the last Duke grudgingly housed him and Nell until they were old enough for school.
It looked the same as ever; no need to make it bright and comfortable for children his uncle and aunt didn’t have. Colm wondered fleetingly if he might be Duke of Linaire himself one day if Uncle Maurice’s wife kept producing daughters. It wasn’t a prospect he relished, even if he and Nell would have half a dozen old-fashioned homes to choose from. He liked the Duke and the Duchess and would rather have the modest house and a wife to make it a home he had dreamed of when trying to sleep on a bare mountainside or as he and his men were waiting for battle.
Colm went to the governess’s desk and extracted a penknife to slip under Lord Farenze’s seal. He should have known the man was too shrewd to take anyone at face value, but what did the Viscount want? He’d best read the letter instead of staring at it as if it might bite. Addressed in a bold, impatient hand, it was a masterpiece of distant politeness. They had matters to discuss arising from certain documents delivered to Lord Farenze. Since his lordship now knew who Colm was, they probably did as well. Tempted to wait until he had new clothes and looked a little more gentlemanly, Colm limped up to his room and wrote out an offer to call on his lordship tomorrow morning instead.
‘Mr Carter, my lord,’ the Viscount’s stately butler announced Colm solemnly the next day.
‘Come in, Carter, and bring burgundy, please, Oakham,’ Lord Farenze said as if it was quite normal to offer his good wine to a humble clerk.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ Colm said quietly.
‘Don’t stand in the corner like a nervous sheepdog, man, take a seat,’ his host ordered him impatiently.
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Colm said and did as he was bid.
‘Should I feel rebuked by your faux humility?’
‘Of course not, my lord. What right has Mr Carter to correct the manners of his elders and betters?’
‘Oh, touché; you learnt more than you want to admit in your old employment.’
‘Old employment, my lord? What work could a humble clerk do to teach him to be bold?’
‘Recently healed scars and a halt in a man’s step are all too common since Waterloo, so pretending the whole business was nothing to do with you attracts attention rather than deflecting it, Hancourt and you will have to resume your true identity under your uncle’s roof, won’t you?’
‘Did my uncle give me away somehow?’
‘No, your father did. You are the spit of him at the same age,’ the Viscount said dourly, as if he was trying not to hold it against him.
‘Barring the scars, I suppose?’ Colm said, wondering how he felt about being so like his father and what conclusions this man had made about him on the strength of his outward appearance.
‘Your hair is a shade darker and you’re leaner and perhaps taller, but that could be due to you leading an active life before you were injured.’
‘I wouldn’t know whether I look like him or not; there are no portraits of my father left at Linaire House and I don’t really remember what he looked like.’
That was the bare formalities out of the way, so Colm tensed, waiting for an order to stay away from the Winterleys from now on. God-send the man had not found out about Verity’s misadventure or the roles he and Miss Winterley took in it on that night he was trying so hard not to remember.
‘You should visit your late father’s godmother,’ Lord Farenze said. ‘She owns a very fine portrait of him taken in his youth and it confirmed all my suspicions about you.’
‘And now?’ Colm challenged because he couldn’t endure sitting here squirming while the man made up his mind whether to dislike him for being his father’s son.
Then the ageing butler re-entered, followed by a footman with that wine and Colm had to be patient after all. He watched his glass being filled with rich wine he didn’t intend to drink and bit back a sigh.
‘That will be all, Oakham,’ Lord Farenze said, ‘close the door behind you.’
Ah, so they were about to stop dancing about, were they? Colm put his glass down virtually untouched and tried to look a lot more relaxed than he felt.
‘I would rather you and my daughter had not met that night at Derneley’s, or in the park the next morning, but what’s done can’t be undone.’
At least Miss Winterley’s father didn’t know about their disgraceful escapade in Cavendish Square. Colm blanked the thought of it from his mind so his lordship couldn’t read it and listened for what came next.
‘You have little to offer any woman, let alone my daughter, but you were alone with her for far too long before I turned up to make you respectable.’
‘That’s true,’ Colm admitted carefully.
‘Yet you stayed in that library although you knew you were the last man on earth she should be alone with like that.’
‘Now there I must argue, my lord. Sir Steven Scrumble proved a worse rogue than me that night,’ Colm said bitterly. Having to name that piece of filth as a brother in infamy made him feel as if he was indeed lying down with swine.
‘You’re splitting hairs, Hancourt. My daughter has fought against the blight of her mother’s blown name all her life. If any gossip gets out about her being alone with you in a closed room at Derneley House that night, I’ll rip you to shreds.’
‘I have already promised to keep silent.’
Deeply offended by Lord Farenze’s doubts, Colm wanted to spring to his feet and stalk out in a noble huff, but years of military discipline kept him sitting here and wasn’t it true you should know your enemy? There was little doubt Lord Farenze considered him one of those since he refused to take Colm’s word for the iron promise it truly was.
‘I saw the way you looked at my daughter and you have wild blood in your veins, however hard you try to deny it. If you were still rich as Croesus, you’d have an uphill struggle persuading me to consent to a marriage between you and Eve. You would have to love each other to the edge of reason for me to even think about such a repellent idea. Imagining the public mockery and doubts such a marriage would arouse makes me shudder for my daughter and say that, no, even that would not be enough. Steer clear of her, Hancourt, maybe then I’ll admit you’re a better man than Lord Christopher Hancourt ever was.’
‘I have met Miss Winterley only twice and you really think I see her as a fine opportunity to better myself? I don’t recall offering her marriage on such a short acquaintance and you will just have to believe I have absolutely no intention of ever doing so in the future since you don’t respect my word of honour.’
‘You don’t want to marry her?’ his lordship asked, sounding as if he was genuinely surprised any young man in possession of his right senses wouldn’t want to do so.
He was quite right, of course, but Colm had learnt the difference
