As his friend looked at him in shock, Quincy remembered: Peter didn’t have a clue that Quincy was aristocracy.
He blanched. Ah, God, how had he forgotten? In all the years they had known each other, he had never once told Peter who his family was. He had told him everything else, of course, such as where he was from, about his parents and siblings, and his dreams of traveling. Yet he’d never said to Peter, his closest friend,I’m the son of a duke.
Why? What had prompted that glaring omission? In a flash he saw it, that uneasy night spent aboardThe Persistencewhile a storm battered the merchant ship. It had been mere days after sailing from London, the first crossing for either of them. He and Peter had huddled together belowdeck, confiding in one another to keep their minds from the fear of sinking to a watery grave. It had been on the tip of Quincy’s tongue to tell Peter the truth of his birth.
But Peter had begun telling his own story, of his hate for his cousin, the duke, who he blamed for his mother’s death. Of his disgust for anything or anyone noble. And in Quincy’s fear that he might lose his first and only friend, he had conveniently left that aspect of his past out. It wasn’t imperative, he’d reasoned. Peter knew everything about him that was important, and as Quincy never intended to return to his family, he might as well cut himself off from them completely. As the years passed that omission had blended into reality until he had forgotten he was aristocracy. He was a self-made man and owner of his own destiny, and nothing else.
But the poisonous truth of what he had been born into was already erasing that life he’d built from nothing. Fourteen years of hard work undermined in a single moment.
Peter’s face was still slack with stunned incomprehension. Guilt reared up in Quincy, that he had kept something so very important from this man who had shared everything with him.
“I’m sorry,” he managed. As apologies went, it was the bare minimum, yet it was all he could think of to say.
If anything, Peter looked more confused. “It’s true then? This is not some prank on your part?” He shook his head, his heavy brows drawing down in the middle. “But how can you be aduke?”
The words formed in Quincy’s mind, excuses as to why he’d kept such a thing from his best friend. But they froze on his tongue. To his grief-numbed mind they sounded ridiculous. In the end he could only stare at him miserably.
A soft voice shattered the thick, cloying silence. “I do believe he was as shocked as you by the news, Peter,” Lady Clara said, laying a hand on her cousin’s arm, giving Lenora a meaningful look. “If you had only seen his face when he arrived here, you would know how deeply he was affected.”
Lenora took the hint, snapping out of her stunned muteness. “Of course he was. Mayhap it would be best if the two of you talked in private. I’m certain he can explain everything to you then.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Lady Tesh interjected, waving her cane about, nearly clipping Lady Phoebe’s nose in the process. “You shan’t leave me in suspense.”
“Gran,” Margery said in an overloud manner, stepping in front of the viscountess, holding the frazzled dog before her face, “Freya is looking a bit peaked. I do think the trip to Lord and Lady Crabtree’s quite did her in. We’d best see about finding her something to eat.”
The diversion worked. Lady Tesh’s attention was successfully snagged, for there was little the dowager viscountess loved more than her pet. “Oh, my darling Freya,” she cooed to the dog, who took the attention with all the grace of a queen. “Are you hungry? Let’s see about feeding you, my love.” With that she shuffled off without a word to her granddaughter, her cane thumping. Margery, with an apologetic look to Quincy, trailed after her with the dog.
“There,” Lady Clara declared as her great-aunt disappeared from view. “Now there is nothing to stop you from sitting down together.”
Quincy looked to his friend. “Will you hear me out?”
For a long, horrible moment Quincy thought his friend might refuse. Peter’s pale blue eyes bored into him with all the intensity of a flame. Finally he gave a terse nod, turning on the ball of his foot and heading in the direction of his study.
Of their own volition, Quincy’s eyes found Lady Clara in silent thanks. She gave him an encouraging smile that he felt clear to his toes. Dragging in a deep breath, he turned and followed Peter.
***
By the time Quincy reached the study Peter was stationed by the window. He stood staring out into the back garden, looking for all the world as if something outside interested him greatly. Yet Quincy, who had known him half his life, could plainly see the lines of tension scoring his broad back.
“Peter,” he began, “I’m sorry—”
Peter held up one meaty hand and turned to face him. “I will admit, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around this.” He frowned, looking more confused than Quincy had ever seen him. “Please forgive me for repeating myself, but you are the Duke of Reigate?”
Quincy swallowed hard. “Yes,” he rasped.
Peter nodded and began to pace. Each movement was deliberate and slow, as if he might gain control over this insane moment by pure intent. “And who was the previous duke?”
It occurred to Quincy that he wasn’t certain which of his brothers had taken the title before him. Had Gordon, his father’s heir, passed first? Did Kenneth or Sylvester don the mantle before their untimely demises?
For the first time since learning of his brothers’ deaths, he was filled with a cloying, bitter grief. He and his siblings had not gotten along. Yet they had been of his blood. They had been family.
“I don’t know,” he managed.
Peter must have heard something in his voice, for in a moment he was at Quincy’s side, steering him to a chair. And then a glass was being pressed into his hands.
Quincy could only stare at it in incomprehension. With a gentle nudge Peter lifted it to his lips.
The first sip seared him from the inside, finally jarring him back to the present. He blinked, looking to Peter, who had seated himself across from him and was looking at him in worried expectation.