The Wyndham Legacy (Legacy 1)

He read again, feeling his face grow red:

My lord,

It was kind of you to send grapes from your succession house. Badger has quite delighted in preparing them in various dishes.

Give my regards to Aunt Gweneth and the Twins.

And she’d signed it, “Your servant”—nothing more, not Duchess, not her name, nothing. Not even obedient servant, which she wasn’t, damn her eyes.

He looked up to see Crittaker standing in the doorway, obviously afraid to say anything until Marcus recognized him.

“What is Miss Cochrane’s name?”

“The Duchess, my lord.”

“No, no, her real name. It was I who named her Duchess when she was nine years old, but I have no memory at all of her real name.”

Crittaker looked nonplussed. “I don’t know. Shall I ask Lady Gweneth?”

“Don’t bother. It really isn’t important. I just received a letter from her. She received the grapes. Badger is cooking with them. She is fine, I assume. She says nothing more. I suppose I will write her back, but I would rather kill her, or at least maim her, or strangle her just a little bit, to get her attention.”

Crittaker backed out of the door. “We can review your other correspondence later, my lord.”

Marcus grunted, picked up a piece of foolscap, and dipped his pen into the onyx inkwell atop the desk. He wrote:

Dear Duchess:

I am more pleased than I can tell you about Badger’s pleasure with the damned grapes.

I trust you are well though you didn’t say. I am well, Aunt Gweneth is well, the Twins are well, though Antonia is ordering novels from Hookhams in London and telling me that she has developed a fondness for sermons and that is what comprises her orders. Fanny is gaining flesh and Aunt Gweneth has told her that no gentleman will want to speak to her if she has more than one chin. I don’t suppose you will tell me what you are doing to earn sufficient funds for the cottage and food and Badger—

Your servant, Marcus Wyndham

He’d written too much, he thought, she didn’t deserve all the words he’d bothered to write her, but nonetheless he carefully folded the paper and slipped it into an envelope, writing her direction in a neat hand. He dipped his signet ring into the hot wax he’d prepared, and pressed it on the envelope.

He turned back to the London Gazette and read the latest war news. Schwarzenberg had crossed the Bohemian Mountains and tried to storm Dresden. However, the French had turned the city into a fortified camp and they’d beaten off the poorly coordinated allied attack. Of course then Napoleon had arrived with more French corps and Schwarzenberg ended up losing thirty-eight thousand men and retreating to Bohemia. Thirty-eight thousand! Marcus couldn’t take it in. Good God, so many soldiers, slaughtered through incompetence, men now dead who shouldn’t be. He ached to return to action but he knew that until he married and produced an heir that he couldn’t take that kind of risk. He owed it to the four-hundred-year direct line of Wyndhams.

Damn.

He turned in his chair and yanked the bell pull. Crittaker showed his face around the door within two minutes. Marcus sighed and allowed himself to be drowned in estate business for the next three hours. At least he knew enough now about his uncle’s various business dealings not to make a complete ass of himself.

PIPWELL COTTAGE

NOVEMBER 1813

The Duchess simply stared at the letter. She couldn’t take it in. She read it again and then once more. She called out faintly, not realizing that she’d yelled, “Badger, please come here, quickly.”

She heard him crashing through the kitchen, through the hallway, and into the drawing room. He was breathing hard and obviously alarmed.

“I’m sorry, please, come here and read this. I can’t believe it. It is absurd, surely a jest. It is—” She fell to a stop and thrust out the letter to Badger.

He looked from her white face to the letter. He read it through, whistled softly, then read it again, and yet one more time.

He seated himself beside her on the settee and took her hands in his. He said quietly, “Well, this is a shock. It seems that everyone was looking for you. It took the earl only two months to find you, but this gentleman took considerably longer. He claims he’s been searching since last May. Well, now he’s found you.”

“Marcus doesn’t know about any of this.”

“No, and that’s appropriate, I think. This solicitor fellow is a realist. He knows that your position is automatically precarious, that everything rests upon his speaking to you and not allowing the earl or any of the family to get to you first. He is a wise man.”