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Grace’s heart pounded. She looked at Thomas. He was pale and his hands were shaking, and she felt like such a traitor. She could have told him. She could have warned him.

She had been a coward.

“Your parents,” Thomas said, his voice low. “Were they married?”

“What is your implication?” Mr. Audley demanded, and for a moment Grace feared that they would come to blows again. Mr. Audley brought to mind a caged beast, poked and prodded until he could stand it no more.

“Please,” she pleaded, jumping between them yet again. “He doesn’t know,” she said. Mr. Audley couldn’t know what it meant if he was indeed legitimate. But Thomas did, and he’d gone so still that Grace thought he might shatter. She looked at him, and at his grandmother. “Someone needs to explain to Mr. Audley—”

“Cavendish,” the dowager snapped.

“Mr. Cavendish-Audley,” Grace said quickly, because she did not know how to style him without offending someone in the room. “Someone needs to tell him that…that…”

She looked to the others for help, for guidance, for something, because surely this was not her duty. She was the only one of them there not of Cavendish blood. Why did she have to make all of the explanations?

She looked at Mr. Audley, trying not to see the portrait in his face, and said, “Your father—the man in the painting, that is—assuming he is your father—he was his grace’s father’s…elder brother.”

No one said anything.

Grace cleared her throat. “So, if…if your parents were indeed lawfully married—”

“They were,” Mr. Audley all but snapped.

“Yes, of course. I mean, not of course, but—”

“What she means,” Thomas cut in sharply, “is that if you are indeed the legitimate offspring of John Cavendish, then you are the Duke of Wyndham.”

And there it was. The truth. Or if not the truth, then the possibility of the truth, and no one, not even the dowager, knew what to say. The two men—the two dukes, Grace thought with a hysterical bubble of laughter—simply stared at each other, taking each other’s measure, and then finally Mr. Audley’s hand seemed to reach out. It shook, quivered like the dowager’s when she was attempting to find purchase, and then finally, when it settled on the back of a chair, his fingers grasped tightly. With legs that were clearly unsteady, Mr. Audley sat down.

“No,” he said. “No.”

“You will remain here,” the dowager directed, “until this matter can be settled to my satisfaction.”

“No,” Mr. Audley said with considerably more conviction. “I will not.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” she responded. “If you do not, I will turn you in to the authorities as the thief you are.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Grace blurted out. She turned to Mr. Audley. “She would never do that. Not if she believes that you are her grandson.”

“Shut up!” the dowager growled. “I don’t know what you think you are doing, Miss Eversleigh, but you are not family, and you have no place in this room.”

Mr. Audley stood. His bearing was sharp, and proud, and for the first time Grace saw within him the military man he’d said he once was. When he spoke, his words were measured and clipped, completely unlike the lazy drawl she had come to expect from him.

“Do not speak to her in that manner ever again.”

Something inside of her melted. Thomas had defended her against his grandmother before; indeed, he’d long been her champion. But not like this. He valued her friendship, she knew that he did. But this…this was different. She didn’t hear the words.

She felt them.

And as she watched Mr. Audley’s face, her eyes slid to his mouth. It came back to her…the touch of his lips, his kiss, his breath, and the bittersweet shock when he was through, because she hadn’t wanted it…and then she hadn’t wanted it to end.

There was perfect silence, stillness even, save for the widening of the dowager’s eyes. And then, just when Grace realized that her hands had begun to tremble, the dowager bit off, “I am your grandmother.”

“That,” Mr. Audley replied, “remains to be determined.”

Grace’s lips parted with surprise, because no one could doubt his parentage, not with the proof propped up against the drawing room wall.

“What?” Thomas burst out. “Are you now trying to tell me that you don’t think you are the son of John Cavendish?”