Thomas freed an elbow, jabbed it hard into Audley’s stomach, and was rewarded with a low grunt.
“Stop it! Both of you!” Grace managed to wedge herself between them, which was probably the only thing that would have stopped the fight. Thomas just barely had time to halt the progress of his fist before it clipped her in the face.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she said, and Thomas would have agreed with her, except he was still breathing too hard to speak. And then it became apparent that she was speaking to him. It was galling, and he was filled with a not very admirable urge to embarrass her, just as she had embarrassed him.
“You might want to remove yourself from my, er…” He looked down at his midsection, upon which she was now seated.
“Oh!” Grace yelped, jumping up. She did not let go of Audley’s arm, however, and she yanked him along with her, peeling the two men apart. Audley, for his part, seemed more than happy to go with her.
“Tend to my wounds?” he asked, gazing upon her with all the pitiable mournfulness of an ill-treated puppy.
“You have no wounds,” she snapped, then looked over at Thomas, who had risen to his feet as well. “And neither do you.”
Thomas rubbed his jaw, thinking that their faces would both prove her wrong by nightfall.
And then his grandmother-oh now there was a person who ought be giving lessons in kindness and civility-decided it was time to enter the conversation. Unsurprisingly, her first statement was a hard shove to his shoulder.
“Apologize at once!” she snapped. “He is a guest in our house.”
“My house.”
Her face tightened at that. It was the one piece of leverage he held over her. She was there, as they all knew, at his pleasure and discretion.
“He is your first cousin,” she said. “One would think, given the lack of close relations in our family, that you would be eager to welcome him into the fold.”
One would, Thomas thought, looking warily over at Audley. Except that he had disliked him on sight, disliked that smirky smile, that carefully studied insolence. He knew this sort. This Audley knew nothing of duty, nothing of responsibility, and he had the gall to waltz in here and criticize?
And furthermore, who the hell was to say that Audley actually was his cousin? Thomas’s fingers clawed then straightened as he attempted to calm himself down. “Would someone,” he said, his voice clipped and furious, “do me the service of explaining just how this man has come to be in my drawing room?”
The first reaction was silence, as everyone waited for someone else to jump into the breach. Then Audley shrugged, motioned with his head toward the dowager, and said, “She kidnapped me.”
Thomas turned slowly to his grandmother. “You kidnapped him,” he echoed, not because it was hard to believe but rather because it wasn’t.
“Indeed,” she said sharply. “And I would do it again.”
Thomas looked to Grace. “It’s true,” she said. And then-bloody hell-she turned to Audley and said, “I’m sorry.”
“Accepted, of course,” he said, with enough charm and grace to pass muster in the most discerning of ballrooms.
Thomas’s disgust must have shown on his face, because when Grace looked at him, she added, “She kidnapped him!”
Thomas just rolled his eyes. He did not care to discuss it.
“And forced me to take part,” Grace muttered.
“I recognized him last night,” the dowager announced.
“In the dark?” Thomas asked dubiously.
“Under his mask,” she answered with pride. “He is the very image of his father. His voice, his laugh, every bit of it.”
Everything made sense now, of course. The portrait, her distraction the night before. Thomas let out a breath and closed his eyes, somehow summoning the energy to treat her with gentle compassion. “Grandmother,” he said, which ought to have been recognized as the olive branch it was, given that he usually called her you, “I understand that you still mourn your son-”
“Your uncle,” she cut in.
“My uncle,” he corrected, although it was difficult to think of him as such, given that they had never met. “But it has been thirty years since his death.”
“Twenty-nine,” she corrected sharply.
Thomas looked to Grace for he wasn’t sure what. Support? Sympathy? Her lips stretched into an apologetic line, but she remained silent.
He turned back to his grandmother. “It has been a long time,” he said. “Memories fade.”
“Not mine,” she said haughtily, “and certainly not the ones I have of John. Your father I have been more than pleased to forget entirely-”
“In that we are agreed,” Thomas interrupted tightly, because the only thing more farcical than the present situation was imagining his father witnessing it.
“Cecil!” he bellowed again, flexing his fingers lest he give in to the urge to strangle someone. Where the hell was the bloody painting? He’d sent the footman up ages ago. It should have been a simple endeavor. Surely his grandmother had not had time to affix the damned thing to her bedchamber wall yet.
“Your grace!” he heard from the hall, and sure enough there was the painting for the second time that afternoon, bobbing along as two footmen attempted to keep it balanced as they rounded the corner.
“Set it down anywhere,” Thomas instructed.
The footmen found a clear spot and set the painting down on the floor, leaning it gently against the wall. And for the second time that day Thomas found himself staring into the long-dead face of his uncle John.
Except this time was completely different. How many times had he walked by the portrait, never once bothering to look closely? And why should he? He’d never known the man, never had cause to see anything familiar in his expression.
But now…
Grace was the first to find words to express it. “Oh my God.”
Thomas stared in shock at Mr. Audley. It was as if he were one with the painting.
“I see no one is disagreeing with me now,” his grandmother announced smugly.
“Who are you?” Thomas whispered, staring at the man who could only be his first cousin.
“My name,” he stammered, unable to tear his eyes off the portrait. “My given name…My full name is John Augustus Cavendish-Audley.”
“Who were your parents?” Thomas whispered. But he didn’t reply, and Thomas heard his own voice grow shrill as he demanded, “Who was your father?”
Audley’s head snapped around. “Who the bloody hell do you think he was?”
Thomas felt the world dropping away. Every last moment, every memory, every breath of air that made him think he actually knew who he was-they all slid away, leaving him alone, stark, and completely without bearings.
“Your parents,” he said, and his voice shook like the wind. “Were they married?”
“What is your implication?” Audley snarled.
“Please,” Grace pleaded, jumping between them yet again. “He doesn’t know.” She looked at Thomas, and he knew what she was trying to tell him. Audley didn’t know. He had no idea what it meant if his birth was indeed legitimate.
Grace looked at him with apology. Because she was also saying that they had to tell him. They could not keep it a secret, no matter what the consequences. She said, “Someone needs to explain to Mr. Audley-”
“Cavendish,” the dowager snapped.
“Mr. Cavendish-Audley,” Grace amended, ever the diplomat. “Someone needs to tell him that…that…” She looked frantically from person to person, and then her gaze finally settled upon Audley’s stunned face. “Your father-the man in the painting, that is-assuming he is your father-he was his grace’s father’s…elder brother.”