“Acomplication.”
Blaise let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “That, at least, is honest.”
Marcus set the book down heavily on the desk. “You said you would give me time.”
“I did.” Blaise’s voice was mild. “And I have. Unfortunately, Daniel is not inclined to wait while you sort through your every feeling on the matter.”
“I do not need to sort through anything.” Marcus turned to face him fully, arms braced on the back of the chair as if holding himself in place. “You keep asking the same thing, and I keep answering the same way. There is no evidence that my father married my mother.None whatsoever. You can say ‘you are legitimate’ until your tongue withers, but that will not magically create a wedding certificate into existence.”
Blaise’s fingers flexed where they rested against his sleeve. “I am not relying on magic,” he said. “Only on the tedious workings of truth.”
Marcus gave a short, harsh laugh. “After the lawsuit becomes public, even if by some miracle we find proof, it will be too late. They will have read the news, and I will be branded a bastard forever. Whatever parchment you produce after will be a mere footnote, not a salvation.”
“Whattheysay,” Blaise replied, choosing each word with care, “and whatyouare, are not the same thing.”
“That is a fine sentiment,” Marcus said coldly. “Perhaps you can embroider it on a cushion. I daresay the London ladies would find it soothing.”
Blaise suppressed an exasperated smile. “I would pay a shocking amount to see you present any cushion to a woman.”
A reluctant flicker pulled at Marcus’s mouth, but it was gone almost at once.
“You are not listening. Thetonloves a scandal too much to relinquish it. They will say that I am a bastard, and then they will say I am a bastard who tried to pretend he was not. It will be twice the humiliation.”
Blaise held his nephew’s gaze for a moment, then stepped away from the wall and moved to the desk, where a pile of neglected letters rested beneath an open treatise on Roman law.
“Perhaps I should begin with something smaller than the entire edifice of your identity. At least come to the party.”
“I beg your pardon?” Marcus stared at him as if he had suggested attending a public beheading for amusement.
“The party I am planning at the end of the week,” Blaise clarified. “At Knoxford. It will be a modest affair.” His mouth twisted. “By our standards, which means thetonwill be there in force, half of them curious about my face, the other half curious about my sins. I would like you to be present.”
“So you can put me on display?” Marcus scoffed.
“I would like to ensure that when Daniel makes his move, you are not a half-forgotten nephew tucked away in Oxford, but a man people have met and spoken with and quite possibly liked. It is harder for society to devour someone whose hand they have shaken.”
“You overestimate their stomachs,” Marcus muttered venomously.
“You underestimate the power of being known.”
Marcus gave him a look that might have bordered on mutinous amusement if he were not so determined to be offended. “I do not want anything to do with theton. Those people?—”
“Those people might save you. Even the viscountess is trying to help you.”
Marcus glanced aside, his fingers tightening on the back of the chair. “Why is she wasting her time?”
Blaise allowed himself the smallest, inward satisfaction. “You recall her, then. The viscountess.”
“Yes, she was… quite nice,” Marcus admitted and shrugged. “Considering the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” Blaise frowned at the boy, and he looked at him smugly.
“What, with you barging into her house and threatening to throw her out.”
“What a brutal word. I merely informed her of the law.”
Blaise thought of Iris’s defiant chin and how that same chin had tilted up in the shadows of their privacy, not in defiance but in her throes of passion.
“That did not happen in the way you imply,” Blaise continued defensively. “She is a difficult woman to simply just… throw out.”
