The Truth About Dukes Read online

  “Of course not. I tried to assist him to stay on his feet, and he cowered away from me so violently he nearly overset himself again.”

  “You are a good man, Neville. If His Grace has taken leave of his senses, that is not your fault. I heard he tried to attend services and made a complete hash of it.”

  The brandy was working its magic, as was Phoebe’s sense of calm and good sense. “How can one make a complete hash of attending services, short of a loud case of the wind during the sermon?”

  “Neville, I despair of your humor. Rothhaven arrived at the last minute, said not a word to anybody, and left before the organist had concluded the final hymn. He looked neither left nor right, greeted nobody, and kept his coach waiting right at the foot of the steps. Very odd, if you ask me.”

  Very pragmatic. The biddies in the churchyard would gabble until sunset with a new duke to torment.

  “He was pale,” Neville said, thinking back over a situation that would not leave his mind. “Rothhaven, when he tried to get up. Looked like a shade.”

  “Clearly, attending services was the limit of his ability, and then those women had to drag him all the way into York, parading him about as if he’s some sort of oddity. What can you expect from a family of bankers?”

  As bankers went, His Grace of Walden had a spotless reputation. Quinn Wentworth hadn’t been among the cabal that had financed Napoleon’s Hundred Days, for example. Another set of London bankers had helped the fledgling United States buy the Louisiana Territory from Napoleon, providing an enormous infusion of cash into the emperor’s coffers.

  In Neville’s opinion, most bankers were economic parasites. They made money off of other people’s hard work or misfortune. Solicitors might not be gentlemen in the strictest sense of the word, but at least they earned their coin fairly and in exchange for honest services rendered—in theory.

  “Lord Nathaniel arrived as His Grace’s fit was passing,” Neville said, taking a fortifying sip of his brandy. “He seemed to know what to do.”

  Phoebe set aside her cordial. “And that makes it better, that the same brother who all but imprisoned Rothhaven was abetting His Grace’s public torment today? First, poor Rothhaven is kept hidden away like some disgusting secret. Then they drag him around to the Wentworth entertainments. Now they force him to attend services and haul him clear to York. Of course Rothhaven’s wits went begging. It’s a wonder he didn’t strike you with his walking stick or flail at you with his fists.”

  Phoebe fell silent, hands folded in her lap. She didn’t often lose her temper, but in this case, she had a point.

  “Rothhaven wanted to be away as quickly as possible,” Neville said slowly. “That much was obvious.” Though the man had been in possession of a stout walking stick, stout enough to do damage if wielded like a weapon.

  Phoebe spread her fingers, the firelight catching the gemstones and gold of her rings. Another woman would have tossed out a few recriminations or a succinct I told you so. She merely sat, ladylike and composed, while Neville’s conscience and his legal instincts wrestled with a puzzle.

  “We don’t know Rothhaven is being run ragged by his brother. We don’t know whose idea it was for him to attend services. We don’t know that a trip into York wasn’t at His Grace’s bidding. He called on Cranmouth. The old duke retained Cranmouth’s father, and I’m fairly certain Lord Nathaniel did as well.”

  Though come to think of it, Cranmouth never mentioned meeting with Lord Nathaniel in the years when the true duke—Robert—had been away from the Hall. All very curious, that. The timing of Robert’s re-emergence at Rothhaven Hall was never discussed in any detail, not in the circles Neville frequented.

  “Do we know when Rothhaven re-joined the household at the Hall?” he asked.

  “We do not,” Phoebe replied. “I’ve probed gently, strictly out of concern for the duke. As best I can tell, Robert simply did not interest himself in affairs at the family seat. He wasn’t aware his father had died, which again suggests a man of unusually eccentric sensibilities. How can a parent’s death be a matter of indifference to a son in line for a great title?”

  Neville was about to say They aren’t like us, my dear, but Phoebe was an earl’s daughter. She placed herself firmly on the them side of the us-and-them divide, and Neville forgot that distinction at his peril.

  “The old duke had Robert declared dead,” Neville said, “suggesting the family crotchets aren’t limited to the present generation. More cordial, my dear?”

  “Thank you.” She passed over her glass. “One doesn’t want to borrow trouble, but I do fear Rothhaven’s situation will require legal intervention, Mr. Philpot. Between Lord Nathaniel and those Wentworth women, His Grace is without allies, and too much is being asked of him. The falling sickness can be fatal, you know, and I would not want it on my conscience that Rothhaven was being hounded literally to death by selfish meddlers while I stood by and said nothing.”

