No one bothered to introduce them.
“Good morning,” said the duchess abruptly, before the two men could do more than exchange polite nods of acknowledgement. “I trust your journeys were without incident.”
Max’s mouth curled. On the godforsaken mail coach, until he managed to charm a nearby innkeeper’s daughter to let him have a horse on credit. The roads were atrocious, it had rained the first day, and if not for the accommodating innkeeper’s daughter, he would have arrived bedraggled and on foot, baggage in hand, like a traveling peddler.
“Yes, Your Grace,” said the soldier politely.
“It was perfectly delightful,” drawled Max. He crossed one leg over the other and draped his wrist over his knee, the picture of rakish insolence.
Her lips pinched at him. “Excellent. No doubt you wonder why I summoned you to Carlyle.” She turned to the solicitor. “Mr. Edwards will explain.”
The solicitor adjusted his spectacles. “On the fourteenth of April last, Lord Stephen St. James, youngest brother of His Grace the Duke of Carlyle, fell ill and died.”
The soldier had penetrating green eyes. He turned them on the duchess. “I offer my deepest sympathies, madam.”
“Thank you, Captain,” she replied. “That is very kind of you.”
“Unfortunately,” continued the solicitor, “Lord Stephen was His Grace’s nearest living heir. Carlyle himself has no children or wife.”
The soldier jerked in his chair with an audible intake of breath. Max flicked a glance at him, but his face was expressionless.
An odd thought lit up the back of Max’s mind. But no; it couldn’t be. He and the duke were only very distant cousins, and if anyone at Carlyle gave a damn what happened to him, they had never showed it. Eons ago, in Max’s childhood, his mother had appealed to Carlyle for aid, when his father had run off with another of his flirts and left them without money. He still remembered his mother’s tragic expression at the curt reply, with but five pounds enclosed. They had nearly starved that winter, being forced to stay with his mother’s family. Max’s father had returned home in the spring, drunk, penniless, and utterly unapologetic.
He glanced at the soldier again. That one seemed to have a sense of what was up. He sat as alert as a pointer, all but quivering with eagerness to please.
Max shifted in his chair. The captain must be another St. James relation. Nearer, or more distant? he wondered. Because there was only one reason it could possibly matter to either of them that the Duke of Carlyle’s heir had just died.
And then the duchess confirmed it. “Lord Stephen has also left no wife or children. In their absence, it appears the dukedom will pass upon my son’s death to one of his distant cousins.” Her unimpressed gaze moved over each of them. “In short, to one of you.”
Blessed Christ and all the angels. Max’s heart skidded violently in his chest before he could rein in his reaction. A dukedom—and not just any dukedom, but Carlyle, large and prosperous.
But he did rein it in, because the next words out of the soldier’s mouth squelched his moment of euphoria. “That is most unexpected news, Your Grace,” he said in his deep, gravelly voice. “May I inquire how . . . ?”
“Certainly,” she said crisply. “Mr. St. James is the great-great-grandson of the second duke.” She raised her brows at him, and Max inclined his head in agreement. “And you, Captain, are the great-grandson of the third duke.”
So the soldier outranked him. Max silently let out his breath. It had been too incredible to be true.
“This is quite shocking news, ma’am,” replied the captain. If the news had shocked him, he had recovered well. “But is there no one—?”
The solicitor cleared his throat and opened his mouth. “No,” said the duchess shortly. “There is no one nearer.”
A weighty look passed between them, and then the solicitor picked up the thread. “As you may not know, His Grace the Duke suffered a tragic injury many years ago. It has rendered him unable to take a wife and father direct heirs, which means there is no chance either of you will be supplanted by an heir apparent.” He drew a wide sheet of paper from under his elbow and spread it on the front of the table, facing them. “I have taken the liberty of documenting the family here.” He paused as Max and the soldier leaned forward in unison, craning their necks to see. “This documentation will be invaluable when the time comes to assert a claim, particularly as neither of you is a direct descendant of the current or previous holder of the title.”
For the first time Max’s eyes met those of the captain. The other man looked as startled as Max felt. The Duke of Carlyle was incapable of fathering a child. His only heir was dead. And he was . . . Max took a brief glance at the neatly scripted family chart. The duke was nearly sixty years old.
This . . . this was a pressing concern, he realized.
“I see this has been something of a surprise to you,” announced the duchess into the silence. “It has been no less alarming to me.”
Max’s hackles rose. He knew exactly what she meant. It might not have been so horrifying to them if they’d taken any interest in him years ago. “I wouldn’t precisely call it alarming,” he drawled. “A surprise, I’ll grant.”
The duchess’s expression should have turned him into a pillar of ash. The solicitor sighed in disappointment. Even the captain gave him a disapproving look. Max simply smiled back at all of them.
“The rules of inheritance are firm,” said the duchess, still eyeing him with distaste. “The title and entailed lands must descend through the male St. James line, and they will. One of you will be the next duke—Captain St. James, most likely, or Mr. St. James in the event tragedy befalls the captain.” From her expression, Max thought she’d consider his inheriting a calamity verging on the apocalypse.
“There is a considerable fortune attached to the estate, naturally,” she went on. “It is an enormous responsibility, and neither of you have the slightest preparation to assume it.”
“Naturally,” murmured Max.
“I have had both of you investigated,” she went on, ignoring him. “The results were hardly reassuring, but we must deal with what we must. Neither of you has taken a wife yet.”
“No, ma’am,” said the captain.
Max could hardly feed himself some months, let alone a wife and the children who usually followed. The duchess, with her jewels and satin-covered footstools, hadn’t the slightest idea about him. “Not one of my own,” he said languidly.
The silence was like a bubble of surprise. The lawyer took his meaning first, pressing his lips together and looking down. The captain cleared his throat, and the duchess glared daggers at him.
“Nor have you taken any pains toward respectability, sir,” she shot back. “That is what troubles me, and that is why I sent for you. The Duke of Carlyle wields great power, and must do so with dignity and decorum.”
Max thought of the last duke he’d seen—the young Duke of Umberton, gambling away eleven thousand pounds in one night and taking down his breeches to piss upon the faro table in a fit of pique. Dignity and decorum, indeed.
“It is an awesome responsibility,” the captain was saying, as sober as a judge, lapping up her words as if they were scripture. “I hope I may become worthy of it.”