To that, the dowager replied, “Is Wyndham returned?”
“I don’t believe so,” Grace answered. She looked up to the footman. “Graham?”
“No, miss, he is not at home.”
The dowager pursed her lips into an expression of irritated discontent. “Very inconsiderate of him.”
“It is early yet,” Grace said.
“He did not indicate that he would be gone all night.”
“Is the duke normally required to register his schedule with his grandmother?” Mr. Audley murmured, clearly out to make trouble.
Grace gave him a peeved look. Surely this did not require a reply. He smiled in return. He enjoyed vexing her. This much was becoming abundantly clear. She did not read too much into it, however. The man enjoyed vexing everyone.
Grace turned back to the dowager. “I am certain he will return soon.”
The dowager’s expression did not budge in its irritation. “I had hoped that he would be here so that we might talk frankly, but I suppose we may proceed without him.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” Grace asked before she could stop herself. And indeed, the dowager responded to her impertinence with a withering stare. But Grace refused to regret speaking out. It was not right to make determinations about the future in Thomas’s absence.
“Footman!” the dowager barked. “Leave us and close the doors behind you.”
Once the room was secure, the dowager turned to Mr. Audley and announced, “I have given the matter great thought.”
“I really think we should wait for the duke,” Grace cut in. Her voice sounded a little panicked, and she wasn’t sure why she was quite so distressed. Perhaps it was because Thomas was the one person who had made her life bearable in the past five years. If it hadn’t been for him, she’d have forgotten the sound of her own laughter.
She liked Mr. Audley. She liked him rather too much, in all honesty, but she would not allow the dowager to hand him Thomas’s birthright over breakfast.
“Miss Eversleigh-” the dowager bit off, clearly beginning a blistering set-down.
“I agree with Miss Eversleigh,” Mr. Audley put in smoothly. “We should wait for the duke.”
But the dowager waited for no one. And her expression was one part formidable and two parts defiant when she said, “We must travel to Ireland. Tomorrow if we can manage it.”
Chapter Ten
Jack’s usual response when delivered unpleasant tidings was to smile. This was his response to pleasant news as well, of course, but anyone could grin when offered a compliment. It took talent to curve one’s lips in an upward direction when ordered, say, to clean out a chamber pot or risk one’s life by sneaking behind enemy lines to determine troop numbers.
But he generally managed it. Excrement…moving defenseless among the French…he always reacted with a dry quip and a lazy smile.
This was not something he’d had to cultivate. Indeed, the midwife who’d brought him into the world swore to her dying day that he was the only baby she’d ever seen who emerged from his mother’s womb smiling.
He disliked conflict. He always had, which had made his chosen professions-the military, followed by genteel crime-somewhat interesting. But firing a weapon at a nameless frog or lifting a necklace from the neck of an overfed aristocrat-this was not conflict.
Conflict-to Jack-was personal. It was a lover’s betrayal, a friend’s insult. It was two brothers vying for their father’s approval, a poor relation forced to swallow her pride. It involved a sneer, or a shrill voice, and it left a body wondering if he’d offended someone.
Or disappointed another.
He had found, with a near one hundred percent success rate, that a grin and a jaunty remark could defuse almost any situation. Or change any topic. Which meant that he very rarely had to discuss matters that were not of his choosing.
Nonetheless, this time, when faced with the dowager and her unexpected (although, really, he should have expected it) announcement, all he could do was stare at her and say, “I beg your pardon?”
“We must go to Ireland,” she said again, in that obey-me tone he expected she had been born with. “There is no way we shall get to the bottom of the matter without visiting the site of the marriage. I assume Irish churches keep records?”
Good God, did she think all of them were illiterate? Jack forced down a bit of bile and said quite tightly, “Indeed.”
“Good.” The dowager turned back to her breakfast, the matter good and settled in her mind. “We shall find whoever performed the ceremony and obtain the register. It is the only way.”
Jack felt his fingers bending and flexing beneath the table. It felt as if his blood were going to burst through his skin. “Wouldn’t you prefer to send someone in your stead?” he inquired.
The dowager regarded him as she might an idiot. “Who could I possibly trust with a matter of such importance? No, it must be me. And you, of course, and Wyndham, since I expect he will want to see whatever proof we locate as well.”
The usual Jack would never have let such a comment pass without his own, exceedingly ironic, One would think, but this current Jack-the one who was desperately trying to figure out how he might travel to Ireland without being seen by his aunt, uncle, or any of his cousins-actually bit his lip.
“Mr. Audley?” Grace said quietly.
He didn’t look at her. He refused to look at her. She’d see far more in his face than the dowager ever would.
“Of course,” he said briskly. “Of course we must go.” Because really, what else could he say? Terribly sorry, but I can’t go to Ireland, as I killed my cousin?