The Duke Goes Down (The Duke Hunt #1) - Sophie Jordan Page 0,12

were born as he was en route home.”

“A great inconvenience, that,” Perry said with all the bitterness one might feel in such circumstances. Not that he imagined many people ever found themselves so similarly devastated. His situation was wholly unique.

“We married as soon as he returned.”

“Little good that does me now.”

“We shall contest this!” His mother struck a fist on the surface of the table, her eyes bright with the impulse to fight.

He’d grimaced, recalling the grim visages of the crown’s agents in his drawing room, armed with documentation that verified the true date of his birth was before his parents’ wedding, an event that took place at a small church in Yorkshire. That alone served as a flag.

Why had his mother not been wed in grand style in St. Paul’s Cathedral in front of hundreds of members of the ton as her sister had done? As her mother had done? As all the previous Dukes of Penning had done?

A small wedding at a remote shire in Yorkshire was certainly not in keeping with tradition or with his mother’s enduring need for spectacle and admiration.

His parents had been married in near seclusion and without pomp because she had been hiding her newborn son from the world.

“You want to contest it?” He shook his head. “Why? Are they mistaken? Was I born after your marriage? Am I legitimate? Am I not a bastard? That is the only point that matters here.”

She glared at him in mute frustration, her lips pressing together mutinously. “It is not right.”

“And yet it is indisputable.”

They would not take on the laws of primogeniture and win. Surely she knew that. Certainly she was not so arrogant to believe she was an exception to long-standing tradition and the rules that governed their land?

She stabbed a finger toward him. “You are not the only one affected here, Peregrine.”

He blinked at her sudden attack on him.

“Oh, the shame.” She pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks. “Thank Providence your sister is already married to Geston and can weather this.”

“Indeed,” he’d said wryly. “Thank Providence for Thirza’s good fortune.”

At least one of his parents’ offspring would be untouched by the day’s revelations. But then Thirza was the legitimate one. She had nothing to fear other than the barest tangential shame. Her marriage to the Earl of Geston would spare her the worst of the damage. Thirza’s mother-in-law was a great friend of the queen, after all.

His mother had looked at him with sudden dawning horror. “What of me? You don’t think I shall lose my title and widow’s jointure, do you?”

In that moment, he could have been justly scathing toward his mother who had so little thought for him and his ruin, but he did not possess the inclination.

It took energy to be angry and hostile, and he found he lacked the will. It had already been an emotionally fraught day.

Instead, he had marched across the room and sank down across from his mother. He reached between them and took her hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. “You will be fine.”

And he was correct.

She was fine.

Even though it was well within the crown’s right to strip her of her title as the Duchess of Penning for her involvement in the fraud, no one wanted to drag things out in so dramatic and punitive a fashion. It would be a public embarrassment for all. So Mama had weathered the backlash.

She fortunately retained her widow’s jointure, and most of her friends stood by her. They weren’t so spiteful as to hold against her an indiscretion from almost thirty years ago—not when she ultimately married the man in question. Besides . . . if they renounced her then they would not be privy to all the despair in her life—or rather, in Perry’s life. They wanted a front-row view for that spectacle. Shunning Mama would prevent them from that pleasure.

As predicted, his sister was saved and untouched by the disgrace. She was actually even more popular than ever—still the darling of the ton. Everyone wanted to be close to her to hear all the juicy bits of her brother’s downfall.

Whereas his mother and Thirza were spared, there was nothing to be done for Perry.

Perry wholly and fully felt the sting of his life going up in smoke all around him. The smoke was still all around him. Most days he struggled through the haze.

Thurman was still talking as Perry dragged his attention back to him.

His mother’s butler was shrugging. “If the baroness’s daughter does