  Neville replenished her drink and topped up his own. “No man is above the law, or so we’re told, but Rothhaven is a duke. Walden’s sisters command ducal standing. Lord Nathaniel is a duke’s son, and there’s tremendous wealth in play. A mere lowly solicitor charges at that windmill only after very careful consideration. Have we heard anything from young Sybil’s swain?”

  Phoebe’s smile was an echo of her youthful beauty. “Lord Ellenbrook sent a lovely note to me yesterday, including his good wishes for our Sybil. He expects to be passing back this way early next week. I am encouraged, Mr. Philpot. I am very encouraged.”

  The change of subject had served its purpose, restoring Phoebe’s good humor, and allowing Neville to finish his second and third brandy in a better frame of mind. Rothhaven’s situation was troubling, to be sure, but without proof that the duke was being ill treated by his family and neighbors, the matter was not any of Neville’s affair.

  Not, at least, until Sybil and her young lord became engaged.

  The inevitable had occurred sooner than Robert would have liked. Constance had seen him in the middle of a great fit, convulsing on the ground like a bovine in its final throes at some knacker’s yard. And then what had he done? Had he offered her conversation, reassurances, any semblance of normal interaction?

  “I slept most of the way home. Slept in a moving coach, and I detest coach travel.”

  Nathaniel regarded him with a slight, maddening smile. “Isn’t that progress of a sort, that you could sleep in a moving coach at midday?”

  “No, it is not progress.” Robert sat back on his heels, the walled garden for once providing no solace. “I could not have stayed awake in the coach had I wanted to. I could not prevent myself from having that seizure. I sensed trouble approaching, but I hadn’t enough notice to turn the coach around.”

  Nathaniel twirled one of the last of the red tulips by its stem. “How do you sense trouble approaching? Can you anticipate a seizure?”

  “Not reliably, and not for want of trying.” The flower bed had bloomed and faded, but Robert believed in allowing the foliage to die back naturally, at least for a few weeks. The appearance of the declining bed was too wretched to be borne, so he folded the leaves to the stalks and tied the lot into tidy bundles. “After yesterday, I must offer Lady Constance the opportunity to cry off.”

  “Are you formally engaged already? Fast work, Your Grace.”

  Nathaniel sounded a bit envious, which brightened Robert’s outlook marginally.

  “Constance is the sister of a duke, the proprieties will be observed. We have an understanding, or we did.” He tied off the last forlorn, pale plant. “Constance needs a man who can support her in all endeavors, not some graceless invalid who embarrasses her in public.”

  “Bit late for that, isn’t it? You knew you had epilepsy when you courted her favor.” Nathaniel sat on the gardener’s rug beside Robert, knees bent, feet spread, twirling his tulip and gazing across the garden like some damned philosopher.

  Robert had seen the looks on the faces of the crowd around him in York. He’d felt the swift blow to the sole of his boot delivered by a lad more curious than appalled. Be he dead? Those words had lodged in his memory, along with the recollection of being unable to roar back: No, I am not dead.

  “People are still unenlightened when it comes to epilepsy, Nathaniel. For myself, I will cope with the hand I’ve been dealt. Having seen one of my seizures firsthand, Constance should be given an opportunity to decline having to share my lot.”

  “If you send Constance packing,” Nathaniel said, rising and stretching, “I will be disappointed. She cares for you, and you care for her. The rest can sort itself out if that foundation is in place. Shall I have a look at the correspondence?”

  How casually he made that offer, how kindly. “I’ve already gone through the day’s mail, and I’m caught up, thank you. Take some catmint to go with your bouquet. Damned stuff comes back twice as thick for being pruned.”

  “You have as well,” Nathaniel said, scooping up the jar. “Thus far, every time life has tried to prune you, you’ve found a way to thrive despite all. I admire that. Looks like we have company.” He sauntered off toward the garden door to greet Lady Constance, who’d apparently tossed propriety to the wind and parted from her sister on the drive.

  Brave woman. Dear woman. But was she brave enough? Why should she have to be brave, given what life had already put on her plate? Robert pulled off his gloves, ran a hand through his hair, and prepared to have a difficult, necessary conversation with his intended.

  Nathaniel went whistling on his way, bouquet at the ready, leaving Robert alone with the woman he might soon part from.

  Again. “Good day, my lady.” He bowed.

