Jack crumpled the newspaper again and threw it at Phineas.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over both of them.
Jack and Phineas looked up.
“Edmund,” Phineas said, grinning. “Save me from this starboard bow assault by newsprint.”
Edmund Haskett, Earl of Longridge and heir apparent to the Marquess of Sudbury, loomed. Edmund was tall and large. Outlandishly so. Very intimidating. Reliably foul-tempered. Always destined since birth for the peerage so he had never served in either the army or the navy. But Jack had often thought what a phenomenal soldier Edmund would have made. He would have scared the French into surrendering with his hulking size alone.
Jack saw Phineas straighten up, push his shoulders back. He always did when Edmund was around. Didn’t like his relative stature. Never had. Although Phineas would be the first to say his height was average for an Englishman and he was just cursed with unusually tall friends.
Edmund bowed. “Your Grace.” His deep voice filled the reading room of the club. The chatter among the other gentlemen in surrounding chairs suddenly hushed.
Edmund sat. As always, he made ordinary furniture look doll-sized.
Jack glanced around the room to see if either the Duke of Thornwick or the Duke of Abingdon, both members of the club, were standing nearby. No, they weren’t in the reading room.
The silence stretched.
Jack looked at Phineas. Phineas was looking at Edmund.
“Did Norman MacNaughton die?” Phineas asked in a low voice.
“Yes. This morning.”
No. No. Jack’s bones dissolved and he slumped back into his chair.
Norman was dead. His cousin. His vile, contemptible, piece-of-shit cousin was dead. But Norman was young, three or four years younger than Jack. And the last Jack had heard, he was in good health.
“It’s a mistake,” Jack got out.
“No,” Edmund grunted. Definitively. “Choked to death on his breakfast.”
Phineas stood and turned to Jack and bowed. “Your Grace.”
“Sit down, Phin,” Jack hissed. “Edmund’s having a joke.”
Phineas looked down at Jack. “Have you ever known Edmund to have a joke? If it were me coming to you with the news, I could see it. But Edmund?” He gestured at the dark-haired man who was hunched over, his elbows resting on his thighs. “It must be true, Jack. You are the new Duke of Dunmore.”
“I . . .” Jack searched Phineas’ serious face and Edmund’s scowl. He got no reassurance from either of their expressions.
No, no, no. He couldn’t be the Duke of Dunmore. He was never going to be the duke. Norman was supposed to have a dozen sons with his deceitful, beautiful whore of a wife and put Jack well out of the running. It was just like Norman to have failed at even that. The arsehole.
“I need a drink,” Jack finally gasped out.
Phineas disappeared and seconds later was back with glasses and a bottle of amber liquid.
“It’s appropriate, I think, to toast the new Duke of Dunmore with some whisky.”
Jack grabbed a glass as soon as the whisky was poured and gulped it down. He held the glass out, his hand shaking. “Another.” The glass was refilled. He was drinking the second finger as Phineas and Edmund both held out their glasses and intoned, “To the Duke of Dunmore.”
Jack was aware other men were saying “hear, hear” and several were leaving the reading room, ready to spread the news to men in other parts of the club and also among thetonin general. By afternoon, it would be everywhere. Because it was juicy news, indeed. Captain Jack Pike, the ruthless navy captain who had untold riches after the wars, was now the Duke of Dunmore.
“Where’s everyone off to?” George Danforth joined the three men, his book in his hand. The grave baron with his regimented mind, his outmoded wig, his dark eyes that missed very little. “Did something important happen?”
“Jack’s the new Duke of Dunmore,” Phineas said and sat quickly, likely to remind George of his prior claim onthe chairtoday.
“Your Grace.” George bowed and pulled up another chair, glaring at Phineas and shaking his head when Edmund lifted the whisky bottle. “Norman MacNaughton is dead, I take it. He would have to be, wouldn’t he?”
