Napoleon’s knees, he’d been away too long. Ducking his head, he slurped at his tea, scalding the roof of his mouth as he did so until he could rein his less civilized urges back in again. It had been so long since he’d even thought about lust. The multiple surgeries on his leg had mostly seen to that.

Well, evidently he was past all that.

“Adam, are you all right? Is it your leg, or another injury? Would you like to lie down?”

He opened his eyes again, afraid that now he was the one blushing. “No, no. I was just enjoying the tea. I’ve been thinking how these are the small moments a soldier thinks of when he’s lying on the cold ground in Spain.”

Oh, sweet Christ, he was really going to be lost if she didn’t turn that sympathetic gaze somewhere else. It made him want to just lay himself at her feet.

If his leg were more dependable, he’d jump up and pace. He was afraid, though, that he’d end up with his face in her lap, and that wouldn’t promote his intentions here a bit.

“Lully,” he blurted out. “I’m really here for her.”

His words were met with a rather stark silence. “Pardon?”

He nodded, setting down his saucer. “I am actually here to bring her some news.”

Again Georgie tilted her head. “Lully is four, Your Grace. What news could you have to give her?”

This wasn’t going the way he’d planned. He should have believed Jamie from the start. Maybe his reaction to Georgie wouldn’t have knocked him so off-center.

“I need to take her to Scotland.”

Georgie froze. “I beg your pardon?”

He tried closing his eyes again. “She is needed there.”

She was staring at him as if he’d begun to bark like a dog. “In Scotland.”

He nodded, and surrendered to the inevitable. It wouldn’t get any easier with the waiting. “Life has just changed forever for her, Georgie. She is no longer simply a little girl.” A deep breath didn’t help, so he just dove in and opened his eyes again. “She’s a duchess.”

Georgie laughed. “She is no such thing.”

It was pointless to argue.

“Are you feeling perfectly well, Your Grace?” she asked, getting to her feet. “I can call for the local physician. He is old, but….”

He should have known this would be her reaction. “No,” he said, There was no avoiding it. He had to get to his feet as well. “No,” he said, grabbing his cane and hoisting himself up, his knee protesting like an unoiled hinge. “I am not ill. Please sit again so I might.”

She flushed, but she sat. Adam did the same, trying not to wince.

“And please,” he said. “My name is Adam.” He considered picking up his cup again and decided against it. He had a feeling he’d be on his feet again soon. “I was coming to see you anyway. I promise. Not only because I wanted to meet the woman who had stolen Jamie’s heart, but because I made a promise to him.”

“That is lovely.” Her voice didn’t sound like it. “But not to the point.”

He nodded and took another breath. “There is news,” he repeated. “Jamie’s mother has died.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She neither sounded nor looked like she meant it. Having known Jamie’s mother well, he couldn’t really blame her.

“How can that concern us?” she asked. “Jamie’s family made certain we knew we were not welcome.”

“Well, since Jamie is…gone, it means that Lully has inherited. I need to take her with me to accept.”

Adam didn’t think you could see fire in the color green. He certainly could now.

“Inherited? Inherited what? Jamie was disowned.”

“You cannot disown a title, Mrs. Grace. Your daughter is now a duchess in her own right.”

She was shaking her head. “Don’t be ridiculous. Girls cannot inherit titles. They pass along the males. My father was quite specific about that when he was complaining about his oldest two daughters.”

“Scottish titles can. This one passed from Jamie’s great-uncle to his mother to...well, it would have been Jamie. But now it passes to Jamie’s child. Which is where I come in. It is my duty to take her to verify her title.”

She was up again, glaring down at him. “Try not to be absurd. My daughter is not going anywhere. Certainly not to Scotland. You do realize that it is January, Your Grace.”

“Not Scotland immediately,” he acknowledged, eying his cane and wondering how many times he could get her to sit back down. “I should have made that clear. To London to secure her title, but she will need to travel to the estate in Scotland as soon as it is possible.”

She sat back down with a bit of a thump. “Well, she isn’t going. She is a four year old girl.”

He drew a careful breath, wondering why she should be so adamant. “You do know I am her trustee.”

She stiffened and seemed to grow in stature. “I know this is the first time since Jamie died that you have mentioned it, either in person or letter. We have been dealing quite successfully with Mr. Carson at the bank.”

“I know. But you were here with your brother and safe, and it didn’t seem there was anything I was needed for. And then Jamie’s mother died, and the duchy of Kintyre has passed to your daughter. But she must attend the Chancery Court to make it official.”

It was as if she completely froze. “In that case, she politely declines.”

“She cannot. Her people will suffer if she does not. The duchy will go into abeyance and most of their land given over to sheep, which would uproot all her crofters. I cannot allow that to happen, and so it is my duty to take the duchess home.”

She was glaring now. “She. Is. Four.”

“And as trustee I will act in her stead. But she needs to be there.”

She seemed to glide up to her feet, rising to her full height, which suddenly seemed not so insignificant. Following again to his own feet, Adam wondered suddenly how anyone could possibly think she was forgettable. She was Boedica, Titania, Maeve. He had the oddest feeling she was looking down at him, instead of standing at his shoulder.

And then she closed the conversation.

“No.”

Without another word she turned away and stalked out of the room, slamming the doors behind her with a force that made the walls shake. Ten minutes later Adam was standing out under the front portico waiting for his phaeton to be brought around after a much older man wearing livery ushered him out the front door and slammed it behind him.

Well, he thought, struggling into his driving coat. That went well. Wait until he told her it was about to get even worse.




