means to use it against us.” He propped his head up on one hand. Kate gazed up at him, her eyes pure sapphire blue. Suddenly he found himself telling her—wanting to tell her. “You heard the rumors about my father? Sadly, they’re true, in most respects. When he was a young man, he made a rash, clandestine marriage with a young woman of high temper and low rank. The marriage was conducted by a reverend of questionable piety in a tavern near the Fleet, of all places. Too late they realized how foolish it was, but neither had the money for a divorce, and my father was ashamed of the mistake he’d made. They simply agreed to part ways, and that was that.
“Father claimed he tried to find her again when he inherited the dukedom. It came to him after his great-uncle died; he never expected to be a duke, or else he likely wouldn’t have been allowed enough freedom to do such a damned foolish thing in the first place. But when he became one, he knew he must marry and have an heir, and he knew very well that first marriage would cause trouble. Despite his efforts—and knowing my father, they must have been thorough—he never found her. It had been twenty years. Finally he married my mother, and there was nary a murmur of any impediment. For decades he believed the first wife was dead, or so far removed from England she might as well be dead. Only a year ago did he learn otherwise, when a letter arrived saying simply ‘I know about Dorothy Cope.’ ”
“His first wife?”
Gerard nodded. “I gather it set Father off on a frenzied search. So few people had known about the marriage at the time—only the minister who conducted it, his clerk, and of course my father and the woman herself. The only record would have been in the minister’s register—my father burned whatever form of certificate he received, and there was no license. But this woman . . . God only knows what she’s done and what she’s said in the last sixty years. She could have told any number of people. She could still be living.”
Kate was quiet for a moment. “So might the minister or his clerk.”
“True,” he granted, “but far less likely. The minister must have married hundreds of people. Would either remember one couple?”
“He doesn’t have to remember, he has their names in a register. He might have come across it by chance and seized an opportunity.”
“He’d be a very old man by now. If he wanted to blackmail my father, why wait?”
“Perhaps he just discovered it recently and realized what it might mean. Or his family might have uncovered it when he died.”
He laced his fingers together and rolled onto his back, cushioning his head on his hands as he thought. “Possible. But it doesn’t fit with the letters. The first arrived a year ago, with that one cryptic line. The second came three months later, and said Durham’s secret would be exposed. The third asked for money, which was never collected, and the fourth merely restated the writer’s intent to reveal Durham as a bigamist. If you suddenly discovered evidence of such a thing and decided to act upon it, would you patiently wait a year? Would you ask for money and make no effort to claim it?”
“Perhaps he was prevented.”
“Then wouldn’t you send another letter, making a new demand?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
For a moment they were both quiet. Kate’s brow puckered up in thought, very appealingly in Gerard’s opinion. “If I were the clerk’s granddaughter,” she said slowly, “or the minister’s, or any innocent person who came across this mysterious proof, I’m sure I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to blackmail someone. Undoubtedly it would take me a while to work up the nerve to do it. Perhaps I would suffer pangs of remorse. I’m certain I wouldn’t want everyone to know of my actions, which would mean taking care to conceal it. And how would I explain a large sum of money?”
“You could bury it in your garden and dig out a few pounds at a time.”
“Even posting the letters would make me nervous,” she added. “It must cost a good sum to send a letter from Bath to Sussex. I would be in a state of fright someone at the post office might ask why I was sending a letter to a duke.”
“An excellent