Would he understand that the livelihoods and indeed the lives of hundreds of people depended upon him?

Would he feel the history in his position? The heritage? The unspoken covenant with the soil, the stones, the blood that had fed the ground for generations? Wyndham was more than a title one appended to one’s name, it was…

It was…

Thomas sat down in his favorite leather chair, closing his eyes in anguish.

It was him. He was Wyndham, and he had no idea who he would be when it was all taken away. And it would. He was growing more certain of this by the day. Audley wasn’t stupid. He would not lead them all the way to Ireland, for God’s sake, if proof of his legitimacy was not waiting at their destination.

Audley had to know that he would still have been showered with privilege and money even if he’d declared his mother a dockside whore, known to his father for all of three minutes. Their grandmother was so desperately infatuated with the idea of her favorite son having produced a son of his own that she would have provided him with an income for life, regardless.

Audley’s life would have been secure, and a great deal less complicated, if he was illegitimate.

Which meant that he wasn’t. Somewhere in Ireland there was a church with proof of the marriage between Lord John Cavendish and Miss Louise Galbraith. And when they found it, Thomas knew he would still be Mr. Thomas Cavendish, gentleman of Lincolnshire, the grandson of a duke, but that would be as close as his connection went.

What would he do with himself? How would he fill his days?

Who would he be?

He looked down at his drink. He’d finished it some time ago, and he thought it was his third. What would Amelia say? He’d told her he did not overindulge in spirits, and he did not, as a normal matter of course. But life was anything but normal lately.

Perhaps this would be his new habit. Perhaps this was how he would fill his days—in the ignoble pursuit of oblivion. Pour enough brandy into him and he could forget that he did not know who he was or what he owned or how he was meant to act.

Or—he chuckled grimly at this—how others were meant to act with him. That would be amusing, actually, watching society scramble and stammer, with not a clue what to say. What macabre fun it would be to drop in at the Lincolnshire Dance and Assembly. London would be even worse.

And then there was Amelia. He supposed he would have to cry off, or at least insist that she do so, since as a gentleman he could not initiate the dissolution of the betrothal contract. But surely she would not want him. And certainly her family would not.