“Nothing may be moral insofar asyouare concerned.” Freddy shook his head. “Your father may have been an honorable man,but the title has been stained by your rakish history. That my sister should bear your name is a crime unto itself.”
The duke took a step forward, standing beside Amelia. She looked at him nervously, knowing that his past had been far from spotless, but surprised that Freddy seemed to know so much about him.
“So long as you stand in these halls,” Nicholas intoned, clearly as surprised as she was, “we will speak with manners befitting gentlemen of your station and mine. Or you will leave.”
Amelia glanced, panicked, between her husband and her brother. Why was Freddy behaving like this? He stepped forward, and Amelia held him back, placing a hand on his chest.
She searched her brother’s blue eyes.
I have never seen him look so angry. Before he left, Freddy would never have spoken so rudely to a man of Nicholas’s rank. Something has changed within him, but I do not know what or why. Unless he feels he has been slighted by this marriage? Is what he heard about Nicholas really so terrible?
“Please,” she murmured. “There is no need for this. Allow me to introduce you to His Grace properly. Come, we will have tea together. Please, Freddy…”
Reluctantly, her brother agreed to sit with them for a while, guided by hand to the nearest drawing room. He waited quietlyas the maids entered shortly thereafter with a tea service and apple cake, glowering at Nicholas from his armchair by the fire, the flames casting his silhouette in shadow.
Nicholas stood protectively behind Amelia’s chair. The air in the drawing room was thick with tension as she leaned forward to serve her brother tea, hands trembling around the teapot.
A stream of dark amber liquid rippled quietly into his china cup. Amelia focused her attention on the sound of the cup filling rather than on Freddy, knowing what questions needed to be asked but not wanting to ask them.
Not in front of Nicholas. Not while they are trained on one another like two men looking to gain advantage over the other on a battlefield.
“Shall I begin? It seems I must.” Nicholas’s voice cut through the silence. “You were in France for two years, Viscount Tate. This sudden return of yours seems highly unnecessary if you have come only to ensure Amelia’s safety as my wife. There must be more, something you have learned. For as you can see with your own eyes, the duchess is fine.”
“To the naked eye, yes. As has ever been the case.” He pursed his lips. “Any brother would have done the same.”
“Returning? Why?”
“You and I may not have mingled in the same circles, Your Grace. But I know of your past—yoursand yourbrother’s. Birds of a feather,almost.”
Did he mean their half-shared parentage? Amelia could not bear to look up and find out.
Her brother continued, “Why Amelia? It does not make a lick of sense to me. There is only one thing this marriage of yours can be.”
“And what is that?”
“A perverse joke. Some sort of cruel prank you are playing on her. My only other hypothesis is that you are a sadist taking joy in having Amelia near to you, making the most of her supposedly vulnerable state for your own amusement. By now, you should have realized she is perfectly sane. So why continue this charade?”
“Frederick,” Amelia interrupted, stunned. She set down the teapot, grateful Nicholas had sent the staff away so they would not witness this. “What on earth are you saying?”
“I am saying the truth.” He pointed an accusatory finger at Nicholas. “The Duke of Avon learned the rumor of your condition and sought to take advantage. When I called on Uncle before coming here, in search of you, he assured me that I was wrong. Said that your betrothal arose out of some sort of misunderstanding and that His Grace is good and proper now.I do not believe that. I say that out of purest devotion to you, sister, and with all due respect to His Grace.
“This must all be a lie you are too gentle to understand.”
Her chair creaked as Nicholas’s hands tightened around the headrest.
“Your devotion has blinded you,” Nicholas muttered. “Yes, there was a misunderstanding, but I took Her Grace to be my wife out of much more than duty.”
Amelia glanced up at him, frowning. He almost sounded sincere. The thought made her heart leap painfully.
Painfully, because it was not true.
“I know of your sister’s malady. You are right in what pertains to her sanity.”
“Then something more is afoot. It must be.” Frederick leaned forward. “What the devil is in this for you?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You must release my sister immediately, and—”
