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“I don’t know where to start,” Quincy said haltingly.
Peter shrugged. “Start at the beginning.”
It was so simple, wasn’t it? He nodded, fighting the urge to drop his gaze, forcing himself to look in Peter’s eyes as he finally revealed a truth that should have been spoken long ago.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he began slowly. “Or rather, I’m more than what I led you to believe. And while I never explicitly stated that I was a commoner, I never once admitted otherwise. It was a lie by omission.”
That pronouncement was met with a careful nod. “And so you are an aristocrat?”
“Yes.” Quincy hesitated before, with a quick, desperate motion, he threw back the remainder of his drink in a bid for courage. “In fact,” he continued in a rush, pressing the empty glass to his chest as if he could dig out the guilt that filled him, “I am not Mr. Quincy Nesbitt at all, but rather Lord Quincy Nesbitt. Youngest son of the Duke of Reigate. Or, rather”—his lips twisted painfully—“I was.”
“Now you are Duke of Reigate.” It was no longer a question, but still plain as day that Peter was trying his hardest to comprehend this new turn of events.
Regardless, Quincy answered him. “Yes.” As Peter remained quiet, Quincy continued. “Peter, I am more sorry than I can ever say. I should have told you on that very first day—”
Again his friend stayed him with a hand. Quincy’s mouth closed with a snap of teeth, and he sat in misery.
“Yes, you should have told me,” Peter finally said, his voice low. “But you are still the same man I’ve known this past decade and a half. I know who you are, Quincy. Or at least, I know everything that matters.”
Quincy swallowed hard, his throat suddenly burning, his eyes hot. It took him a long moment to realize he was damn close to crying. It was the closest he had come since the day he’d left home. He looked down to the glass in his hands, at the remnants of whiskey within. “Thank you, Peter,” he managed thickly.
Peter scoffed. “You’ve nothing to thank me for. And I know you did not keep the truth from me to spite me. I can well understand the need to distance yourself from the past, to forge a new life on your own terms.”
Quincy shook his head, more in wonder that his friend could be so generous with him than anything else. “You make it out to be much more noble than it is. The only reason I kept it a secret was so you would not hate me.”
“Hate you?”
The disbelief in his friend’s voice brought Quincy’s gaze up. “You despised the nobility and all it stood for. I was fourteen, alone in the world for the first time, frightened. And you were my only friend.” He shrugged helplessly. “I could not chance losing you.”
“You could never lose my friendship,” Peter said fiercely, before he flushed and cleared his throat. “Arse.”
Quincy felt something deep in his chest lighten. Meaningless insults he could handle. They meant that things had not completely changed, that at least in this he was still the same person.
With that Peter rose and fetched Quincy’s glass from him, striding to the sideboard. Once again came the sound of clinking glass and splashing liquid. A moment later he was pressing Quincy’s glass back into his hand, this time fuller than before. And this time there was a matching glass in Peter’s hand, a testament to just how much Quincy’s revelation affected him.
“I expect the whole truth from you now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag, of course. But first,” he said, holding his own glass aloft. “To reluctant heirs.”
Quincy stood, letting loose a relieved laugh. “To reluctant heirs,” he replied, clinking his own glass against Peter’s, his chilled heart warming with the knowledge that, in this, he was not alone.
***
Peter and Mr. Nesbitt—er, the duke—closeted themselves up for the remainder of the afternoon and into the early evening. In that time Clara learned one new thing about herself: her curiosity, while not as blatant as Aunt Olivia’s, was just as potent. Her mind swirled with questions, each one spinning round and round Mr. Nesbitt’s new dukedom like dancers around a maypole. The man had been pale as a sheet when he’d first arrived at Dane House, and in shock. That, combined with the strange questions he had put to her regarding the refusal of a title, made it plain as day the man had not expected or wanted his sudden dukedom.
She would never forget the haunted look in his eyes when he had first told Peter. Her heart ached even now, just recalling it. She rubbed at her chest absentmindedly, as if to ease the small pain there. Beside her, Aunt Olivia tapped her gnarled fingers with impatience on the arm of her chair. The rest of the women were grouped tightly together, their seats facing the wide-open door of the smaller downstairs sitting room, the better to catch sight of Peter and Mr. Nesbitt—the duke! Goodness, this was going to be difficult—when they finally emerged from the study.
“What is taking so blasted long?” Aunt Olivia muttered. She craned her neck, peering with a scowl to the hall beyond the door, as if she could magic the two men into being by sheer will.
“I’m sure they have much to discuss,” Clara said in as cheerful a voice as she could manage. Which was not very cheerful at all, as the same phrase had been repeated in myriad ways over the past hours.
“I just wish I could recall the particulars of the Duke of Reigate’s family,” the viscountess grumbled. “Truly, it is beyond ridiculous that no one in this house remembers.”
As Dane House had kept a skeleton staff over the past several decades of sitting empty, and the rest of the staff had either come with them from the Isle or been hired on for the season, there was no one to glean information from—much to Aunt Olivia’s disgust. And she had tried to wheedle information from any staff she could. Which explained the obvious lack of footmen in the hall, seeing as they were now keeping as far from Aunt Olivia as was possible.
“I’m certain Peter and Quincy shall be able to answer your questions in short order,” Lenora soothed.
Her calming words were met with a glare by the older woman.
Phoebe, who had been diligently sketching beside Lenora to the duchess’s quiet instruction, laid her pencil aside and stretched her arms over her head, sighing. “It is frustrating, I admit. Perhaps, Aunt Olivia, you might go over the details you do remember once more. Revisiting it might jar some forgotten memory.”
