The Mayfair Affair by Tracy Grant Page B

Street runner we don't know."
    "Jeremy Roth is very good at his job."
    "It's still a stranger prying into our lives." James's fingers closed on the beveled edge of the desk. "Mary and the girls have been through enough."
    "Not all men would get on with their stepmother so well."
    James took a turn about the room as though he wished he were pacing his country property. "It was a surprise, of course, Father remarrying. Not that it should have been, I suppose— but one doesn't think of one's father— In any case, Mary seemed to make him happy. As much as the word could be ascribed to my father. It was certainly nice to have a woman's touch about the house again. And of course I'm fond of Bobby and the girls."
    "Your father never mentioned Miss Dudley?" Malcolm asked.
    "Never." For a moment it seemed James might say more, but he remained silent.
    "Do you think she could have been his mistress?"
    "I—"
    "Your stepmother has already admitted to knowing he had mistresses."
    "Damn it, one doesn't like to think of one's father— Yes, of course I knew he had mistresses, but I tried to know as little as possible about them. Still, wouldn't have thought a governess was precisely in his style."
    "Did you ever hear him talk about someone called Emily?"
    James spun round and took a quick step towards Malcolm. "You know who Emily is?"
    "Only that your father murmured her name as he was dying. Who is she?"
    "I'm trying to find out. My father left her five thousand pounds a year."
    Malcolm stared at the new Duke of Trenchard. "Your father left five thousand pounds a year to someone you've never heard of?"
    "My father and I were hardly confidants. You should understand that, Rannoch. I'd never heard of this Emily—Emily Saunders, apparently—until I went through his desk this morning. It appears to be a codicil to his will written very recently."
    "And you thought—"
    "I wasn't sure what to think. Though the obvious assumption was that it was a mistress. Or possibly—"
    "Yes?"
    James swallowed. "As I said, my father and I were hardly confidants. I knew he had mistresses. I didn't care to know more. He and Mary seemed to rub along well enough. But if he left a legacy to someone, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a child."
    Malcolm scanned James's face. "Did you have reason to think your father had an illegitimate child?"
    "Other than the fact that he had mistresses? No."
    "You said he altered his will. Five thousand pounds a year is a large sum even for a wealthy man like your father. Where did the money come from?"
    James hesitated. "From Mary's share."
    Odder and odder. The marriage of a Mallinson and a Fitzwalter was in the nature of a diplomatic alliance, and changing the terms of the will like violating a treaty. "Does she know?"
    "I haven't asked her, if that's what you mean." James turned away, picked up his coffee cup again as though weighing a choice. "Malcolm— It's more than just the legacy to this Emily. Except for the parts of the marriage settlement he couldn't change, Father cut Mary out of his will entirely."
    A dozen possibilities, each worse than the last, raced through Malcolm's head. "Your father cut his wife out of his will?"
    "To the extent that he could. She'll still be well provided for. Carfax saw to it that her marriage portion is settled so it goes to her and then to her children. But she'd have received considerably more before he made these changes. He—" James hesitated.
    "What?" Malcolm asked.
    "He even specified that she wasn't to have the use of the dower house, which is nonsense. Of course she and my brother and sisters will be welcome there and in our other houses. I'd hardly turn out my own family."
    Malcolm saw Mary's contained face the night before. "Do you have any idea why your father made these changes?"
    "None."
    Malcolm met James's gaze. For all his agreeable demeanor, he could appear surprisingly unyielding. "But?"
    "I didn't say anything."
    "You had no clue that anything had changed