He did, however, slow his pace to hers, and they strolled in companionable silence until Georgie was able to get her breath back.
She looked around the surrounding countryside with interest. The village was placed south of the famous moors, but the purple-grey edge of them could be seen off in the distance on this clear summer day. In the other direction, the faint outline of a grand manor house graced a small rise, surrounded by rolling green fields.
“Whose estate is that?” Georgie asked.
He paused for a moment, and said with some reluctance, “It belongs to the Duke of Livesey.”
Georgie succeeded in not allowing her jaw to drop at the scandalous name. “However did you get the living here?”
Even as the words emerged from her mouth, she realized what his answer would be. He hesitated for another long moment, glancing sideways at her, and sighed as he saw her expression.
“The duke is my older brother.”
Georgie stopped in her tracks. “Yourbrotheris the Duke of Livesey?”
Lord Peter seemed to brace himself as he turned to face her. “Yes.”
“ThatDuke of Livesey?”
“Yes. Well, no. It was our elder brother Percy who was killed in the duel. He was the heir, not the duke. But then the duke our father died as well, and …”
“And your next eldest brother became the duke.”
“Yes.”
Even while in deep mourning in rural Sussex for their own losses, Georgie and her father had heard of the terrible scandal of the Double Demise, two noblemen killing each other in a Hyde Park duel over a whore. It had been far too public to be hushed up entirely, especially after the old Duke of Livesey succumbed to a heart seizure the night before his eldest son’s funeral and the burial arrangements had to be postponed to make room in the family vault. The funeral itself had been a near-riot, with unruly spectators crowding the streets to get a glimpse of the mourners as the coffins were transported to be interred.
“That must have been dreadful for all of you,” Georgie said. “To be at the center of a public scandal while you were trying to mourn your father and brother.”
“It was,” Lord Peter said. “We discovered after it happened that we did not have nearly as many friends as we had thought.”
“I am so sorry.”
After another moment of gaping at him, Georgie remembered herself and began walking again. Lord Peter resumed walking as well, his first few steps slow before he seemed to shake off the memories and return to his brisk pace.
“Is that why you ended up in Yorkshire?” she asked. “To escape the scandal?”
“Not really.” He cast a sideways glance at her, looking a little ashamed of himself. “In truth, I was able to, er, use the situation to convince my brother Paul—the current duke—to allow me to serve in the London parish I preferred over a more lucrative position, but my actions there unfortunately put my twin in danger and I had to accept this living to avoid even more scandal.”
“The current duke is yourtwin?”
“No, my twin is Philip. He was on the continent fighting Bonaparte when all this was happening. Lucky devil.”
Georgie shook her head. Clearly Lord Peter’s mother had been far too fond of names that started with the same letter and had not cared how confusing it might be for everyone outside the family. The humorous thought died as she contemplated the rest of his story.
“I think… I think I might understand a little of that,” she said slowly. “What it’s like to be a scandal through no fault of one’s own.”
She glanced over at Peter as they continued to walk, fearful of his reaction, but his expression was placid. Open. She took a deep breath.
“My mother… we were known in our village of course, but we would sometimes travel to another village where the people might never have seen someone with skin darker than theirs. Mama would tell me to hold my head up high and be proud of myself and my ancestry, but… it is not easy to feel as though one is on public exhibition whenever one walks down the street.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That must have been difficult.”
Georgie shrugged a shoulder. “It was, sometimes. But we had each other—Mama and Papa and Freddy and I.”
She had been relieved when her parents chose a finishing school in Cheltenham for her, with its population that included both English gentlemen returned from India as successful nabobs and emigres from India itself, but of course she could not share that with Lord Peter without raising more questions than she could answer. A young gentleman would have gone to a school like Harrow. Like Freddy had been supposed to.
Before she could be lost in gloom again, the road widened and the village came into view around the bend, first with a few isolated cottages, then with more low buildings as they approached the church near the center of the village. They paused at the gate, and Lord Peter gazed at the building with understandable pride.