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“Changed your preferred name, have you? Cannot say that I blame you.” Amiable as ever, Merrivale chattered away, seeming not to notice Lilly’s shock. “I detest Aldric. Most of my inner circle calls me Rick.”

Layton swallowed before giving a shallow nod. “I left the army some time ago. I am currently an instructor at Kelston Hall Children’s Home.”

That seemed safe enough to divulge.

Lilly’s eyes grew impossibly rounder as she must have realized he had regained his memory, but she kept her lips tightly pressed together. Few women would have maintained their composure under these circumstances.

He admired her self-control and poise.

God, his head throbbed like he had been clobbered by an Australian Aboriginal’s waddy.

Australian?

Yes, Australian.

Layton had been to Australia for a brief time, delivering confidential dispatches. That explained how he knew about long-neck turtles and gigantic spiders.

Merrivale’s eyebrows shot to his hairline in perplexed disbelief.

“You are employed…here?”

Twenty-one

In what was now a very uncomfortable drawing room

After the passage of an undeterminable number of awkward seconds

“I am.” Layton strove to keep the terseness from his tone, but by God, Merrivale’s incredulity bordered on insulting. No, his blatant disbelief radiated disdain.

To a man who had never worked a minute in his life, the shock and disgust were genuine.

“But why, man?” Merrivale glanced around, the faintest hint of contempt flaring his nostrils as he took in the room’s simple décor and dismissed the furnishings as commonplace. “You are the adopted son of the wealthy and powerful Duke of Latham, not to mention you possess your own substantial fortune.”

True, but that was none of Merrivale’s business, and that he knew of Layton’s inheritance from his biological father proved more than a little unnerving.

Layton never spoke of his birthright, having despised his father with every ounce of his being for as long as he could remember. The funds sat in an account at Hoare’s Bank, earning a tidy annual income from interest.

He had as much desire to access the funds as he did to be drawn and quartered.

Layton speared Lilly a swift glance.

Her jaw had gone slack before she snapped her mouth closed.

“Duke?” she mimed silently, then wandered to stand beside a table displaying several inkwells.

Eyes slightly narrowed, she stared at him reproachfully as she toyed with the lid of a bronze acorn-shaped ink pot.

What the blazes was she thinking?

Surely, she did not blame Layton for what he could not remember until now.

So absorbed in his amazement, Merrivale did not seem to notice. Or more likely, the viscount had dismissed her as an inferior and therefore beneath his regard.

Typical of him.

Aldric Davenport was the epitome of privileged elitist snobbery. Unless blueblood ran in a person’s veins, that individual was irrelevant. A nobody.

“Why, by all that is holy, would you choose to smell of the shop, Westbrook?”