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Miles’s expression was one of utter disbelief. “Have you lost your mind?”
He didn’t think he had, but he hadn’t entirely ruled it out.
“I’ll ask you again—what of the entail? Surely you can’t simply sell. The entail must be rather complicated.”
“Oh, it is,” Joshua assured him. “Very complicated for a man with an heir. But I don’t have an heir, and the entail ensures that I hold the property for subsequent generations. As there are no subsequent generations, I should think I might do what I want.”
“There are no subsequent generationsyet,” Miles pointed out. “You make it sound as if you’re seventy-five years old, and not the thirty-three years that you are.”
“Thirty-three years or seventy-five, there will be no more Parkers after me, and therefore, no more dukes.”
“Your mother—”
“Can no long bear children.”
Miles snorted. “How can you be entirely sure there are no other relatives? That the line of Parkers will cease to exist? How can you predict your future with such ease?”
“I can’t predict it. But I can deduce what will probably be true given the current facts.”
“I think you’re mad. Well and truly mad.”
“Entirely possible.”
Miles shook his head. “I intend to speak with your mother. I think she should know what you’re about.”
His mother couldn’t summon enough to care. When John had died, so had all her hopes. Her surviving son had never been much of an inspiration to her. When Diana died, it felt to him as if she blamed him as much as he blamed himself. “I wish you all the luck with that, my lord.”
Miles was clearly exasperated. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you.” He joined Joshua at the window and stood with his arms crossed, his jaw clenched. He remained like that for several moments, stewing in his inability to force Joshua to his will. It was the same demeanor he’d had when they were boys, and Miles had not been able to best him in their boxing matches.
“Here come more wagons,” Miles said absently.
The road to Iddesleigh House had begun to resemble a trade route what with the number of coaches and wagons that were moving back and forth. Just this morning, Miles had pointed out a set of wagons carrying crates of who knew what, headed for Iddesleigh House.
“This should be quite the ball. I wonder if the Weslorian treasury has been advised as to the extravagance of it?” Miles asked idly, then moved away from the window.
Joshua remained, watching the wagons disappear over a crest. He’d tried not to think at all about that blasted ball, but it was impossible—everyone in the village was talking about it. It was remarkable the number of things being ferried to Iddesleigh—did a ball with a royal princess really command so much fuss? Perhaps. She was terribly eccentric. For all he knew, she planned to race into the ball on horseback.
Eccentric and reckless. And also unsettlingly pretty.
“What’s that?” Miles asked.
Joshua turned; Miles was pointing at a bonnet. Joshua hadn’t told his friend about the mad princess—Miles already believed he complained too much about her. He’d found the hat after she and the girls and her useless guards had trotted away after that near catastrophe. What would have happened had he not been on the drive just then?
Miles picked up the bonnet. It was yellow, with little white silk flower buds appended to it in various places. Joshua knew from having examined it that two of the buds were covered in dirt. A strand of gold hair dangled from one of the bonnet strings, and he imagined her tying it up under her chin, catching a bit of hair as she did.
Miles was staring at him with a new expression. One that suggested he didn’t know who he was looking at. Joshua turned back to the window. “I found it.”
He recalled how her face had been completely devoid of color after she’d nearly fainted off her mount. It had struck him that for all her outrageousness, she wasn’t as bold as she acted. She’d seemed fragile in that moment.
“Found it? Where?”
There was a twinge of suspicion in Miles’s voice. Hardly a surprise—Miles knew him better than most. Joshua shrugged. “On the road to the village.” Not a complete fabrication. One would have to take the drive from Hollyfield if one intended to go to Iddesleigh.
“And you picked it up?”
Miles was gearing up for in inquisition, so Joshua was somewhat relieved when Butler entered the room with a tea service. Miles put the bonnet down.
Butler placed the service on the table between two chairs. “Will there be anything else?”
