“How far is that?” the dowager demanded, tugging at her arm.

Thomas held firm.

“Twenty miles, your grace,” Mrs. Audley replied before turning back to her nephew. “Jack? What is this all about? Why do you need proof of your mother’s marriage?”

Jack hesitated for a moment, then cleared his throat and said, “My father was her son,” with a nod toward the dowager.

“Your father,” Mrs. Audley gasped. “John Cavendish, you mean…”

Thomas stepped forward, feeling strangely prepared to take charge of the rapidly deteriorating situation. “May I intercede?”

Jack nodded in his direction. “Please do.”

“Mrs. Audley,” Thomas said, “if there is proof of your sister’s marriage, then your nephew is the true Duke of Wyndham.”

“The true Duke of—” Mrs. Audley covered her mouth in shock. “No. It’s not possible. I remember him. Mr. Cavendish. He was—” She waved her arms in the air, as if trying to describe him with gestures. Finally, after several attempts at a more verbal explanation, she said, “He would not have kept such a thing from us.”

“He was not the heir at the time,” Thomas told her.

“Oh, my heavens. But if Jack is the duke, then you—”

“Are not,” he finished wryly. He glanced over at Amelia and Grace, who were watching the entire exchange from just inside the front door. “I am sure you can imagine our eagerness to have this settled.”

Mrs. Audley could only stare at him in shock.

Thomas knew just how she felt.

Amelia wasn’t sure what time it was. Certainly after midnight. She and Grace had been shown to their room several hours earlier, and even though she had long since washed her face and donned her nightclothes, she was still awake.

For a long time she’d lain beneath her blankets, pretending there was some kind of music to Grace’s even, sleep-lulled breathing. Then she’d moved to the window, deciding that if she couldn’t sleep, she might as well have something better to look at than the ceiling. The moon was nearly full, its light rendering the stars a bit less twinkly.

Amelia sighed. She had enough trouble picking out the constellations as it was.

Somewhat apathetically, she located the Big Dipper.

Then the wind blew a cloud over it.

“Oh, it figures,” she muttered.

Grace began to snore.

Amelia sat on the wide window ledge, letting her head lean up against the glass. She’d done this when she was younger and couldn’t sleep—go to the window, count the stars and the flowers. Sometimes she even climbed out, before her father had the majestic oak outside her window pruned back.

That had been fun.