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Around them the room went utterly still.

Except for Amelia, who looked ready to crumble.

“Do you understand me?”

And Jack…Well, he was Jack, and so he simply lifted his brows, and he didn’t quite smirk, but he was quite certain that his smile clearly lacked sincerity. He looked Thomas in the eye.

“No.”

Thomas said nothing.

“No, I don’t understand.” Jack shrugged. “Sorry.”

Thomas looked at him. And then: “I believe I will kill you.”

Lady Amelia let out a shriek and leapt forward, grabbing onto Thomas seconds before he could attack Jack.

“You may steal my life away,” Thomas growled, just barely allowing her to subdue him. “You may steal my very name, but by God you will not steal hers.”

“She has a name,” Jack said. “It’s Willoughby. And for the love of God, she’s the daughter of an earl. She’ll find someone else.”

“If you are the Duke of Wyndham,” Thomas said furiously, “you will honor your commitments.”

“If I’m the Duke of Wyndham, then you can’t tell me what to do.”

“Amelia,” Thomas said with deadly calm, “release my arm.”

If anything, she pulled him back. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Lord Crowland chose that moment to step between them. “Er, gentlemen, this is all hypothetical at this point. Perhaps we should wait until—”

And then Jack saw his escape. “I wouldn’t be the seventh duke, anyway,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?” Crowland said, as if Jack were some irritant and not the man he was attempting to bludgeon into marrying his daughter.

“I wouldn’t.” Jack thought furiously, trying to put together all the details of the family history he’d learned in the past few days. He looked at Thomas. “Would I? Because your father was the sixth duke. Except he wasn’t. Would he have been? If I was?”

“What the devil are you talking about?” Crowland demanded.

But Jack saw that Thomas understood his point precisely. And indeed, he said, “Your father died before his own father. If your parents were married, then you would have inherited upon the fifth duke’s death, eliminating my father—and myself—from the succession entirely.”

“Which makes me number six,” Jack said quietly.

“Indeed.”

“Then I am not bound to honor the contract,” Jack declared. “No court in the land would hold me to it. I doubt they’d do so even if I were the seventh duke.”

“It is not to a legal court you must appeal,” Thomas said, “but to the court of your own moral responsibility.”

“I did not ask for this,” Jack said.

“Neither,” Thomas said softly, “did I.”

Jack said nothing. His voice felt like it was trapped in his chest, pounding and rumbling and squeezing out the air. The room was growing hot, and his cravat felt tight, and in that moment, as his life was flipping and spiraling out of his control, he knew only one thing for certain.

He had to get out.

He looked over for Grace, but she’d moved. She was standing now by Amelia, holding her hand.