Not one minute after he walked from his dining room to the library, Blakeley followed behind. "Brandy, Your Grace?"
"It is half-past seven o'clock in the morning, Blakeley, so no, I do not want brandy. I want to be alone and undisturbed. Tell Cook I may eat later. Perhaps not. And send my excuses to my office. I am not, at this moment, sure what might or might not yet happen this day. We shall see how things go. First, I must be alone for a time, before I decide upon anything."
"Your Grace, I feel quite nervous about your disposition."
"You, too?" Toad turned to Blakeley and asked, "Am I not the duke?"
"Yes, Your Grace."
"Does the title not come with the right to be left alone upon request?"
"It does, Your Grace."
"Excellent. You may consider I am exercising that privilege."
Blakeley backed out of the room.
That had been a bit more than three hours ago, according to the ormolu clock on the library mantelpiece, Toad saw when he was awakened by shouting in the hall outside.
"Wellbridge!"
Toad woke on the chaise longue, where he had shamefully wept himself to sleep, staring at the ceiling. He had planned to spend the day brooding after breakfast—once he found the announcement, in any case—and the headache forming behind his eyes bore out that thesis, though he had wasted a goodly amount of self-pity on his ill-timed nap. He hadn't even had a drink yet; he should not feel so muddled. So, now he knew how to while away the remaining hours of this grey, rainy afternoon. Well, afternoon soon enough. No one would be hurt if he started drinking early.
"What is it, Etcetera? I am in the study," he called out as he pulled himself up to a seat on the chaise.
Etcetera burst through the study door. "Wellbridge!"
"How did you get past Blakeley when I am Not at Home? Am I not a duke?" Toad sat up and scrubbed a hand across his face, stretched his shoulders, then rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "I am entirely certain I told my butler I was Not at Home."
"The Haverfords have docked at Margate, and the duke has sent his man to London with instructions to set up a meeting with the Colonial Office, so he, at least, will surely be here soon. I expect Sally will insist on coming with him to look for you."
Tossing the ball of newspaper at Etcetera, Toad snarled, "Yes, I've heard. I expect Sally in London momentarily, to collect her trousseau and book St. George's. Perhaps you missed the betrothal announcements this morning?"
"Betrothal?" Etcetera asked, bewildered, picking apart the crumpled, balled up newspaper Toad had rolled to near-rocklike consistency. He pried it apart and straightened it on the desk and scanned the torn and endlessly wrinkled page. His face turned white and he dropped the newspaper at his feet.
"Maddox. That is..."
"That is perfect; yes, I know. There is not a better intellectual match in the world for Sally Grenford. If she's accepted Maddox, I have not a prayer of stopping it."
"Sally cannot have agreed to marry Maddox. Not without talking to you first. Longford and Stocke, for two, would not have allowed it. No one in either of your families would allow it. Chirbury cannot be allowing his son to marry Sally without speaking to you first."
"If Longford and Stocke had thought of him at the height of her scandal, they'd have called him home. He was born to marry Sally Grenford. She was made for him. I'm sure he whispered math problems in her ears under the stars and traced geometric patterns across the freckles on her... The only chance I ever had against Maddox was him flying away in his balloon and ceding the field, which he did, thank everything that is holy. Until the eleventh hour." Clearing his throat and taking a breath, he admitted: "He was her first crush, Niko. Or the first she ever confided to me. Uncle Haverford asked him to help her with her arithmetic when she was... I don't know how old. Seven? Eight? Before I fell in love with her when she was nine, in any case."
"She grew up to fall in love with you."
"People can fall out of love as they fall in, can we not?"
"She has not fallen out of love. She's just begun mourning for the Duchess of Winshire; she's barely docked in England and put on her black. Sal would never show her grandmother such disrespect. Aunt Cherry can't have approved her announcing her engagement from seclusion. And even if she did—which I am sure she did not—that means you have a half-year, if not a year, before any chance of a wedding. You can talk her out of it."
