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father had decreed. It wasn’t exactly that Hawke believed in ghosts, but he swore he could still smell his father’s tobacco in the hall and hear his voice in the library, worrying over politics with other members of the House of Lords. To the consternation of the servants, on Hawke’s return he had chosen to sleep in his old boyhood bedchamberrather than in the rooms once occupied by his father, rooms reserved for the duke, with those for the duchess close by.
    The duchess. Not his mother, but his wife. He tipped his head against the armchair’s tall back and muttered a halfhearted oath aimed at nothing in particular. Could anything else spoil his morning more completely?
    “Forgive me, sir, a small interruption,” Giacomo said beside him, and reluctantly Hawke turned. With Giacomo stood one of the footmen, and both wore the sort of pained expression that servants always adopted when bearing unwelcome news. “You have a visitor, sir. His Grace the Duke of Breconridge.”
    “Brecon? Here?” Immediately Hawke sat upright. There could be only one reason why his eldest cousin would come to the Chase at this hour. “Tell him I’m not at home, or tell him I’m still abed, or—”
    “Too late, dear Hawke,” Brecon said, entering the room as if it belonged to him. He handed his hat and his gloves to the footman, sat in the chair opposite Hawke’s, and motioned for Giacomo to pour him coffee, too. “You make yourself damned elusive, cousin. Fortunately, my skills as a huntsman are excellent, and you weren’t going to escape me any longer.”
    “Good day to you as well,” Hawke grumbled. Richard, Duke of Breconridge, was the eldest of the quartet of cousins descended from the royal bastards of the same king. If March was like a brother to Hawke, then Brecon was like an uncle, a half generation older at forty-two. Brecon had long ago married and produced three stalwart sons, which had given him the confidence to offer advice, friendship, and solicitude to the younger cousins as they’d lurched their own ways toward manhood.
    Not that Brecon was a doddering graybeard. He was a worldly, witty widower who knew everyone worthknowing in London. Celebrated both for his embroidered French waistcoats and for his mistresses, he was as adept with his sword as he was with a bon mot, and perfectly capable of making ladies of every age swoon with delight at his gallantry. Secretly Hawke had always wanted to be like Brecon, a much more dashing model of a duke to emulate than his father had been.
    But not now, not when Brecon was sitting before him, as elegantly dressed as Hawke was not, and with a steely set to his handsome face that instantly put Hawke on his guard. Clearly Brecon was here to ask difficult questions, the sort of questions to which Hawke had no suitable replies to offer in return.
    “A good day to you as well, cousin,” Brecon said agreeably. “Or rather, what is left of it. By my recollection, you were born an Englishman, no matter that you’ve spent the past decade attempting to prove otherwise. Perhaps now that you are once again in London, you might at least attempt to keep London hours.”
    Hawke set his cup down on the table and folded his arms over his chest. “Is that why you’ve come, then? To lecture me on the hours I choose to keep?”
    Brecon smiled. “Oh, we both know that’s not the case,” he said easily. “Hawke, you dishonor yourself by ignoring your bride.”
    Hawke knew this was true, but he hated hearing it from Brecon. He did feel dishonorable, which made him speak even more dishonorably.
    “Is that why you are here?” he asked. “Did the harridan herself send you?”
    As soon as he’d spoken, he wished he hadn’t, and seeing Brecon wince at the cruel words only made it worse.
    “Unkind, cousin,” he said “most unkind. The lady is no harridan, as you will realize at once if ever you deign to call upon her. And no, unlike you, she is too well-bred to involve me in her