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was the conversation Aunt Hortense had begun. About preparing for
Violet’s season.
    Not that the prospect of a season for Violet gave him a
megrim. He rather liked the idea. For he rather liked Violet and wanted the
best for her. It was the assumption that Edward would be the one to
escort her to the balls and soirees and musicales.
    He would rather be tortured on the rack in the Tower—if they
did that anymore—than attend Almack’s in a fussy suit and stiff collar.
    So when the gong rang, he leapt to his feet. He hadn’t
completely forgotten himself—although at the moment, he wished he could—and he
offered his aunt an arm.
    “Thank you, m’boy,” she said, patting his hand. Then she
launched into a plan for a ball for Violet’s coming out, for which he would
pay, of course. The litany of his responsibilities went on as they made their
way to the dining room, the boys and Violet following along behind, chattering raucously.
While such hubbub had never been part of his life—a duke was staid, quiet,
decorous—Edward found himself beset with little pings of envy. How fun it would
have been to grow up with boisterous brothers. To have someone to share the
mischief.
    Dukes didn’t get to have fun. He’d learned that from his
father. The first Edward Wyeth had been an extraordinarily reserved and
somewhat sad man. Edward always supposed it was because he’d mourned the loss
of his wife. Although why he would pine so, considering how often they’d
fought, Edward couldn’t fathom. He remembered his mother as a brittle, bitter
woman married to a man she detested.
    She had died when he was a young lad.
    His father had raised him with the strictest expectations—he
was to be a duke one day, after all—which was probably why, when Edward turned
eighteen, he rebelled. He ran off and joined the army, a decided taboo for the
only son and heir of a peer. It had taken his father three years to find him.
It had taken that long because when Edward joined the army, and later worked
for the Home Office, he had done so under a false identity.
    But his father finally found him.
    In France.
    In prison.
    France in those days was a particularly dangerous place.
Especially if one was branded a spy.
    In retrospect, Edward was quite thankful his father had
worked it out and rescued him. He hadn’t cared for captivity in the slightest.
Although, to this day, he was still friends with the men who had shared his
fetid cell, and always would be. He owed them a great debt.
    He nodded to Transom as they passed. His old friend shot a
look at the following brood and rolled his eyes.
    Silence fell as they approached the table and Edward pulled
out Aunt Hortense’s chair. She was still going on about the ball—which would be
done in sea-foam blue, to complement Violet’s alabaster complexion, don’t you
know—but Edward wasn’t listening. So he was free to notice the eerie stillness.
The younger boys gathered around the far end of the table, their eyes trained
on their aunt as she shifted her bulk into her seat.
    He should have known.
    He should have suspected.
    They were far too silent.
    As Hortense sat, a loud crack shot through the room and her
chair collapsed.
    Edward caught her just in time. But he could hardly hold her
for long. Between the two of them, he and Transom managed to heft her to her
feet. Glaring at the now howling imps, he called for another chair.
    The footmen swarmed in to set an un-shattered chair at the
table and remove the Chippendale sticks from the floor—dear Lord, that chair
had been in the family for years. Then they reformed their ranks and, like a
battalion facing battle, served the soup.
    The incident had one positive benefit. Aunt Hortense stopped
talking altogether as she recovered. At least for a while.
    The meal was half over, and Edward was sorely regretting his
decision to emerge from hiding, when Kaitlin appeared in the doorway. She was
breathless. Her dress was rumpled. Her bun was slightly