Page 76 of A Highly Unlikely Duchess
“Yes, Your Grace.”
"Who is he?" Emily said.
"I do not know, Your Grace," Peggy said. "He did not give a name. He simply said it was a matter of some urgency and that he needed to speak with the Duchess." She paused. "He looked agitated. Not angry exactly. But unsettled.”
"Did he give a name?" Emily asked, her voice tight. "Or a reason for such an urgent visit?"
"No name, Your Grace," Peggy replied, her brow furrowed. "He’s been pacing the drawing room like a man waiting for a verdict. He has a look of the city about him, but his clothes have seen better days."
"Where is he?" she asked.
"I put him in the front drawing room, Your Grace."
Emily straightened her dress and walked downstairs.
The front drawing room was the formal receiving room on the ground floor, the one Mrs. Holt kept in perpetual readiness for visitors of consequence, and which Emily had used precisely twice since arriving at Carrowell. She pushed open the door.
He was standing by the window.
He was perhaps sixty years old, solidly built. His coat was clean but plain. His hair was grey and close-cropped, and his hands, she noticed, were large.
He turned when he heard her enter. His face was weathered and tired, and he looked like he had come a long way.
"Your Grace," the man said. His voice was low and slightly rough, a working voice, a voice that had spent its life outdoors. "I apologize for arriving without notice. My name is George Cluett.”
The moment he finished his sentence, Emily felt a slight shiver run down her spine. It made the air leave her lungs in a long, shaky exhale.
Cluett.
The icy, defensive wall she had erected the moment Peggy announced a stranger began to crumble, replaced by a sudden, aching softness. This man was Frederick’s blood. The realization that there was someone else in the world who might have a claim to the boy’s history, who might see his father’s eyes in Frederick’s face, made her hands tremble. For a fleeting second, the Duchess vanished, leaving only a woman who was desperately relieved and terrified to find that they were not as alone as she had thought.
"Mr. Cluett," Emily said, inhaling sharply. "To what do I owe this... unexpected visit?"
"I have come for my grandson," George announced, his hands clenching into fists at his sides. "I have come to take the boy home."
“Your grandson?” she blurted as her eyes widened.
The room seemed to contract, the air growing thin and cold. The relief she had felt only a moment ago instantly curdled into a sharp, jagged fear.
This was the one variable she hadn't accounted for. She had prepared for the scandal of the Ton, the judgment, and the prying eyes... But she had not prepared for a grandfather to appear so suddenly, and now stood in her drawing room to demand custody.
"Please sit down, Mr. Cluett," she finally said, feeling a little lightheaded.
He sat. She sat across from him, folded her hands in her lap, looked at him, and waited.
"I did not know," he started. "About my son's life. Thomas left our house when he was nineteen, and I did not hear from him again. He made his choice, and I made mine, and there were many years between us." He paused, and then his shoulders dropped. "I did not know he had married. I did not know there was a child." He looked at his hands. "Until recently."
"How did you find out?" Emily said carefully.
"Your parents," he said. "Lord and Lady Hatcher. Also, everyone in London is talking about it." He paused. "There are rumors, apparently. About the boy. About you taking him in."
Emily absorbed this quietly. She had heard that the rumors had changed over the past several weeks, transforming something damaging into something else entirely. What had begun as whispers about a child born outside of wedlock had, somewhere along the way, become the story of a woman who had taken in her dead sister's son. This story was not scandalous but moving, the kind of story that the Ton found it easier to admire than to condemn once the truth of it was properly understood. She had noticed the shift. She had been grateful for it in a way she had not been able to fully account for because she had not arranged it herself and did not know who had.
She still did not know.
But it had reached George Cluett through her parents and had led him here. Now she was sitting across from Frederick’s grandfather, and she was thinking very carefully about every word she was about to say.
"What is it you want, Mr. Cluett?" she asked, refusing to believe what he had said earlier.
