Mr. Cavendish, I Presume (10 page)

He was tall, almost as tall as Thomas, and of a similar age. Thomas disliked him instantly.

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“Ah,” the other man said, suddenly all charm.

“Well, in that case, I am Jack Audley. Formerly of His Majesty’s esteemed army, more recently of the dusty road.”

Thomas opened his mouth to tell him just what he thought of that answer, but his grandmother beat him to the punch. “Who are these Audleys?” she demanded, striding angrily to his side. “You are no Audley. It is there in your face. In your nose and chin and in every bloody feature save your eyes, which are quite the wrong color.”

Thomas turned to her with impatient confusion. What could she possibly be blithering on about this time?

“The wrong color?” the other man responded.

“Really?” He turned to Grace, his expression all innocence and cheek. “I was always told the ladies
like
green eyes. Was I misinformed?”

“You are a Cavendish!” the dowager roared. “You are a Cavendish, and I demand to know why I was not informed of your existence.”

A Cavendish? Thomas stared at the stranger, and then at his grandmother, and then back to the stranger.

“What the
devil
is going on?”

No one had an answer, so he turned to the only person he deemed trustworthy. “Grace?”

She did not meet his eyes. “Your grace,” she said with quiet desperation, “perhaps a word in private?”

“And spoil it for the rest of us?” Mr. Audley said.

He let out a self-righteous huff. “After all I’ve been through . . . ”

Thomas looked at his grandmother.

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“He is your cousin,” she said sharply.

He paused. He could not have heard that correctly.

He looked to Grace, but
she
added, “He is the highwayman.”

While Thomas was attempting to digest
that
, the insolent sod turned so that they might all make note of his bound hands and said, “Not here of my own voli-tion, I assure you.”

“Your grandmother thought she recognized him last night,” Grace said.

“I
knew
I recognized him,” the dowager snapped.

She flicked her hand toward the highwayman. “Just look at him.”

The highwayman looked at Thomas and said, as if he were as baffled as the rest of them, “I was wearing a mask.”

Thomas brought his left hand to his forehead, his thumb and fingers rubbing and pinching hard at the headache that had just begun to pound. Good God.

And then he thought—
the portrait
.

Bloody hell. So that was what that had been about. At half three in the godforsaken morning, Grace had been up and about, trying to yank the portrait of his dead uncle off the wall and—

“Cecil!” he yelled.

A footman arrived with remarkable speed.

“The portrait,” Thomas snapped. “Of my uncle.”

The footman’s Adam’s apple bobbed with dismay.

“The one we just brought up to—”

“Yes. In the drawing room.” And when Cecil did not move fast enough, Thomas practically barked, “Now!”

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He felt a hand on his arm. “Thomas,” Grace said quietly, obviously trying to settle his nerves. “Please, allow me to explain.”

“Did you know about this?” he demanded, shaking her off.

“Yes,” she said, “but—”

He couldn’t believe it. Grace. The one person he had come to trust for complete honesty. “Last night,” he clarified, and he realized that he bloody well
treasured
last night. His life was sorely lacking in moments of pure, unadulterated friendship. The moment on the stairs, bizarre as it was, had been one of them. And that, he thought, had to explain the gut-punched feeling he got when he looked at her guilty face. “Did you know last night?”

“I did, but Thomas—”

“Enough,” he spat. “Into the drawing room. All of you.”

Grace tried to get his attention again, but he ignored her. Mr. Audley—his bloody cousin!—had his lips puckered together, as if he might whistle a happy tune at any moment. And his grandmother . . . well, the devil only knew what she was thinking. She looked dyspeptic, but then again, she always looked dyspeptic. But she was watching Audley with an intensity that was positively frightening. Audley, for his part, seemed not to notice her maniacal stare. He was too busy ogling Grace.

Who looked miserable. As well she should.

Thomas swore viciously under his breath and slammed the door to the drawing room shut once they were all out Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

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of the hall. Audley held up his hands and cocked his head to the side. “D’you think you might . . . ?”

