sheet, thicker, with an embossed seal broken along one edge. She unfolded that, too, until they saw the old-fashioned, elegant, and precise handwriting. The words swam for a moment, then sharpened before Blaise’s eyes.
On this day, the fifteenth of May in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and ninety-nine, in the Parish Church of St.—
His eyes moved down, heart hammering.
Benjamin Arthur Vale, Duke of Knoxford, and Miss Diana Jane Hapwell, both of this parish, were married in this church by banns…
Below are the signatures. Benjamin’s, bold and clean. Diana’s, smaller, a little shaky as if written with a hand that trembled. Then the witnesses: Daniel Arthur Vale, Viscount.
* * *
“You are alive?” Daniel roared as he sat comfortably in Blaise’s chair in the Knoxford with Alistair opposite him.
Blaise threw the marriage certificate at Alistair, who studied it carefully. Iris waited just outside the door for him, and he could not wait to get back to her.
“You cannot prove that it is the original,” Daniel said. His voice trembled, but he lifted his chin with stubborn pride. “Any clerk could have forged Vale next to her name. You think judges do not see such tricks?”
Blaise had never seen Daniel look so small. He tapped the page with one finger, just beside Benjamin’s unmistakable signature. The ink, browned by time, had bled in a familiar way at the tail of the V.
“No,” Blaise said, keeping his tone even. “Any clerk could not have imitated my brother’s hand.”
Daniel’s eyes darted to the book and away again. He folded his arms, but the movement lacked its usual languor.
“You broke into my house,” he argued.
“You lied and hid my brother’s certificate to try and steal a title that does not belong to you,” Blaise accused him, almost lazily.
Alistair shifted between them, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. He had been silent thus far, playing the watchful second, but his Blaise knew he was observing and noting.
Blaise’s blood thrummed with a satisfaction so cold it bordered on relief. This was what he had promised his brother—justice for the boy who believed himself a bastard. For Iris, too, though Daniel did not yet know the extent of that debt.
“We have what we came for.” He turned the book around so that its spine faced Daniel, the two signatures spread between them like judgment.
“Here is what will happen,” he continued threateningly. “Tomorrow, I will present this to my solicitor. The certified copies will be deposited with my own lawyers, with the bishop’s registrar, and with the headmaster of Oxford. Marcus will be recognized as Benjamin’s legitimate son and as the true Duke of Knoxford.”
“If you do any of that,” Daniel said hoarsely, “the scandal will explode across every drawing room in London. A hidden marriage and a child denied his title for years. Do you think society will look kindly on your brother? On you, for hiding the boy? They will call you complicit!”
“They may,” Blaise said. “But their outrage will not change the law. I have never relied on society’s kindness, Daniel. Only on its greed and its boredom. The scandal will amuse them for a fortnight. The title, however, will remain where it belongs.”
He watched that sink in.
“And what of me?” Daniel asked in a low, shameful voice. “You imagine you can simply disinherit me from any standing, toss me aside like refuse?”
