Very likely Miss Abbott had ensured that Robert’s company was, in fact, what Constance truly sought, and not a capitulation to domestic tyranny. He held out the tray of tea cakes and the lady looked at him as if he were a stuffed canary that had started singing.

“You are a duke, sir.”

“Lamentably so, and yet, I am able to manage a tea tray.”

She considered the sweets and considered him. “A touch of honey will do, Your Grace. Thank you.”

Never had thanks been more grudging. Robert rewarded her skepticism with a double serving of tea cakes.

He fixed Constance a cup of tea, plain, because later in the day she preferred it that way, and then prepared his own, also with just a drop of honey. Miss Abbott watched all of this, her expression unreadable.

“You were saying,” Constance prompted. “The Wilsons had the raising of Artem—of Ivy—for seven years.”

“But Mrs. Etta Wilson was not, of course, born a Wilson. I’d thought she was born a Brown, another common Yorkshire name, and she was, but in other regards I was in error.”

A peal of thunder should have accompanied that admission, so portentous was Miss Abbott’s tone.

“Etta’s mother, Daphne Shaw, was the second wife of Mr. Abel Brown,” Miss Abbott went on, “but Etta was born only four months after the wedding. Her mother had been widowed after conceiving Etta, and by agreement, Etta took her stepfather’s name. Etta was thus born a Brown, though her full siblings are Shaws.”

Constance ignored her tea. “You were looking for an Artemis Wilson, but you found an Ivy Shaw?”

“Exactly so. My apologies that it took this long, but as His Grace has pointed out, all of the names involved—Brown, Shaw, Wilson—are exceedingly common in the northern counties.”

“And how,” Robert asked, “did you eventually find her?”

“The past two weeks have been nigh frenetic, because I was able to put all available hands to her ladyship’s project. Some of my agents are Americans, though most are from other parts of Britain. They have been inquiring at vicarages and posting inns as if searching for relatives on this side of the Atlantic or in this part of England.”

Clever and plausible. “Your agents are female?”

“Yes, Your Grace, most of them. Fewer people suspect a female of being an inquiry agent. I also find women tend to notice what men miss and are more inventive and subtle about the job.”

Said with the merest suggestion of condescension.

“Tell me,” Constance said. “Is she well? Is she happy?”