“For the love of Christ,” Thomas muttered, grabbing a letter opener off a nearby writing table. He grasped one of Audley’s hands and with one angry swipe sliced through the bindings.

“Thomas,” Grace said, situating herself in front of him. Her eyes were urgent as she said, “I really think you ought to let me speak with you for a moment before—”

“Before what?” he snapped. “Before I am informed of another long-lost cousin whose head may or may not be wanted by the Crown?”

“Not by the Crown, I think,” Audley said mildly,

“but surely a few magistrates. And a vicar or two.” He turned to the dowager. “Highway robbery is not generally considered the most secure of all possible occupa-tions.”

“Thomas.” Grace glanced nervously over at the dowager, who was glowering at her. “Your grace,” she corrected, “there is something you need to know.”

“Indeed,” he bit off. “The identities of my true friends and confidantes, for one thing.”

Grace flinched as if struck, but Thomas brushed aside the momentary pang of guilt that struck his chest.

She’d had ample time to fill him in the night before.

There was no reason he should have come into this situation completely unprepared.

“I suggest,” Audley said, his voice light but steady,

“that you speak to Miss Eversleigh with greater respect.”

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Thomas froze. Who the hell did this man think he was? “I
beg
your pardon.”

Audley’s head tilted very slightly to the side, and he seemed to lick the inside of his teeth before saying,

“Not used to being spoken to like a man, are we?”

Something foreign seemed to invade Thomas’s body. It was furious and black, with rough edges and hot teeth, and before he knew it, he was leap-ing through the air, going for Audley’s throat. They went down with a crash, rolling across the carpet into an end table. With great satisfaction, Thomas found himself straddling his beloved new cousin, one hand pressed against his throat as the other squeezed itself into a deadly weapon.

“Stop!” Grace shrieked, but Thomas felt nothing as she grabbed at his arm. She seemed to fall away as he lifted his fist and slammed it into Audley’s jaw. But Audley was a formidable opponent. He’d had years to learn how to fight dirty, Thomas later realized, and with a vicious twist of his torso, he slammed his head into Thomas’s chin, stunning him for just enough time to reverse their positions.

“Don’t . . . you . . . ever . . . strike . . . me . . . again!”

Audley ground out, slamming his own fist into Thomas’s cheek as punctuation.

Thomas freed an elbow, jabbed it hard into Audley’s stomach, and was rewarded with a low grunt.

“Stop it! Both of you!” Grace managed to wedge herself between them, which was probably the only thing that would have stopped the fight. Thomas just barely Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

95

had time to halt the progress of his fist before it clipped her in the face.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said, and Thomas would have agreed with her, except he was still breathing too hard to speak. And then it became apparent that she was speaking to
him
. It was galling, and he was filled with a not very admirable urge to embarrass her, just as she had embarrassed him.

“You might want to remove yourself from my, er . . . ”

He looked down at his midsection, upon which she was now seated.

“Oh!” Grace yelped, jumping up. She did not let go of Audley’s arm, however, and she yanked him along with her, peeling the two men apart. Audley, for his part, seemed more than happy to go with her.

“Tend to my wounds?” he asked, gazing upon her with all the pitiable mournfulness of an ill-treated puppy.

“You have no wounds,” she snapped, then looked over at Thomas, who had risen to his feet as well. “And neither do you.”

Thomas rubbed his jaw, thinking that their faces would both prove her wrong by nightfall.

And then his grandmother—oh now
there
was a person who ought be giving lessons in kindness and civility—decided it was time to enter the conversation.

Unsurprisingly, her first statement was a hard shove to his shoulder.

“Apologize at once!” she snapped. “He is a guest in our house.”

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“
My
house.”

Her face tightened at that. It was the one piece of leverage he held over her. She was there, as they all knew, at his pleasure and discretion.

“He is your first cousin,” she said. “One would think, given the lack of close relations in our family, that you would be eager to welcome him into the fold.”

