Undercover Duke

. half-cocked lad with a hot temper.
“I can’t believe this has you so furious,” his half sister, Gwyn, said from her perch on Mother’s favorite settee. “All of this stomping about isn’t like you at all.”
“I’m not ‘stomping about’—I’m pacing. That’s what men do when they’re angry. Stomping about, indeed. You make me sound like a . . . a—” A half-cocked lad with a hot temper. He halted in front of her. “You should have seen Lady Eustace. I tell you, that woman was laughing at me. Laughing! She didn’t even bother to hide the fact that she’d once been in Sanforth. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn she murdered Uncle Armie and Father with her bare hands.”
“We both know that’s unlikely. Probably it was that Elias fellow, doing the bidding of an employer we have not yet uncovered. Besides, according to what I gleaned from your less-than-coherent tale of your visit to the Pryde house,” Gwyn said, “she might have been more confused than anything. I mean, it sounds to me as if she was trying to figure out where she’d learned of the bull running, and Vanessa was trying to help.”
Sheridan shook his head. “You don’t understand. Vanessa gave her mother a perfectly good reason for having heard of it, so if Lady Eustace was confused, she could have seized on that. Instead, the woman flat-out said that wasn’t where she’d heard about it! Without proposing an alternative explanation. She was taunting me, I swear.”
Gwyn smirked at him. “I notice you’re not claiming that Vanessa was trying to cover up her mother’s perfidy.”
“Because that would be absurd,” he said. Vanessa’s very name caused a different sort of agitation in him. “The poor woman was mortified by every word out of her mother’s mouth. I don’t know how she can endure such a mother. Now I see why Grey hates his aunt so. She’s a . . . a rude, pushy gossip who insisted on mocking me about the debts I inherited.”
“Ah, now we are coming to the truth of what has set you off. You didn’t like looking bad in front of Vanessa.”
“What? That’s ridiculous.” It wasn’t the least true. Couldn’t be. He didn’t care that much about Vanessa. Did he?
Gwyn tried to rise from the settee but fell back onto it.
“Careful,” Sheridan said with concern, holding out his hand to help her up. Damn, but at seven months along Gwyn was heavy now. That child of hers must be quite a bruiser.
Then again, Gwyn’s new husband had the shoulders of an ox.
Once she was on her feet, she said, “I’m hungry. Are you hungry? I shall call for some tea and cakes. And perhaps an apple. Wait, does Cook still make those heavenly apple tarts? That’s what I want: tea and cake and apple tarts . . . and maybe a bit of cheese. Oh, and pickles! Yes, I shall definitely want some pickles with it.”
“Eating for seven, are we?” he said dryly.
“You have no idea. I think I single-handedly devoured half of the supper Olivia laid out last night.” She leveled her inquisitive gaze on him. “And speaking of last night, you and Vanessa seemed very chummy.”
“I have no intention of discussing last night. You and Mother are intent on marrying me off, and I won’t have it.”
“Why not?” When he didn’t answer right away, Gwyn searched his face. “Wait a minute. Surely you’re not still mourning Helene. It’s been five years now.”
He stiffened. “Six. And it feels as if it were only yesterday.” Or it should feel that way. One should not get over loving somebody so easily or quickly just because that person had died. It seemed wrong somehow. “I don’t want to talk about Helene.”
“Well, then.” She rang for a servant and gave the footman her lengthy list of food and drink demands.
Sheridan couldn’t believe it. Were women in her condition always filled with a ravenous hunger? Or was it just the ones like his sister, who presently looked as if she’d swallowed a whole ham?
Unbidden, an image of Vanessa in Gwyn’s situation assailed him—of Vanessa rosy and glowing, Vanessa carrying their child in her belly, Vanessa dandling their son or daughter on her knee.
Blast it! What was wrong with him? It felt disloyal to Helene to imagine such a thing, especially since he’d never conjured up such an image with her. So why was he doing so with Vanessa?
As the servant marched off to do Gwyn’s bidding, she waved her hand at him. “Since you won’t let me talk about Helene, continue with your tirade against Lady Eustace, that ‘rude, pushy gossip.’ I begin to be rather glad I never met her.”
“Trust me, you should be.” But oddly, the heat of his anger had cooled. “I just wish I knew what her game was. She doesn’t seem to like me, yet she insisted on quizzing me about the state of the dukedom’s finances.”
“And Vanessa didn’t join in.”
“No. If anything, she was horrified by her mother’s line of questioning.”
Deep in thought, Gwyn lowered herself carefully onto the settee. “And you’re sure Vanessa knew nothing incriminating about her mother?”
“If she did, she hid it amazingly well.” He shrugged. “I have to go back tomorrow. I need to find out if her mother had been hinting at the truth or was just an awful creature in general.”
“You should bring Mama with you.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“They were friends once, weren’t they? Or at least relations. Lady Eustace was Mama’s sister-in-law for the year Mama was married to Grey’s father. And Mama will have the perfect reason for going—because she wants to get to know Vanessa after meeting her at Thorn and Olivia’s party.”
Just what he needed—his mother and Vanessa putting their heads together about anything.
Gwyn shifted on the settee. “And what does Mama have to say about Lady Eustace’s whereabouts at the two house parties, anyway? Have you asked her?”
“Of course I asked her.” Sheridan sighed. “For the first party, as you know,