Mr. Cavendish, I Presume

“Where are we going?” Amelia asked.

“The Happy Hare.” It was a bit out of their way, but not drastically so.

“The posting inn?”

Indeed. “I shall be cured.”

“At the Happy Hare?” She sounded dubious.

“Trust me.”

“Said by a man reeking of gin,” she said, shaking her head.

He looked over at her, lifting one of his brows into the famously regal Wyndham arch. “I wasn’t drinking gin.” Good Lord, he had more breeding than that.

She looked as if she might smile. “So sorry. What were you drinking, then?”

He was quite certain this wasn’t the sort of conversation one ought to conduct with one’s fiancee, but nothing about this meeting was the sort of thing one ought to do or see or say with one’s fiancee. “Ale,” he told her. “Have you ever tried it?”

“Of course not.”

“Tsk tsk. Such outrage.”

“That wasn’t outrage,” she shot back, outraged now. “It was simple fact. Who would have ever served me ale?”

She did have a point. “Very well,” he said, everything gracious. “But it wasn’t gin.”

She rolled her eyes, and he almost laughed. They were like an old married couple. Not that he’d had much cause to witness old married couples doing anything but insulting (his father) and accepting it (his mother), but Grace had told him that her parents had been wondrously devoted to each other, and from what he’d seen of Lord and Lady Crowland-Amelia’s parents-they seemed to get on reasonably well, too. Or at the very least, neither seemed consumed with desire to see the other one dead.

“Do your parents like each other?” he asked quite suddenly.

She blinked several times in rapid succession, obviously surprised by the change of topic. “My parents?”

“Do they get on?”

“Yes, I suppose.” She paused, and her brow wrinkled adorably as she considered it. “They don’t do very much together-their interests really don’t mesh-but I do think they hold each other in some affection. I haven’t given it much thought, to be honest.”

It was not exactly a description of a grand passion, but still, it was so entirely different from his own experience that Thomas could not help but be intrigued.

She must have noticed the interest on his face, because she continued, “I suppose they must get on. If they didn’t, I probably would have given it much thought, wouldn’t you think?”

He thought about the endless hours he’d wasted thinking about his own parents. He nodded. For all her innocence and guileless speech, she could be extraordinarily astute.

“My mother can nag a bit,” she said. “Well, more than a bit. But my father seems not to mind. He knows it is only because she feels it her duty to see all of her daughters settled. Which is of course his wish as well. He just doesn’t wish to be involved in the details of it.”

Thomas found himself nodding approvingly. Daughters had to be an incredible amount of work.

“He humors her for a few minutes,” Amelia continued, “because he knows how much she likes an audience, but then he most often just shakes his head and walks away. I think he is happiest when out of doors, mucking about with his hounds.”

“Hounds?”

“He has twenty-five of them.”

“Gad.”

She grimaced. “We keep trying to convince him it’s got a bit excessive, but he insists that any man with five daughters deserves five times as many hounds.”

He tried to suppress the image in his mind. “Please tell me none are included in your dowry.”

“You should verify,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “I’ve never seen the betrothal papers.”

His eyes held hers for a long, steady moment, then he said, “That means no.” But she held her blank expression for long enough to make him add, “I hope.”

She laughed. “He could not bear to part with them. Me, I think he will be happy to get off his hands, but his dogs…Never.” And then: “Did your parents get on well?”

He felt himself go grim, and his head began to pound anew. “No.”

She watched his face for a moment, and he was not sure he wanted to know what she saw there, because she looked almost pitying when she said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said briskly. “It is done, and they are dead, and there is nothing to be done about it now.”

“But-” She stopped, her eyes a little sad. “Never mind.”

He didn’t mean to tell her anything. He had never discussed his parents with anyone, not even Harry, and he’d been witness to it all. But Amelia was sitting there so silently, with an expression of such understanding on her face-even though…well, she couldn’t possibly understand, not with her gloriously boring and traditional family. But there was something in her eyes, something warm and willing, and it felt as if she knew him already, as if she’d known him forever and was merely waiting for him to know her.

“My father hated my mother.” The words fell from his lips before he even realized he was saying them.

Her eyes widened, but she did not speak.

“He hated everything she stood for. She was a cit, you know.”

She nodded. Of course she knew. Everyone knew. No one seemed to care much anymore, but everyone knew that the most recent duchess had been born without even a connection to a title.

The title. Now that was rich. His father had spent his entire life worshipping at the altar of his own aristocracy, and now it seemed he’d never really been the duke at all. Not if Mr. Audley’s parents had had the sense to marry.

“Wyndham?” she said softly.

His head jerked toward her. He must have drifted off in his own thoughts. “Thomas,” he reminded her.

A faint blush spread across her cheeks. Not of embarrassment, he realized, but of delight. The thought warmed him, deep in his belly and then deeper still, to some little corner of his heart that had lain dormant for years.

“Thomas,” she said softly.

It was enough to make him want to say more. “He married her before he gained the title,” he explained. “Back when he was the third son.”

“One of his brothers drowned, did he not?”

Ah yes, the beloved John, who might or might not have sired a legitimate son of his own.

“The second son, was it not?” Amelia asked quietly.

Thomas nodded, because there was nothing else he could do. He was not about to tell her what had transpired the day before. Good God, it was madness. Less than twenty-four hours earlier he’d been happily kissing her in the garden, thinking it was finally time to make her his duchess, and now he didn’t even know who he was.

“John,” he forced himself to say. “He was my grandmother’s favorite. His ship went down in the Irish Sea. And then a year later a fever took the old duke and the heir-both within a week-and suddenly my father had inherited.”

“It must have been a surprise,” she murmured.

“Indeed. No one thought he’d be the duke. He had three choices: the military, the clergy, or marriage to an heiress.” Thomas let out a harsh chuckle. “I cannot imagine anyone was surprised that he chose as he did. And as for my mother-now here’s the funny part. Her family was disappointed as well. More so.”

She drew back, faint surprise coloring her face. “Even marrying into the house of Wyndham?”

“They were wildly rich,” Thomas explained. “Her father owned factories all across the North. She was his only child. They thought for certain they could buy her a title. At the time, my father had none. With little hope of inheriting.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged. “I have no idea. My mother was pretty enough. And she was certainly wealthy enough. But she