One would, Thomas thought, looking warily over at Audley. Except that he had disliked him on sight, disliked that smirky smile, that carefully studied insolence. He knew this sort. This Audley knew nothing of duty, nothing of responsibility, and he had the
gall
to waltz in here and criticize?

And furthermore, who the hell was to say that Audley actually
was
his cousin? Thomas’s fingers clawed then straightened as he attempted to calm himself down.

“Would someone,” he said, his voice clipped and furious, “do me the service of explaining just how this man has come to be in my drawing room?”

The first reaction was silence, as everyone waited for someone else to jump into the breach. Then Audley shrugged, motioned with his head toward the dowager, and said, “She kidnapped me.”

Thomas turned slowly to his grandmother. “You kidnapped him,” he echoed, not because it was hard to believe but rather because it
wasn’t
.

“Indeed,” she said sharply. “And I would do it again.”

Thomas looked to Grace. “It’s true,” she said. And then—bloody hell—she turned to Audley and said,

“I’m sorry.”

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“Accepted, of course,” he said, with enough charm and grace to pass muster in the most discerning of ball-rooms.

Thomas’s disgust must have shown on his face, because when Grace looked at him, she added, “She
kidnapped
him!”

Thomas just rolled his eyes. He did not care to discuss it.

“And forced me to take part,” Grace muttered.

“I recognized him last night,” the dowager announced.

“In the dark?” Thomas asked dubiously.

“Under his mask,” she answered with pride. “He is the very image of his father. His voice, his laugh, every bit of it.”

Everything made sense now, of course. The portrait, her distraction the night before. Thomas let out a breath and closed his eyes, somehow summoning the energy to treat her with gentle compassion. “Grandmother,” he said, which ought to have been recognized as the olive branch it was, given that he usually called her
you
, “I understand that you still mourn your son—”

“Your uncle,” she cut in.

“My uncle,” he corrected, although it was difficult to think of him as such, given that they had never met.

“But it has been thirty years since his death.”

“Twenty-nine,” she corrected sharply.

Thomas looked to Grace for he wasn’t sure what.

Support? Sympathy? Her lips stretched into an apolo-getic line, but she remained silent.

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He turned back to his grandmother. “It has been a long time,” he said. “Memories fade.”

“Not mine,” she said haughtily, “and certainly not the ones I have of John.
Your
father I have been more than pleased to forget entirely—”

“In that we are agreed,” Thomas interrupted tightly, because the only thing more farcical than the present situation was imagining his father witnessing it.

“Cecil!” he bellowed again, flexing his fingers lest he give in to the urge to strangle someone. Where the hell was the bloody painting? He’d sent the footman up ages ago. It should have been a simple endeavor. Surely his grandmother had not had time to affix the damned thing to her bedchamber wall yet.

“Your grace!” he heard from the hall, and sure enough there was the painting for the second time that afternoon, bobbing along as two footmen attempted to keep it balanced as they rounded the corner.

“Set it down anywhere,” Thomas instructed.

The footmen found a clear spot and set the painting down on the floor, leaning it gently against the wall.

And for the second time that day Thomas found himself staring into the long-dead face of his uncle John.

Except this time was completely different. How many times had he walked by the portrait, never once bothering to look closely? And why should he? He’d never known the man, never had cause to see anything familiar in his expression.

But now . . .

Grace was the first to find words to express it.
“Oh
my God.”

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Thomas stared in shock at Mr. Audley. It was as if he were one with the painting.

“I see no one is disagreeing with me now,” his grandmother announced smugly.

“Who
are
you?” Thomas whispered, staring at the man who could only be his first cousin.

“My name,” he stammered, unable to tear his eyes off the portrait. “My given name . . . My full name is John Augustus Cavendish-Audley.”

“Who were your parents?” Thomas whispered. But he didn’t reply, and Thomas heard his own voice grow shrill as he demanded, “Who was your father?”

Audley’s head snapped around. “Who the bloody hell do you think he was?”