He relaxed. “I gathered as much from what you said earlier.”
“My father has been trying to get Sarah into Almack’s for the past couple of years and hasn’t managed it yet. He’s . . . er . . . difficult, so I understand why they won’t givehima voucher. But she’s perfectly lovely and about as respectable as a widow can be.”
“Who’sSarah?” he asked. “Is there a fourth Harper sister who didn’t want to be part of the business?”
“Oh! No. Sorry.” Diana drew him over to the area under the musician’s balcony, which wasn’t as crowded or noisy. “She’s our . . . stepmother, I guess you’d call her. She was a widow with children when Papa married her. But she’s only a bit older than we are, so we tend to call her by her given name. I suppose we should be calling her Lady Holtbury, but that’s confusing to us because then we think one of us is talking about Mama.”
“Your father certainly wasted no time in getting remarried.” If Geoffrey hadn’t already hated what the man’s actions had done to his daughters, this would have convinced him to do so.
She shrugged. “Papa needs an heir. Sometimes I wonder if he’d merely been waiting for an excuse to divorce Mama so he could try again with some other woman because Mama had given him only daughters.”
That sent a chill through Geoffrey. “If you’re right, his behavior is loathsome. There’s more to a marriage than siring an heir, no matter what the aristocracy believes.”
“You really need to stop talking as if you’re not part of the aristocracy,” she said with a shake of her head. “You’re a duke and will be expected to sire an heir.”
“I don’t feel like a duke.”
“But surely you have had time to get used to the possibility.”
“Actually, I have not.” He probably should at least tell her about that, so she could better understand his situation. “Rosy wasn’t lying about Father’s family cutting him off when he married my mother. After that, they were all dead to him—it was a mutual disinheriting, if there’s any such thing. So Father didn’t keep up with the lineages, assuming he was way down on the list to become duke. He died still believing he was sixth in line and I was seventh.”
“But he was wrong.”
“Yes.” Geoffrey blinked at her. “Wait, how did you know?”
Diana gave him a sheepish smile. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but after we took you on as a client, we traced the family connections. They’re very twisted.”
“To say the least. My predecessor lived so long, he not only outlasted his three sons, none of whom had possessed male heirs, but also a couple of cousins who’d outlasted their own sons. By the time my predecessor died, the College of Arms had already traced the dukedom, at his request, up through several ancestors to the original title-holder and then come down a completely different branch of the family to find me. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—by then my father’s two brothers had died without male issue.”
“If your father had lived, he would have been duke before you.”
“And Viscount Brookhouse. Yes.” Perhaps Father wouldn’t have died quite so soon either. Because his rotten relatives would have embraced him with open arms, and he wouldn’t have been so sunk into melancholy that he’d disappeared into a bottle. Or bottles, as it were.
Then again, he’d hated his relatives, so perhaps not.
A thought occurred to him. “Why did you and your sisters trace my line of inheritance?”
She shrugged. “So we would know who your relations were if we needed to invite them to any of our social occasions for you.”
He shot her a dark look. “You didn’t invite them to Rosy’s ball, did you?”
“No, indeed. Your mother made it quite clear they weren’t to be invited to anything ever. Besides, I gather that your most immediate relations—your grandparents on your father’s side—are deceased.”
“If you say so. I never knew or cared. They washed their hands of Father once he married Mother. If I could have refused the dukedom and the viscountcy, too, I would have, but aside from the fact that it’s mine whether I want it or not, Mother pointed out that actually claiming the title might help with some of my projects down the line. God knows, the Duke of Bridgewater has certainly benefited from his title.”
Diana cocked her head. “I don’t know who that is.”
“That’s because he never took part in politics and almost never came to London. Spent all his time building canals.” The Duke of Bridgewater was a man after Geoffrey’s own heart.
“Oh, right—the one they call ‘the Canal Duke.’ Who washisheir?”
“Nobody. He never married and had no relations to inherit.”
“Like you.”
“I suppose.” Geoffrey hadn’t considered that before.
“There is no supposing involved. We traced all your relations. You are the last Duke of Grenwood.”
