Uncle Hugh and Uncle Francis clambered to their feet and scurried toward the protection of the wall. Aunt Eliza slumped in her chair while Mr. Lewis simply sat, holding the will, the left corner of his mouth still pointed up. His two clerks wisely decided to retreat from the room, their role fulfilled.
“Do something!” Uncle Hugh roared at Eoin because, even if they didn’t like him, they still expected him to solve everything that plagued them.
Eoin stood up and stalked toward the goose, who promptly half ran and half glided in the opposite direction. Eoin made one swipe, but he only touched two tail feathers.
“It’s moving!” Aunt Eliza suddenly screeched.
Eoin turned to see her staring in horror at one of the eggs, which had indeed begun to shake back and forth. The gosling inside was clearly in the process of hatching, but the sight was unsettling, especially to someone as prone to nerves as Aunt Eliza. However, instead of simply backing away from the basket as Eoin would have expected, Aunt Eliza chose to reach inside, grab the egg, and then hurl it.
Eoin acted on instinct and dove for the delicate projectile. After all, the creature inside was striving with all its might tobe born into this world. How terrible would it be for that hope of life to be literally dashed against the floor?
Eoin landed painfully on his stomach, but the force of his plunge shot his body forward. Reaching out one long arm, he was just able to softly catch the egg before it hit the ground.
“You are to secure the filthy goose, not the egg, John!” Hugh demanded.
Eoin, however, ignored his uncle as he strode to the bellpull in the corner of the room. Unlike Mr. Lewis’s hand-held one, this chime would call the house servants. Sure enough, a footman popped into the room a few seconds later. To the young man’s credit, he remained stone-faced at the spectacle before him.
“Peter, can you bring Ann to catch the geese? My understanding is she recently came from the country, and she grew up on a tenant farm. Also, bring two more footmen with you to carry off the birds and their baskets,” Eoin said, ignoring the utter chaos too.
Peter nodded and hastily exited. He returned promptly with Ann, a wide-eyed lass of seventeen. It was clear that the maid was overwhelmed by being called into a meeting of the noble family, but she very expertly wrangled each fowl. Within moments, not even a single feather remained in the room, and a semblance of peace descended—or rather it would have if Aunt Eliza hadn’t commenced sobbing and Uncle Hugh hadn’t taken to muttering curse words.
Eoin, however, felt more at ease than he had since he’d open his box of ashes. If his aunts and uncles had received nothing, they were dependent on him and desperate for funds. He could easily pay them to tell him what they knew of his mother. Eoin doubted that they were aware of her location, but they must at least remember her maiden name. Perhaps they could evendescribe her. Eoin had only hazy memories of eyes as blue-green as his own and a voice singing to him in a lilting Irish accent.
“Let us all sit,” Eoin said. As his relatives complied, he turned to the solicitor. “Mr. Lewis, if you would be so kind as to finish the rest of the letter.”
“Certainly,” Mr. Lewis said. This time when he read, he left the paper lying on the lace cloth. “‘If my four children wish to receive any more from my estate, they must earn it. It should not be difficult as it only requires that they do nothing. I have set up a trust with my unentailed wealth. For every five years that Viscount Malbarry does not locate either his mother or his sister, you’ll receive one hundred pounds each. After twenty years, you shall jointly inherit Windy Hill.’”
Bloody hell. The old sot had been uncannily devious, even until the end. Although the estates produced enough income that Eoin could technically pay his relatives more than the trust, the price was simply too stiff. Too many souls depended on the duchy for their livelihoods, and Eoin wouldn’t siphon away large amounts from the coffers. And he had no idea how he could compensate his aunts and uncles for the Windy Hill property, even if the house and the lands were relatively small compared to the rest of Eoin’s holdings.
His relatives would be loath to help him even without the incentive that his grandfather had just offered from the grave. Now Eoin truly had no leads, and he doubted his mother would reach out to him. Even though his memories of his parents were fuzzy at best, he did recall his grandfather threatening to use his power to send Eoin’s sister to a far-flung girls’ school and to have his mother hanged for treason if she ever tried to interfere in Eoin’s life.
