“As you say, Cousin, you give me too much credit.” He gestured for St. Clare to join him in the townhouse’s well-appointed drawing room. “Madre will be pleased to see you. She’s been grieved that neither you or Lord Allendale have yet seen fit to call on her. An oversight, I’m sure.”

Lavinia Beresford was perched on a plump-cushioned settee, a beribboned lace cap upon her head and a scrap of embroidery in her hands. “Lord St. Clare!” Setting aside her needlework, she rose and executed a curtsy. “Do come in, my lord. And pray sit down.” She flashed her son an arch look. “How naughty you are, Lionel. You might have told me your cousin was expected.”

“He wasn’t expected,” Lionel replied.

“I should have been,” St. Clare said, “after that scurrilous report in the paper.”

“You’ve read it, have you?” Mrs. Beresford made a clucking noise as she resumed her seat. “Such a shock! To insinuate that you were born in Somerset of all places. An imposter they seem to believe. Not half-Italian at all. I wonder where they can have got such an idea?”

Lionel sat down, uttering a languid sigh. “Lord St. Clare believes it was we who gave it to them.”

“We?” Her eyes went wide. “But we know nothing at all about you, my lord. Nothing about your life in Italy, nor in Somerset.” She tittered. “Though I see no great difficulty in clearing up the matter. All you need do is present your parents’ marriage lines. They have such, don’t they? Even on the continent, I believe.”

St. Clare made no move to sit. This wasn’t a social call. “By what right do you demand proof from me?”

“Oh no. We would never demand. Not from Allendale’s heir. What must you think of us?” Another titter. “To be sure, it’s only a bit of advice. If an heir—a presumptive heir—is accused of being illegitimate, why, it stands to reason that the simplest course is for him to show his papers. Why wouldn’t he produce them if he has nothing to hide?”

“My grandfather won’t take kindly to your demands,” St. Clare said. “Simple or otherwise.”

“They’re quite unobjectionable,” Mrs. Beresford said. “And made in the familial spirit.”

“They are, madam, equivalent to calling my grandfather a liar. To calling me a liar.” St. Clare stepped forward. “And we neither of us take kindly to being called liars. Indeed, I find I can’t abide the charge with any degree of equanimity.”

She blinked rapidly. “We would never—”

“Which is why I must ask you, madam,” he said in the same cold voice, “which one of you spoke to the papers?”

Lionel cleared his throat. “If you mean to call me out, St. Clare, know this: I’m unskilled with pistols, and equally so with swordplay. You’ll get no satisfaction—”