It had, alas, pricked his curiosity just enough to make him respond to the duchess’s letter instead of tearing it in half in front of the stiff-lipped servant who delivered it. There was just enough suggestion of advantage that he couldn’t ignore it.
Max never ignored anything that could be put to his advantage. And this summons, for all its mystery and condescension, was very promising.
Thus far his instincts had seemed on target, both with regard to the mystery and the potential advantage. After a solitary breakfast this morning, he’d gone exploring. The castle was a sprawling pile of stone but pristinely maintained, with ancient tapestries on the walls and priceless antiquities on the mantelpieces. No bankrupt aristocrats here, but wealth and power in abundance.
And while he was here... Max took the opportunity to look up someone he’d heard about all his life. Trailed by a stone-faced footman, he strolled through the castle corridors until he found the gallery.
There was his quarry, at the far end of the gallery: the second Duke of Carlyle, his long curled wig cascading over his polished armor, his face narrow and almost delicate, save for the thin mustache along his upper lip. A length of fine linen or lace was carelessly knotted around his neck, and fields and hills—presumably Carlyle—spread behind him into the distance.
Max had always been well aware that a duke figured in his lineage. It had been his father’s favorite point of pride, and his mother’s main source of hope. He himself had used the fact to his benefit whenever possible, with the occasional fond thought for the ancient Frederick Augustus, whoever he was. Invoking his name, and hinting that Max was still close to the ducal branch of the family, had got him out of more than a few scrapes, even if it had never once led to actual improvement in his circumstances.
He studied the man, his great-great-grandfather. Was there some resemblance? He doubted it. That fellow posed with arrogant command, confident in the wealth and power he held. Max, on the other hand... Too many scoundrels and hellhounds, all of them penniless, had come between the two of them for any kinship.
“Cheers,” he quietly told the painting, giving his ancestor a brief nod. Then he turned and walked away.
And now he sat in an ornate salon, enduring the suspicious eyes of his hostess with a faint smile, waiting. The duchess sat on an elaborately carved chair that would have made the Queen herself envious. She was a plump old lady, seventy if she were a day, her gray hair frizzed and piled fashionably high. Even though it was morning she wore a black silk gown, and the rings on her fingers could have kept even a very rakish gentleman in style for a year. Max could see the toes of her slippers, propped up as they were on a lavish gilded footstool, and the diamonds on her shoe buckles glittered at him.
The solicitor sat at her elbow, a sober fellow in unrelieved black. The morning sunlight shone on the thinning hair atop his head. He was busily making notes on the papers in front of him, and only when he glanced up appraisingly did Max suspect that the notes were about him.
Another guest had arrived, presumably just this morning. He hadn’t been at breakfast two hours ago, and there was still dust in the creases of his trousers, as if he’d hastily brushed them while still wearing them. He was taller than Max and surely outweighed him by a few stone, a rough-looking common sort of fellow. A soldier, was Max’s idle guess, even though the man wore regular clothes. He had that way of sitting in his chair that suggested he was accustomed to a sword on his hip. He must also have been summoned, for he took the chair beside Max’s and faced the duchess.
No one bothered to introduce them.
“Good morning,” said the duchess abruptly, before the two men could do more than exchange polite nods of acknowledgement. “I trust your journeys were without incident.”
Max’s mouth curled. On the godforsaken mail coach, until he managed to charm a nearby innkeeper’s daughter to let him have a horse on credit. The roads were atrocious, it had rained the first day, and if not for the accommodating innkeeper’s daughter, he would have arrived bedraggled and on foot, baggage in hand, like a traveling peddler.
“Yes, Your Grace,” said the soldier politely.
“It was perfectly delightful,” drawled Max. He crossed one leg over the other and draped his wrist over his knee, the picture of rakish insolence.
Her lips pinched at him. “Excellent. No doubt you wonder why I summoned you to Carlyle.” She turned to the solicitor. “Mr. Edwards will explain.”
The solicitor adjusted his spectacles. “On the fourteenth of April last, Lord Stephen St. James, youngest brother of His Grace the Duke of Carlyle, fell ill and died.”
The soldier had penetrating green eyes. He turned them on the duchess. “I offer my deepest sympathies, madam.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she replied. “That is very kind of you.”
“Unfortunately,” continued the solicitor, “Lord Stephen was His Grace’s nearest living heir. Carlyle himself has no children or wife.”
The soldier jerked in his chair with an audible intake of breath. Max flicked a glance at him, but his face was expressionless.
An odd thought lit up the back of Max’s mind. But no; it couldn’t be. He and the duke were only very distant cousins, and if anyone at Carlyle gave a damn what happened to him, they had never showed it. Eons ago, in Max’s childhood, his mother had appealed to Carlyle for aid, when his father had run off with another of his flirts and left them without money. He still remembered his mother’s tragic expression at the curt reply, with but five pounds enclosed. They had nearly starved that winter, being forced to stay with his mother’s family. Max’s father had returned home in the spring, drunk, penniless, and utterly unapologetic.
He glanced at the soldier again. That one seemed to have a sense of what was up. He sat as alert as a pointer, all but quivering with eagerness to please.
Max shifted in his chair. The captain must be another St. James relation. Nearer, or more distant? he wondered. Because there was only one reason it could possibly matter to either of them that the Duke of Carlyle’s heir had just died.
And then the duchess confirmed it. “Lord Stephen has also left no wife or children. In their absence, it appears the dukedom will pass upon my son’s death to one of his distant cousins.” Her unimpressed gaze moved over each of them. “In short, to one of you.”
Blessed Christ and all the angels. Max’s heart skidded violently in his chest before he could rein in his reaction. Adukedom—and not just any dukedom, but Carlyle, large and prosperous.
But he did rein it in, because the next words out of the soldier’s mouth squelched his moment of euphoria. “That is most unexpected news, Your Grace,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice. “May I inquire how...?”
“Certainly,” she said crisply. “Mr. St. James is the great-great-grandson of the second duke.” She raised her brows at him, and Max inclined his head in agreement. “And you, Captain, are the great-grandson of the third duke.”
So the soldier outranked him. Max silently let out his breath. Ithadbeen too incredible to be true.
