AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Youarethe earl.”
Jack knew his nod was sullen. Why shouldn’t it be? The man was an interfering ass.
Murmurs rose around them, and Jack saw his mistake. He should have taken the duke aside for this talk, though he hadn’t known how it would go, of course. Now the man had ruined the camp for Jack. The Travelers would treat him differently, see him as more alien than he’d already been. They might not throw him out, but their easy comradeship was ended. Had the duke known that would happen? Or was he simply too pleased with his own cleverness to notice?
Jack moved away from the group. No need for them to hear more. The duke followed him. “I won’t go back to London to be schooled by Lady Wilton,” Jack said, dropping all pretense of an accent.
“I can’t imagine anyone who would want to do that.”
His tone was understanding. Jack gave him a closer look.
“But it does seem time to take up your proper position,” the duke added.
“Proper!” Jack spat the syllables. “That word seems to cover a vast deal of judgment and spite. I’ve been told I am entirelyimproper, and I don’t see why I should ‘take up’ anything at all.” In fact, he wasn’t sure what his “position” meant, beyond Lady Wilton’s wish to change everything about his appearance and manner.
“It is a matter of duty,” said the other man. “A great estate, and title, brings responsibility for many other people.” His expression grew wry. “As I have had cause to learn.”
“This is what you have been taught and trained to accept,” Jack pointed out.
The duke nodded.
“Myfather was thrown away by your proper society. As if he was worthless. I think it broke him.” He hadn’t really understood his father’s history until he came here. The bare outline didn’t convey what his father must have felt, tossed from a place like Ferrington Hall into a solitary scramble for survival. Papa hadn’t been able to rise to the challenge, true. But it was a greater one than Jack had realized.
“That was unconscionable,” said the duke. He sounded truly outraged.
Jack searched for insincerity in the fellow’s handsome face.
“It is too bad his family cannot make it up to him,” he went on. “Perhaps we may do so to you.”
The only family Jack had known of was Lady Wilton. Was this duke putting himself in the same category? He was some sort of distant cousin, Miss Finch had said. Did that really mean anything? He shrugged.
“Do you intend to run away again?” There seemed to be sympathetic curiosity in the man’s cool, blue gaze.
At one time, he had. But now there was something keeping him here. Jack hesitated.
The duke took this as encouragement. “I suggest we stage your official ‘arrival’ at Ferrington Hall in a day or so. I can set the thing up, with a carriage and so on. You move in and set up as the earl. We’ll welcome you. Grandmama can’t complain about that.”
“Grandmama?”
“I beg your pardon. I thought you knew. Lady Wilton is my grandmother.”
This made Jack frown. He couldn’t imagine calling that harridanGrandmama. Or anything else, actually. Also, the duke looked about his own age. Or just a few years older. “Great-grandmother, you mean?”
The man shook his head. “My father married late. He was well past thirty. His sister—your grandmother—seems to have been married right out of the schoolroom.”
“Made to, most likely,” said Jack, thinking of the autocratic Lady Wilton.
“I expect so. A seventeen-year-old girl would find it difficult to resist. If she wished to.”
“She died young, my father said.” Jack’s curiosity about his family battled his determination to remain aloof. He’d hoarded every crumb of history his father let fall when he was into the brandy. It added up to very little.
The duke nodded. “I never knew her.”
“And then Lady Wilton sent my father across the sea when he was barely out of school.”
“So I understand.”
“A fine sort of family,” said Jack bitterly.
