My Once and Future Duke (The Wagers of Sin #1)(35)

Jack thought of the decanters of brandy, not books, he’d brought up here to enjoy in secret. There was a good chance the bottles were still up here, where he’d carefully hidden them as a lad. He also thought of doing as she said, hiding away up here all day with her. “Er—-yes. Who would not?” He lifted the lamp higher and moved farther into the quiet attics.

They wandered slowly. Like the rest of Alwyn House, the attics were kept in good order, with furniture neatly ordered and stored by room. Mrs. Campbell discovered an ornate birdcage, and Jack was surprised to remember his grandmother’s parrot. “Possessed of a viciously sharp beak,” he said with a grimace.

She laughed. “That sounds like you put your fingers through the wires of the cage.”

“Why would you think that?” He studied the golden cage, still hanging from its stand. “I remember it being much larger than this. The parrot was enormous.”

“No wonder he bit,” she murmured. “Any creature trapped in a too--small cage would lash out on those who caged him.”

“I didn’t cage him,” said Jack. “He left a scar.” He rubbed his thumb along his forefinger, where there was a faint mark from the bite.

She only smiled. “Imagine how the parrot felt. He was still confined to the cage.”

He gave her a sharp glance but she had walked on, her expression clear, already engrossed by a curious chair. Jack remembered that as well—-it had once been in the library—-and he showed her how to flip the seat up to turn the chair into a stepladder. That led them deeper into the attics until they reached the end of the east wing, and when Jack took out his watch, he was shocked to see they had spent hours rummaging in the dust. And most shocking of all, he would have sworn it had been only a few minutes.

“This is almost as intriguing as the house proper,” she said, sitting gingerly on the edge of an old, worn--out settee tucked against the eaves. “It’s a history of your family.”

“Not quite.” Jack stepped over a trunk and opened one of the tall, narrow windows. It stuck after opening a few inches, but the fresh breeze felt deliciously cool. He could see the stables from here and wondered if Percy had left yet. “You’d have to go to Kirkwood Hall for that. It’s been in the family since before Henry Tudor took the crown.”

“Goodness! What a lot of history that must be.” She leaned toward the window, inhaling the rainy air.

“Due to a compulsion to save everything for future generations. A hundred years from now this attic floor will have broken down and collapsed under the weight of family history.”

She smiled, her gaze directed out the dust--covered window. “Only think how fascinating your great--grandchildren will find it.”

“To read my old Latin lessons? Unlikely.” He had found his and Philip’s old schoolbooks, neatly stacked in a desk he dimly remembered from the nursery quarters. Why anyone had kept those was beyond him.

“I don’t know,” she said wistfully. “They will see your portrait downstairs, pompous and regal. It might please them to no end to discover proof that you were once a boy with poor penmanship who had to write his Latin verbs over and over, just as they might have to do.”

Jack ignored the bit about his portrait being pompous. He leaned against a particularly ugly chest of drawers opposite the sofa she sat on. She wasn’t guarded now; her expression was nearly the same one she had worn yesterday when he asked about her mother. “It sounds like you’ve been that child.”

“I?” Her lips curved and she heaved a sigh. “No. My parents died when I was twelve. I have almost nothing left of either of them.” She hesitated, her gaze distant. “My father was disowned by his parents and I was never able to explore his family home. Everything of his youth was lost to me, but if I had the chance to read his old Latin lessons, to see what he drew in the margins, simply to have something of his . . . I would seize it.”

“Why?” She blinked, and Jack realized he’d asked the question rather stridently. He moderated his voice. “Why was your father disowned?”

“For marrying my mother.” She lifted her chin. “He never regretted it.”

Jack raised one brow. There had been something very like regret in her voice as she talked of the family history her father had lost by being disowned.

“He didn’t,” she insisted. “His father wanted him to marry a girl whose family lived nearby, someone he’d known since they were children. It would have been like wedding his sister, Papa used to say, and it would have given his father—-” She stopped, pressing her lips together. Her eyes flashed and she looked quite fierce, despite the smudge of dirt on her chin and the cobwebs on her borrowed dress.

Jack guessed she had no good opinion of that grandfather. “He was fortunate he was free to follow his heart.”

She looked at him sharply, but then her annoyed expression melted into one that was almost pitying. “He chose to follow his heart. It required certain sacrifices on his part, of course, but he accepted them as part of the bargain he’d made.”

“Commendable,” replied Jack. Her father hadn’t been the heir, then, at least not to any significant estate or title. No heir was permitted to follow his heart unless his heart led him to a lady of impeccable breeding and fortune. “But why was your mother so unacceptable to your grandfather?”