He closed his eyes briefly. This was the final straw. It was bad enough – nothing short of a disaster, in fact – that Woodbine and its rents were being withheld from /him/. But to think of /Cousin Norman/, of all people, benefiting from his loss … Well, it was a viciously low blow. "Norman has a wife and two sons," the marquess told him. "As well as a daughter. Now, /there/ is a man who knows his duty." Yes, indeed.

Both Norman's father and his grandfather were dead. He was the next heir after Duncan. He also had a shrewd head on his shoulders. He had married Caroline Turner six weeks after Duncan abandoned her on their wedding day, and he had apparently got three children off her, two of them sons.

He had taken all the right steps to ingratiate himself with his great-uncle.

Duncan frowned down at the empty square beyond the window. Though it was not quite empty. A maid was down on her hands and knees scrubbing the steps of a house on the opposite side.

Did Norman /know/ that Woodbine was to all intents and purposes to be his in sixteen days' time? "If I had written down that promise I made on your seventieth birthday, sir," Duncan said, "and if you had kept it, I believe you would discover now that my promise really was to marry by your eightieth birthday rather than my thirtieth, though they both fall in the same year, of course." His grandfather snorted again – a sound that conveyed utter contempt. "And what do you plan to do when you leave here in a few minutes' time, Sheringford?" he asked. "Grab the first female you meet on the street and drag her off in pursuit of a special license?" /Something like that/. When one had been brought up to be a well-to-do gentleman, to administer land, to expect to inherit an illustrious title and fabulous wealth one day, one was not educated or trained to any other form of gainful employment. Not any that would give him sufficient income to support dependents, including a child, as well as keep his own body and soul together, anyway.