Blake had been abandoned completely and—
“Sir.” Xavier rested a hand on Blake’s arm, startling him out of the spiral of his thoughts. With a sympathetic wince, he said, “She will bring them back. She knows how much you love them. She isn’t so cruel that she would keep them away from you forever. She’s just having a bit of a pout is all.”
Blake let out a breath and sent Xavier a thankful look. Even though the man was wrong. Xavier didn’t know why Annamarie had left. And he most certainly didn’t know about Niall.
“I’ll have a bath,” he said, sagging in defeat.
Xavier hesitated. “You’ll have to be quick about it. There’s a gentleman downstairs to see you, and I’m not sure if he’s willing to wait for—”
Blake launched into motion before Xavier could finish, his heart in his throat. Niall. He’d come at last. He hadn’t been abandoned after all. His heart was saved.
He raced downstairs, running right past his room and the hallway that led to the other wing of the house—where Annamarie had her rooms—to the stairs. He nearly tripped over himself as he flew down to the foyer, then shot on across the hall, looking into every parlor along the way to discover where his butler had put Niall.
“He’s in your office, your grace,” his butler, Dobson, said, cutting Blake off before he could run through the entire house, like the lunatic he was.
Heart in his throat, Blake tore across the hall and burst into his office, sweaty and panting. Hope blossomed in his chest to the point where it was painful, then crashed spectacularly when the grey-haired man studying some of the books on the shelf in his office turned to stare curiously at him.
“Your grace, are you well?” Kinesin, his solicitor, asked, stepping away from the shelf.
Blake couldn’t catch his breath. Disappointment rang through him, like the echoing vibrations of a gong that had been rung too hard. Desperation not to tip his hand and reveal his secrets slammed into him, and he straightened, tugging at the hem of his jacket.
“Forgive me,” he said, forcing as much cheer and affability into his voice as he could. He strode purposefully across to his desk, praying he didn’t look as bad as he thought he did. God, what had happened to the last few days? Had he really not changed clothes since yesterday morning? “I was all the way upstairs seeing to a few things.” He made an excuse, slipping behind his desk and gesturing for Kinesin to have a seat opposite him.
Only when Kinesin reached the desk did Blake remember it was polite to shake the man’s hand. He reached out, alarmed by how obvious it was that he hadn’t bathed. Thank God there was a desk between them.
After Kinesin shook his hand, wariness at Blake’s unkempt state registering briefly on his face, and sat, Blake sat as well. “What can I do for you this morning, Mr. Kinesin?” he asked, sounding as pleased with life as a duke should.
“I’ve come about the sale of your brother’s estate,” Kinesin said, looking graver than ever.
“How are things progressing with the buyer?” Blake leaned back in his chair, hoping to put as much distance between him and Kinesin as he could so that he didn’t overpower the man with his slovenliness.
Kinesin’s frown deepened. “They’re not, your grace.”
“Oh?” A different sort of worry struck Blake. Since Montague’s arrest for the horrific crime of masterminding a child kidnapping ring earlier in the summer, Blake had been acting on his behalf to do whatever it took to sell off everything Montague owned, including Castleford Estate. Whether Montague spent the rest of his days in prison or not had yet to be determined, but his brother had already made it known that if he ever was released, he planned to leave England for South America or Australia, or some other place so far away from the scene of his crimes that no one who knew him would ever see him again. Blake was more than happy to oblige. If he never saw his brother again it would be too soon.
But there was the problem of the estate.
“The buyers were appalled by the condition of the place,” Kinesin went on. “The house itself sustained so much fire damage that it will need to be demolished and rebuilt.”
“I thought the prospective buyers were aware of that and eager to do the work,” Blake said.
“They were.” Kinesin nodded. “But then they saw the cages.”
Blake swallowed