My God. His head hurt just thinking about all the threads she must have been keeping straight in her mind.

“Your Grace.”

Robert turned from his reverie to see a man beside him. It was George Stevens, standing with a grim look on his face and a disapproving set to his jaw. He’d wiped most of the punch off, but his cravat was still stained pink, and his forehead had a sheen to it that sent Robert’s own skin itching in sticky sympathy.

“Captain Stevens,” Robert said.

“If I might intrude a moment?”

Robert glanced once again at the door through which Miss Pursling had vanished. “Of course.”

Stevens gave him a stiff bow, and then just as stiffly took the seat that Miss Pursling had so recently vacated. “It is admirable,” he said, “in every way admirable, for a man in your position to condescend to speak to everyone deserving at a gathering such as this.” He rubbed his hands together. “But…ah, how do I say this?” He lowered his voice. “Not all women are equally deserving. And Miss Pursling is not what she seems.”

“Oh?” Robert was still too taken aback to do more than take this in. “In what way does the reality of Miss Pursling differ from her appearance?”

Stevens seemed to relax at that. “I have reason to believe she is not who she claims to be.”

“Reason? What reason?”

The other man blinked, as if unused to having such questions asked. “Well. I, uh, I talked to someone who was intimately familiar with her great-aunt. That woman had no knowledge of Miss Pursling’s existence.”

“Was intimately familiar, you say?” Robert kept his tone mild. “How long ago did this individual know her great-aunt?”

Stevens was beginning to squirm like a schoolboy caught out in a lie. “Technically, she knew her before she moved to Leicester. That is to say—”

“Techinically?” Robert raised an eyebrow. “Forgive me if I do not know the families in the area as well as you do. But did not Miss Pursling’s great-aunt move to the area fifty years ago?”

“Yes.” Stevens hunkered down in his seat. “But she knew the whole family, da—ah, dash it.” Stevens stopped, took a deep breath. “She would have known if the young Miss Elvira Pursling had married—the woman who is purported to be Miss Wilhelmina’s mother. People talk, Your Grace, particularly about happy events. But there is no such record. I have reason to believe that Miss Pursling may not be legitimate.”

It might be true. If so, it would explain her insistence that she didn’t want anyone looking into her past. A little different, indeed.

If there were any truth to Stevens’s claim at all, Robert could settle this for good. One little threat, when she’d already put blackmail in play…

But no. He was a gentleman and one of the most powerful men in the country. Powerful men who used their prerogatives to hurt women—they were scum.

Robert let his expression freeze to ice. He didn’t glower. He simply watched the other man, unblinking, until the captain of the militia dropped his gaze and winced.

“Stevens,” Robert said, not bothering with the honorific, “is there perhaps something you have heard about me that made you think I would want to hear such aspersions?”

“But, Your Grace. Miss Pursling is an unknown to you. I only wished—”

“You thought I would be amenable to baseless gossip simply because it was not aimed at someone I knew?”

Stevens’s jaw worked. “I only meant—”

“I’m done with your speculation. If I hear you’ve indulged it any further, I’ll see that Leicester receives another captain of the militia.”

Stevens turned white. “You couldn’t.”

But the man no doubt knew all too well that Robert could. Not directly, no, but he only needed to drop a word in the right ear… Robert wouldn’t use that influence without good reason, and given what he expected to find here, he needed to conserve that power as best as he could. Still, threats were free.

The man bowed his head. “Forgive me, Your Grace. The woman is nothing. I erred. I never thought you would take an interest in one so much beneath you.”

“What’s the point in being a duke if I don’t?” The query was out of his mouth before he could call it back—but he wouldn’t have, even if he could.

Stevens blinked in confusion and Robert shook his head. It was madness to give a man so much power and to have no expectations as to how he’d use it. He could crush Miss Pursling with one sentence. He might have crushed her with silence. But that would have been wrong.

“Your Grace,” Stevens finally said, “your concern does you justice.”

The man’s toad-eating did him none.

Robert met Stevens’s eyes. “No, it doesn’t. It’s called basic human decency, and I deserve no credit for doing what every man should.”

Stevens flinched again, and set his hand to his forehead—his sticky forehead, if the fingerprints he left were any guide.

“Now,” Robert said, standing, “if you’ll excuse me, I have other people I must speak with.”

He was aware of the man’s eyes boring into his back as he crossed the room. Robert made a note: This man bore watching.

Chapter Five

“LYDIA,” MINNIE SAID, DASHING DOWN THE CORRIDOR. “Lydia, wait! What are you doing?”

Lydia stopped in the corridor, her arms held straight at her sides, terminating in tight fists. “Going upstairs.” She didn’t turn around. “What does it look like?”

Minnie came abreast of her. “It’s not too late. Go back in there and apologize—Stevens will forgive you. I know he will.”

“Well, I won’t forgive him,” Lydia said. “He related the most vile rumor about you—that you were not legitimate. The cad, saying such things to me!”

Minnie took hold of her shoulders. “Lydia, listen to me. Go back. Apologize. Say you’re sorry. Say you were mistaken. Say you were drunk on punch, and I’m sure he’ll take you back.”

“Well, I won’t have him.” Lydia stamped her foot. “I won’t. I won’t have a man who could talk about my dearest friend that way. I won’t marry someone who could laugh about it and expect me to nod my head. I won’t do it.”

“You know what will happen when your father dies. Your brother gets the mill, and you…”