“My lord, you will forgive my abrupt appearance, but I must speak with you on a matter of some urgency.”
“All right.” Effie sat, feeling a twinge of nerves.
“I haven’t known how—or whether—to broach this subject, but I think it is something you ought to know. It’s a delicate matter. But you know you can trust me, because . . .”
“Because you made a printing press vanish at my behest.”
“Yes.” Mr. Nancarrow smiled, and there was something strangely reassuring about that smile, the way one corner turned up a little farther than the other.
“Your father is ill,” Mr. Nancarrow said.
Oh. That wasn’t what Effie had expected. “Has anyone called a doctor?”
“That is why he returned early from Italy after having made that initial trip. He had an episode of some sort there and came back here to consult with his doctors.”
“He ought not to be traveling, then. He ought to choose Highworth or here and stay put so he can recover.”
“He . . . is not going to recover. Which is why he went back to join your mother and sister.”
“I beg your pardon?” Effie couldn’t have heard that correctly. The Earl of Stonely was just fifty-three.
“He is dying, my lord,” Mr. Nancarrow said gently. “That is why they haven’t come back. He is too ill to travel now.”
Effie got to his feet, propelled upward by a silent tug as if he were a bird being carried on an air current. He grasped the back of the settee, momentarily concerned that he might actually take flight.
“I can see you’re upset,” Mr. Nancarrow said.
The truth was, Effie wasn’t upset that his father was dying. Which was probably ill-done of him. The boy in the wardrobe would have been upset, but Effie was not. He was no longer that boy, he supposed. Which was itself a kind of triumph.
But if he was no longer that boy, and he was no longer the kind of man who enjoyed being the center of attention at balls, who was he?
“There’s something else,” Mr. Nancarrow said, his voice sounding uncharacteristically ragged.
“All right.” Effie sat again, noticing that Mr. Nancarrow’s hands, which were folded in his lap, were gripping each other so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
“I was born in Calecastle,” Mr. Nancarrow said, naming the village closest to Highworth. Mr. Nancarrow jutted his chin out slightly. “My mother has no husband.”
Had that chin jut been defensive? Did he think Effie was judging him? “Well, your mother’s marital status is hardly your fault.” Effie had to admit that his views on the matter had been shaped by his conversations with Julianna, and by his work as Mrs. Landers, and he was glad they had been.
“Some would say it matters not whose fault it is, that I bear the consequences of my mother’s sin: I was born on the wrong side of the blanket, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Well, you’ve managed to make something of yourself. You went to university, did you not?”
“I did.”
“What did you study?”
“Botany.”
“See? Very impressive. I’m not sure how you managed that; it’s really rather remarkable.”
“I managed it because your father paid for it.”
“He did?” Effie was, frankly, shocked. He had heard his father make unkind remarks about natural-born children before, and about the women who gave birth to them.
“He did. He always made sure I—and my mother—had what we needed.”
“Well, that’s rather surprising. I can’t think why he would do that.”
