“What did he say? Is the dwarf as mentally deficient as they say?” Betts asked.
Mia kept her face down. Nothing in that description matched the man she had met four times now. Kendrick’s obvious intelligence and competence shouldn’t need defending, and Eustace and his friends were unlikely to listen. As to his crooked posture—he was hardly some sort of ogre. She thought again of the way he raised himself out of his saddle, his shoulders rippling with strength under a well-fitted jacket, and blushed.
“You put my cousin to blush, Betts. Watch how you talk, but I’m as curious as you. I wonder what he’s like.” Eustace drained his glass.
“When Felton Tavernash accepts my invitation to dinner, you can ask him. It shouldn’t be long,” Uncle Ludlow said.
“The heir?” Eustace asked. “I thought… But you say you did ask him?”
“He should be able to tell us why that man is still there. When he calls, that is—and gentleman that he is, I have no doubt he will.” A decent pudding arrived, drawing Uncle Ludlow’s attention to his meal.
Selina wiggled in her seat impatiently, her most petulant expression on full display. “We need to prod him a bit,” she muttered, but the viscount ignored her.
“If we’re all so curious about Mr. Kendrick, perhaps we should simply invite him to tea as well,” Mia said, drawing gasps all around the table.
Uncle Ludlow snapped to attention at that. “He will not be received in this house.” He pronounced each word as if it was a dart. “I remember well what he is like and what happened fourteen years ago, things a young maiden shouldn’t hear.”
Eustace perked up at that and appeared ready to ask but closed his mouth.
“Still, it might be amusing to actually meet him,” Rowley murmured.
Betts broke in before the viscount could chastise that remark. “The one that’s coming is the duke’s heir. Do you think he knows whether the duke is dead or where the body might be? Maybe we can learn something to give our betting an edge.”
“Good idea, Betts, but I still think he did himself in,” Eustace said.
“Dukes don’t kill themselves,” Uncle Ludlow said.
“They don’t just disappear, either,” Eustace retorted.
“Maybe the half-wit killed him. Came to try to take over the duchy.” Betts, grinning over a spoon of raspberry trifle, appeared very pleased with that fantastical theory.
Eustace leaned over. “Wouldn’t it just set White’s into a frenzy if we bring that little idea to the betting book? Of course, he’d never be able to take over the title. Unless… The unentailed estate, maybe. If I were Felton Tavernash, I’d watch my back, I can tell you that.”
“I wonder what old Rogers at the Cockcrow would think of that idea,” Betts said. “He knows him.”
“Nonsense. Enough unfounded talk, all of you. Ladies…” Uncle Ludlow gazed at Selina pointedly.
Selina rose with a scowl and led Mia to the door. “We always have to leave when it is getting good,” she whined.
Mia ignored her. She was too busy watching the glances being exchanged. Eustace and his miscreant friends would be spreading nonsense at the tavern before the night was over. Of that she had no doubt.
*
Felton Tavernash wasa fop of the first order who had few ideas not put in his head by his mother, or so Gideon decided when he finally found him on his own fourth day in residence. The Woodglen manor house was massive enough that two men could avoid each other indefinitely, with Gideon housed in the least comfortable guest corridor and Tavernash comfortably entrenched in the family wing. To Gideon’s knowledge, the erstwhile heir avoided the estate offices and seemed more interested in the wine cellar.
Still, an encounter was easy enough to arrange once Gideon decided he needed to meet the man. The Tavernash aspirant liked his food. Gideon merely inserted himself into the formal dining room at dinnertime. The dinner hour was predictable enough. Gideon sauntered in just as the staff in full livery began to serve Felton Tavernash, who sat in solitary splendor at the head of the table.
“Set a place for me, Fillmore. I will dine here,” he said, taking a chair to the cousin’s left.
“I say, what is the meaning of this?” Tavernash sputtered. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re that intruder. Fillmore said you used to live here.”
“That I did,” Gideon said, glaring at Fillmore until the old man laid his place and brought the soup course. “It is my brother’s house. I am Gideon Kendrick.”
“Wrong side of the blanket, m’ mother says,” Tavernash muttered. “Can’t inherit.”
Gideon ignored the jibe and applied himself to his soup before asking, “Who is your father?”
“Was. Passed two years ago. Sir Ronald Tavernash. Left me a neat little pile, Sedgewood Hall, in Buckinghamshire.” Tavernash shrugged. “Nothing like this.”
