Free Grace Gibson by The Lost Heir of Devonshire Page A

that Will’s expectations had sunk. And with Neville playfully threatening to tell all, Will, who was just a boy after all, was stuck acting as if all was right in the world.
    Indeed, to the degree her brother suffered abysmally, Mary began to suffer herself. The shine had worn off Mr. Neville just a little; she found him mildly tiresome while she waited for some sort of reckoning with her troubled brother. Surely, she thought, when four days had elapsed, the evening would find a chastened boy in her bedchamber offering up an explanation. With this in mind, she counted out her pin money and prepared to relinquish the whole of it in anticipation of rescuing him from this scrape.
    But her hopes were dashed. During nuncheon, an express came for Mr. Fanley from the Marquis of Denley. Her father was delighted and put down his fork so he could open the missive. “From Robert!” he had said to all around the table. “Here, I will read it.” While all sat expectantly waiting to hear it read aloud, Mr. Fanley silently perused the letter from top to bottom, finally putting it down with a pat of satisfaction.
    “Papa!” cried Mary. “What did he say?”
    “Oh. Quite right, Mary. He is coming. Indeed he and Eversham had planned to be here tomorrow, but it is quite wet to the south so they expect to be here by week’s end.” He fell to musing, sometimes aloud and sometimes silently, as to what he would first show the Marquis of progress at Treehill, a list of vague concerns, a quantity of favourable reports and one or two very dark mumblings about poaching two counties to the west.
    A little while later, as Mary sat tatting lace in the main salon in a patch of autumn sun, she was surprised when not Will, but Oscar Neville joined her. Rather than the charming half smile she was used to, his face was serious, and she looked up at him with no small degree of curiosity.
    “I wonder that your father can welcome such a man,” he said with a grave shake of his head.
    “Do you mean the Marquis of Denley?”
    “Indeed, who else? I know nothing of his uncle…that is to say, I understand him to be perfectly respectable with a most serious character.”
    “Then you had better say you know nothing bad of the uncle.”
    “It is better than I can say of the nephew,” Oscar replied with his great dark eyes on her.
    “Hm.” Mary went back to her lace. Inexplicably, she was no longer eager to hear tales from Mr. Neville, particularly about Lord Robert.
    Mr. Neville stood abruptly and began to pace the room. “It is outside of enough that he is allowed here, in the midst of a respectable family, with a young and virtuous lady whose reputation is above reproach.”
    “Mr. Neville!” Mary exclaimed. “Calm yourself! Indeed, I have been thrown much into company with the Marquis, and though I find him officious and…and high-handed…and abominable!…I cannot hold him in contempt for he has never been inappropriate to me.”
    Neville returned urgently to his chair and moved it closer to Mary. He took her hands in his and said, “Were it in my power to keep this information from you I would, but I cannot in good conscience allow you to play hostess to such a man without knowing his true nature.”
    “Sir?” Mary’s face grew cold. “You want to tell me something of the Marquis of Denley?”
    “He is, Miss Fanley, a man of such ill repute he has been removed from town, some claim through coercion by the uncle.” This grave announcement was made while he still held her hands in his.
    “Whatever can he have done?” she gasped, instantly removing her hands from his grip.
    “Aside from squandering the family fortune in the most injudicious games of chance, and being dunned by every creditor nameable, he is in deep with the moneylenders, has a dangerous temper and a history of duelling. It is a known speculation that he is in hiding following a duel in which his adversary suffered a serious wound and may not live. And to think, I