Page 19

Grace waited one careful moment, then said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t.”

The dowager speared her with an angry stare.

“We don’t know where he is,” Grace pointed out.

“We will find him.”

“But, ma’am—”

“Enough!” the dowager ground out. Her voice was not loud, but it contained sufficient passion to silence Grace immediately. After a moment passed, she stole a glance at the older woman. She was sitting ramrod straight—too straight, really, for a ride in the carriage, and her right hand was bent and angled like a claw, pulling back the curtain so she might see outside.

Trees.

That’s all there was to see. Grace couldn’t imagine why the dowager was staring out so intently.

“If you saw him,” the dowager said, her low voice cutting into Grace’s thoughts, “then he is still in the district.”

Grace said nothing. The dowager wasn’t looking at her, in any case.

“Which means,” the icy voice continued, “that there are only a very few places he might be. Three posting inns in the vicinity. That is all.”

Grace rested her forehead in her hand. It was a sign of weakness, something she usually tried not to display in front of the dowager, but there was no maintaining a stiff facade now. They were going to kidnap him. She, Grace Catriona Eversleigh, who had never so much as nicked a ha’penny ribbon from a fair, was going to be party to what had to be a high crime. “Dear Lord,” she whispered.

“Shut up,” the dowager snapped, “and make yourself useful.”

Grace grit her teeth. How the devil did the dowager think she could be useful? Surely any manhandling that needed doing would be performed by the footmen, each of whom stood, as per Belgrave regulations, five feet eleven inches tall. And no, she did not mistake their purpose on the journey. When she had looked askance at the dowager, the reply had been a terse, “My grandson might need convincing.”

Now, the dowager growled, “Look out the window,” speaking to her as if she’d turned idiot overnight. “You got the best look at him.”

Dear God, she would gratefully forfeit five years off her life just to be anywhere but inside this carriage. “Ma’am, I said—he was at the end of the drive. I didn’t really see him.”

“You did last night.”

Grace had been trying not to look at her, but at that, she could not help but stare.

“I saw you kissing him,” the dowager hissed. “And I will warn you now. Don’t try to rise above your station.”

“Ma’am, he kissed me.”

“He is my grandson,” the dowager spat, “and he may very well be the true Duke of Wyndham, so do not be getting any ideas. You are valued as my companion, but that is all.”

Grace could not find the outrage to react to the insult. Instead, she could only stare at the dowager in horror, unable to believe that she had actually spoken the words.

The true Duke of Wyndham.

Even the very suggestion of it was scandalous. Would she throw over Thomas so easily, strip him of his birthright, of his very name? Wyndham was not just a title Thomas held, it was who he was.

But if the dowager publicly championed the highwayman as the true heir…dear God, Grace could not even imagine the depth of the scandal it would create. The impostor would be proven illegitimate, of course—there could be no other outcome, surely—but the damage would be done. There would always be those who whispered that maybe Thomas wasn’t really the duke, that maybe he ought not be so secure in his conceits, because he wasn’t truly entitled to them, was he?

Grace could not imagine what this would do to him. To all of them.

“Ma’am,” she said, her voice quavering slightly. “You cannot think that this man could be legitimate.”

“Of course I can,” the dowager snapped. “His manners were impeccable—”

“He was a highwayman!”

“One with a fine bearing and perfectly correct accent,” the dowager retorted. “Whatever his current station, he was brought up properly and given a gentleman’s education.”