“McGregor! Been looking for you. Have someone you might be interested in seeing.”

Dare turned at the sound of his name. Lord Collins stood in the doorway to the hotel room Dare had rented for his sister’s wedding breakfast. Although he was aware Patricia had invited Charlotte’s brother out of politeness, he hadn’t expected to see Collins. He understood from less than oblique references made by others that Charlotte’s brother had washed his hands of her when she eloped with her first husband.

“Collins,” Dare said politely, giving the man the merest sketch of a bow. If the earl had any plans to upset Charlotte, he could just think again; she was having a hard enough time of it with the women making sly digs about Phylomena without having her brother add to her troubles. “I didn’t expect to see you here. I hadn’t thought weddings were to your taste.”

The earl smiled a cold, ruthless smile and waved his pudgy hand toward a slender young man who looked vaguely familiar. “I am sure you weren’t expecting to see us, but I thought as this was an event celebrating family ties, you would wish to have all your family gathered.”

Dare looked at the young man, who arched a sardonic eyebrow and bowed with affected grace. He glanced back to the earl. “I’m afraid you have the advantage of me.”

“That,” replied Lord Collins with an oily smirk, “is exactly what I was telling young McGregor here.”

“McGregor?” Dare narrowed his eyes at the arrogant young man in front of him.

“Geoffrey McGregor,” the man acknowledged, a smile teasing his lips.

Dare went still at the name. “I had a cousin named Geoffrey,” he said slowly, looking carefully at the man. He had the family’s renowned blond looks, the same dark blue eyes, but where Dare’s side of the family leaned toward tall and broad-chested, the man in front of him was slender and elegant. Still, there was no disputing that this man shared common blood. “My cousin died some five years ago, drowned when the ship he was taking to Holland went down in a storm.”

“That is, I believe, the story that was told, but truth, don’t you find, can be so much uglier?”

Dare’s hands fisted at the undertone of insinuation in the younger man’s voice. “Am I to understand that you claim to be Geoffrey Despenser McGregor, son of Robert McGregor of Perth?”

“I am he,” the man said, his lips curling in a smug smile.

An unpleasant sensation in the pit of his stomach spread. Dare felt more than a little sick. “You did not drown while traveling to Holland five years ago?”

“Far from it. I was kidnapped and placed without my consent upon a merchant ship that was sailing for the Orient. The man who kidnapped me sold me into bondage until such time as I could work off his gaming debts to the captain. It took me five years to pay them and make my way back home, but as you can see, cousin, I have returned.”