"If Sally has made a public announcement, especially while she is mourning Aunt Eleanor, we can expect a wedding performed with shocking haste. I assure you, she will not want to wait to marry Lord Bloody Maddox, for if anyone can count the long odds of her making a better match anywhere, it is Sally."
Etcetera dropped into a chair. "Why are you not sotted from drink? Perhaps if you were, you would make more sense. I should be summoning Blakeley to pour you into a bed by now."
"You should summon Piero instead; he might be needed soon, if some impossible plan occurs to redeem myself in Sally's eyes. Or else an easy way to kill Maddox." Contrary to his plan to drink himself to death by sundown. Toad fell back onto the chaise and explained, "I am not drunk—yet—because befuddlement does not serve while I untangle the impossible set of circumstances that must have occurred to lead to this. However, sobriety is not helping, either, so no course is yet certain.
"It sets my head aching to think of it—Sally wed to a veritable god of intellect and reason, hostess to the gentlemen of the Royal Academy and nobles and dignitaries around the world." If he had been forced to write a plan for the best life he could imagine for Sally—if he could have no place in it—he could not have done a better job than fate.
"The despair of it has levelled me since breakfast, without any help from the brandy bottle. But I have done no good divining a plan to stop it. We need Piero. No one can scheme like Piero, and I am not sure I have the strength to do anything but mourn her."
"I will not listen to this. We were both Eton first years during Maddox's sixth. He barely spoke to men unless crusty old professors, much less women, his head always in a book. He cannot have romanced her away from you. He is a dull dog. If you allow Maddox to charm Sally, you are not even trying. Snap out of it, man! You are a great lout, lying there whinging about your sad lot while some egg-headed scholar steals Sally Grenford from you."
Etcetera took up a pillow from the sofa and smacked Toad about the head and shoulders in time to his words. "Get. Up. You. Idiot. We have to go find the truth of this and right now, if it means we have to go all the way to Margate."
Toad reluctantly dragged himself off the chaise and upright, and began feeling for the state of his cravat. "I do not want to hear the truth of it. As long as I stay in here, I cannot hear the truth of it."
Etcetera thumped Toad on the shoulder. "You are a duke now, Toad Wellbridge, and if ever there were a time to act like it. We shall gather reinforcements and make a plan among us."
Toad rose and ambled to the door with bodily strength he hadn't expected to feel until he'd somehow driven Lady Sarah from his mind in a lifetime or so.
"Blakeley!"
"The bell pulls have broken?"
"Heaven forfend I accidentally summon the wrong person. The preferred witnesses to ducal shame should surely be limited, do you not think? To be clear, you are not one, and I am still Not at Home."
In only a moment, the butler entered the room and bowed. "Your Grace?"
Etcetera gave him a charge: "Please send a footman to Lord Piero at our lodgings at the embassy; ask him to attend His Grace and myself at his earliest convenience."
Toad added, "A driver and closed carriage to the docks to seek out Captain Hawley, and then stop for Lord Joseph Gildeforte and bring them here. Keep fast horses saddled and a travelling coach at the ready until I tell you otherwise."
"Immediately, Your Grace. Er... strictly speaking, I would not normally comment..."
"That is hardly ever true, Blakeley."
"Indeed. You are worse for wear, having slept all day in that suit. Let me summon Mr. Franks, while I attend to your travel plans. You will wish to be properly attired when you reach your lady."
"You and Mr. Franks have exactly one quarter-hour." Blakeley yanked the bell pull three times and stood aside for Toad to exit the room. Etcetera stopped them both.
"Blakeley, you and Mr. Franks have an hour." Etcetera held up a hand when Toad started to object. "And I am a royal prince, so do not allow Wellbridge to lord his ducal consequence over you to gainsay me. I will take my leave and report back within the hour, and we will all have time to gather reinforcements and information before we act in regretful haste. Now, everyone to your appointed tasks, and we will meet back here then."