“You said you saw the paper, Daniel. Shepherdston’s nothing if not a true gentleman. What did you expect him to do?”
“Exactly what he’s doing,” Daniel replied. “It’s just such a shock. When I left, he was a confirmed bachelor, and I’ve only been gone a few days!”
“I’m told that sometimes it happens like that.”
“Marriages forced by scandal?”
Jonathan smiled. “Those too. But I was talking about people falling in love.”
“Shepherdston’s in love with Miss Eckersley?”
“Head over heels,” Jonathan confirmed. “He’s known her forever, and it’s taken him this long to realize he’s in love with her.” He looked at his cousin to see if Daniel could handle another shock. “And that’s not all.”
Daniel prepared himself for the worst. Whatever the worst was.
“Lord Rob got married this morning.”
Hearing Lord Robert Mayhew, Jarrod’s godfather, had gotten married after fifteen years as a widower came as an even greater shock to Daniel. Daniel had no idea Lord Rob had ever contemplated remarriage. “To whom?”
“Lady Henrietta Dunbridge.”
“Dunbridge?” Daniel vaguely recalled being introduced to a lovely widow several years Lord Rob’s junior who had accompanied a young lady making her presentation into society some three or four seasons ago. “There was a Lady Dunbridge. But I believe she was some relation to the current Lord Dunbridge.”
Jonathan nodded. “His aunt by marriage.”
“Lord Rob married Reggie Dunbridge’s aunt?”
Jonathan smiled. “She also happens to be Miss Sarah Eckersley’s maternal aunt. She was born Miss Henrietta Helford. She became Lady Calvin Dunbridge upon her marriage, but she and her husband were later estranged, and he insisted that she not be styled with his given name, so on her rare occasions in London, she became known as Lady Henrietta Dunbridge.”
“You’re joking!”
“Not at all,” Jonathan answered. “Imagine, several days ago, Jarrod had no family except the Free Fellows League and Lord Rob. And today, in addition to Lord Rob and us, he’s getting an aunt by marriage and a bride.”
Daniel began to laugh. He’d only been gone a few days, and the world as he knew it had been turned on its ear. Everything had changed. He couldn’t have been more surprised if Jonathan had told him the dowager duchess had gotten married.
“So, Johnny Manners,” Daniel drawled, “tell me everything that’s happened since I left for my trip to the coast. And start with the duel I read about in this morning’s papers.” Daniel took his feet off the leather ottoman, stretched his legs, then propped them up again.
“Despite what you read in the papers,” Jonathan explained, “there was no duel. Jarrod, Griff, and Colin waited at the dueling oak for over an hour past the appointed time, but Dunbridge didn’t appear.”
“So I heard.”
Jonathan arched an eyebrow in query.
“Miranda’s footman heard it at the Cocoa Tree when he stopped for coffee this morning. He told us that nobody knows why Dunbridge made it a point to challenge Jarrod, then failed to appear.”
Jonathan snorted. “Somebody knows.”
“That’s exactly what I thought when he told me,” Daniel said. “And that’s exactly why I came to you.”
“Well, it’s one story you won’t be reading in the papers.” Jonathan glanced disapprovingly at a copy of the Morning Chronicle on the table beside his favorite chair.
“I knew it!” Daniel crowed.
“Knew what?” Jonathan tried to look innocent and failed.
Daniel recognized the look on his cousin’s face. “I knew you wouldn’t allow your hero to face a duel alone, and since you weren’t with Shepherdston, Avon, or Grantham at the dueling oak, I knew you had to, behind Dunbridge’s failure to appear.”
Jarrod Shepherdston had been Jonathan’s hero since Jonathan had occupied the cot beside Jarrod’s at Knightsguild. Back then, Jonathan Manners had been a lonely and frightened boy of seven. He’d whined incessantly and cried for his nanny nearly every night. The other boys at Knightsguild had made him their whipping boy, but Jarrod Shepherdston and the other Free Fellows had gone out of their way to be kind to him and to protect him as best they could—if only, Jarrod had confessed when they’d invited Jonathan to join the Free Fellows League a year ago, to bring an end to Manners’ whining and crying.