CHAPTER 2




HE HAD a face that was completely forgettable. At least that was the way Jamie had described him. Only Jamie could have been so ridiculously wry. Adam Marrick, the Duke of Rothray was not, sadly, forgettable. He couldn’t even be dismissed as memorable. Even leaning on his cane like an octogenarian, he radiated power and command. His shoulders alone would have betrayed him, broad, lean, compelling. His body filled his corbeau coat and biscuit inexpressibles like poetry. If Georgie had met him before Jamie, she might have missed the sight of her husband altogether.

And that jaw. You could cut glass with that jaw, she thought, pacing her brother’s library in a brisk circle. Slashing cheekbones, ocean-blue eyes and tumbled mahogany-colored hair that just brushed his collar. Her Jamie had been comfortable-looking, just a little plump with merry blue eyes and a cleft chin. His cousin looked no more like him than Georgie did. Except for the humor in his eyes. While the humor had lasted, anyway.

What was she to do? Oh, she wished Jack and Olivia hadn’t thought it important to spend Christmas with the family. If only there were anybody else she could confide in. Anybody who understood the laws of peerage, anyway. She had so many questions that needed immediate answers.

As she made another circuit, a shaggy gray head lifted from a set of huge paws, the gentle brown eyes tracking her like prey.

“Thank you, Murphy,” Georgie said as if the Irish wolfhound had spoken. “But I need to work this one out myself.”

Lully simply could not go. She was safe here. They both were, well out of the limelight. Well away from her parents, who had done such a thorough job of striking her name from the family Bible while threatening to confiscate her Lully if she didn’t stay out of sight. Not that they truly wanted Lully. But they would rather the girl be controlled under their eyes than leave her to possibly further soil the Wyndham marquessate under Georgie’s.

How Jack put up with them Georgie didn’t know. But she wasn’t about to. And she was definitely not about to put herself in a position to test their threat. Lully was all she had. She was the reason Georgie had survived Jamie’s death.

If the Wyndhams smelled a duchy in the wind, they wouldn’t let Lully go short of pitched battle.

“Are you receiving?” a brisk voice asked from the doorway.

Georgie didn’t stop moving, but she waved her guest in. “Settle someplace. I wouldn’t want to run you over.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Georgie threw a glance at the tall, prim woman who was even now arranging her gray serge dress about her on one of a pair of bloodred

red leather chairs like a dove settling its feathers. It had been one of the greatest blessings of her life when she had come across Hattie Clark at the hiring agency. Hattie’s former employers had retired her without enough stipend to live on. Georgie had seen the iron-gray hair and straight back, the calm hands and the flash of need in those intelligent brown eyes and hired her on the spot. Hattie had become her trusted companion during the years when she had taken the children and hidden them all away.

“Has the servant’s grapevine filled you in yet?” Georgie asked.

Hattie looked up with a tsk. “This lot is reprehensibly lacking in eavesdropping skills.”

Georgie couldn’t help but grin. “Something we should undoubtedly fit into their lessons. There are few benefits greater in having servants than their uncanny ability to suss out and share information.”

Hattie shook her own tidy gray head. “Well, they have much to learn. All I could garner was that we had an actual duke in the house and that you sent him to the roundabout with his tail between his legs. I imagine it’s quite a story.”

Georgie sighed and slowed. Hattie kept her silence until Georgie had finally plopped into the matching chair.

“Is it?”

Georgie closed her eyes. “I am afraid so. It would seem that Jamie’s mother has died.”

“I am sorry.”

“I am not.” Sighing in frustration, Georgie rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “No. That is unkind. Jamie’s mother was not the problem. She was simply too weak to challenge the problem.”

“The Earl.”

“The Earl.”

Who, unfortunately, was still very much alive and hated Georgie far more than Jamie’s mother and sisters had. Far more than even her own parents. She had not only destroyed the advantageous political match the earl had sought for his son, she had encouraged his love of the sea which, to the earl’s mind, sent him to his doom. Georgie had to admit that at least the last crime could be reason enough to resent her. But of course it had even been worse than that.

“The duke is Jamie’s cousin,” she said rather than dwell on old pain. “You know, the one he idolized.”

Hattie gave a small gasp. “Good heavens.”

Georgie cast her a wry look. “So you saw him?”

“My, yes.”

Georgie nodded. Jamie had talked about him, of course. Jamie had grown up in Adam’s shadow and done it happily. He had read all the dispatches that mentioned Adam to Georgie during their brief courtship, leaving behind the impression that Adam Marrick was nothing short of a minor god.

No, Georgie thought. Not a god of any sort. Just a man.

She almost laughed out loud. No. Not just a man. She would have been able to look away from just a man, no matter how handsome. But one look had proven what Jamie had alleged. Adam Marrick truly was everything Jamie had striven to be; honorable, witty, wise and strong.

She needed strong right now.

No she didn’t. She needed him gone and his news with him. And yet, wouldn’t it be lovely to be able to lay her problem in his lap?

Shaking her head, she fought the urge to jump to her feet and resume pacing. She hadn’t realized how much she had absorbed Jamie’s hero worship.

“He has come to tell me that as Jamie is already dead, Lully is his mother’s heir.” She lifted her head and frowned. “Which makes her the new Duchess of Kintyre.”

Hattie blinked. “Great gods.”

Georgie managed a dry smile. “Indeed.”

“They couldn’t be mistaken, I suppose.”

“I imagine that if the earl could have found any legal way to prevent this, he would have taken it. Evidently a Scottish title can easily pass along the female line. Who knew?”