Dimly, Eoin heard his aunts and uncles protest about theunfairness of waiting for their inheritance, but Eoin couldn’t listen anymore. He’d spent years building fortification after fortification around his emotions, but for the first time in a long while, he felt a crack. A small crack but a crack nonetheless. And he did not want to break in front of Mr. Lewis and his paternal relations.
Without offering an explanation, Eoin stood and strolled from the room. He heard Uncle Hugh yelling “Stop,” but Eoin didn’t listen. He was duke now—even if he otherwise felt as powerless as he always had in this household.
As a boy, when he felt he could no longer endure his grandfather’s endless restrictions, he’d slink away to the gardens behind the London townhouse. Now, however, he merely walked through the French doors leading from one of the sitting rooms onto the veranda. He couldn’t leave the grounds, couldn’t run from his responsibilities as duke, but he could afford himself this single, momentary retreat.
He weaved through the overgrown pathways, as flowers and plants had never been his grandfather’s priority. He stopped in front of a folly built in the shape of a circular keep. The whimsical structure had been ordered by the late duchess, the grandmother who had died long before Eoin’s birth. He wished that he felt some connection to her, some solace. But there was none.
With a sigh, he entered the structure. Nothing was inside. Not even an old, forgotten bench. Ignoring his silk finery, Eoin plopped on the ground and rested his back against the cool interior stonework.
Just then he felt a curious warmth on his palm. Glancing down, he found a little gosling lying partially in its cracked shell with its head nestled against Eoin’s skin. He’d forgotten all about the egg that he’d rescued from his aunt’s panicked fit.
Pink dimpled skin peeked out from between yellowy-brown feathers as the baby animal wiggled back and forth. With its down still wet, the gosling looked unbearably small and breakable. Yet despite its fragility, it still valiantly struggled to free itself from the confines that it had known its entire existence.
Could Eoin be so determinedly resourceful?
“You are a fierce little one,” Eoin said, and then immediately felt sheepish. It wasn’t in his nature to talk to animals as if they could understand his words. Yet now he found himself doing so in less than a space of a fortnight. Last time, he’d even awkwardly bowed to a sharp-tongued parrot named Pan.
Eoin couldn’t stop his lips from twitching upward as he thought about that particular evening. But it wasn’t the bird or even his own actions that brought a glint of amusement to his otherwise miserable day. No—it was the memory of Pan’s mistress: Miss Hannah Wick.
The redhead was precisely the type of female that Eoin had been taught to avoid. Her father was an English-born pirate who’d seduced and married the daughter of a viscount. Then, instead of having the grace to simply run back to the Caribbean and fade into distant memory, the society-defying couple had set up a coffeehouse in London that catered to all sundry of misfits, reformers, and downright dissidents.
They were exactly the kind of people that Eoin’s grandfather abhorred, but Eoin secretly admired.
Although Miss Wick’s family history had intrigued Eoin, it was her boldness that had utterly captivated him. At their first meeting, he’d been dressed in the clothes of a farm laborer, and she hadn’t known his position as an heir to a dukedom. Yet when she’d laid eyes on him, Eoin had watched interest flare to life in her grass-green eyes. And Miss Wick, with her hoydenish expression and the wild Titian curls escaping hercoiffure, had caused a rebellious want to riot through all of Eoin’s staidness.
Perhaps it was because no woman had ever looked at him so brazenly. His height, title, and reputation for aloofness made debutantes and even their matchmaking mamas uneasy. Oh, they still flirted—he’d been an heir to a dukedom after all—but the coyness was always forced and definitely calculated. And Eoin had never known how to respond to their machinations. Yet there had been no artifice in Miss Hannah Wick’s undisguised appreciation of his physique, and his own response had flowed naturally from him.