  She gave him the sort of look she probably reserved for difficult portraiture subjects. “It won’t wash, Rothhaven. The formality, the courtesy. I understand that you need your dignity—heaven knows I have need of mine—but that won’t serve for what I have to say.”

  Oh, dear. Oh, damn. “What will serve?”

  She stepped closer. “I wanted to kill them all, every one of them, all but that old man who was so calm and helpful. I wanted to brandish a sword at them and breathe fire upon them. They dared look at you with less than respect, and I wished them all to perdition.”

  How easy she was to love. “Did you, now?”

  “I wished them to perdition in my thoughts.” She stalked away, pivoting at the Cupid birdbaths. “We are born flawed. Why does that surprise people? Stephen has an injury. I fell in love with a bounder. Quinn can be rigid, and Jane can’t sing to save herself. Why is anything less than perfection cause for judgment and curiosity? I am overset. I didn’t mean to explode like this. I had planned to be articulate and self-possessed, as your future duchess should be.”

  “Should she?”

  Constance’s path brought her back to him. “Of course. You are dignified and self-possessed, when not in the midst of your affliction.”

  She patted his cravat, which he’d tied in a quick, simple mathematical because he’d craved the comfort of his garden.

  “Do you recall our little hike to the orchard, my lady?”

  Another pat, or more of a caress. “I relive that encounter in my dreams.”

  As did Robert. In his fondest, wildest dreams. He slipped his arms around Constance’s waist. “Do you recall kissing me?”

  She linked her fingers at his nape. “Yes, and I recall you kissing me too.”

  “Was I dignified and self-possessed?”

  The question occasioned a frown. “At first. You have self-restraint, Rothhaven. Buckets and bales of it. I do not.”

  Robert drew her close, slowly, gently. “All those years in the schoolroom learning proper deportment when you wanted to go barefoot and paint nature. All the hours spent repeating French phrases you had no use for. All the years of hiding your sorrow as a mother from even your family.” He kissed her temple. “You have self-restraint, Constance. Buckets and bales of it, but I hope you have little need of it with me.”

  She let him have her weight on a soft exhalation. “Althea said you might set me aside. She said you are accustomed to being alone and that your attraction to me was too precipitous to endure. I’m a novelty.”

  “My attraction to you began years ago. There’s nothing precipitous about it. I set you aside once before, and now that the moment is upon me…”

  She peered up at him. “Explain yourself.” Then she bundled closer, as if settling in for a long, comfy snuggle.

  And that—the trust, the affection, the desire—decided that last of Robert’s uncertainty. “Now I know I can never let you go.” Then he kissed her, with no self-restraint whatsoever.

  “How are you not angry all the time?” Constance asked Rothhaven when she’d recovered from his kisses. “How are you not mad?”

  “Oh, but I am.” He kept his arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the garden door. “You’ve seen it for yourself. I am uneasy under an open blue sky, I dread the company of strangers, and I can barely abide to ride in a coach, though I’ve done some thinking about that.”

  The man beside her now was a relaxed, even chatty fellow compared to the man who’d managed that coach ride into York.

  “But you did travel into York. You will again.”

  He paused before the garden door, arms linked around her shoulders. “When my father put me into the traveling coach all those years ago, it was a sunny, lovely day. I thought I was going off to school, as the ducal heirs had gone off to school for generations. Mama was crying, poor thing, and Nathaniel was trying to be brave, but I was confident that my life as a young man of the world was about to begin.

  “I would have adventures,” he went on, “I would make friends, I would excel in my studies. I would finally make Papa proud of me, and the disapproval I’d felt from him since birth would evaporate into paternal rejoicing at how wonderful I was.”

  Oh, God. That poor boy. That poor innocent boy. “You were betrayed. When your father put you into that coach and sent you on your way, knowing full well what your destination would be, you were betrayed.”

  Rothhaven held the door for her. “There’s more. I finally figured this out as I so rudely dozed on your shoulder yesterday. Soames at one point in my early years would run me into the village by coach to study Greek with the local parson. We’d leave early in the morning, when the sun was low. The light flickering through the trees could start me shaking. Soames was delighted to observe this, though it took me eons to connect a cause and an effect.”

  “Light through the trees caused a seizure?” What manner of brain ailment reacted to light?

  “When a coach moves down a wooded road and the sun is at a low angle, the intermittent obstruction of the tree trunks causes the light to flicker. I realized that I never had a seizure on the journey home. If he switched my appointments to the afternoon, I had no seizures either going or coming. If he drew the shades, no trouble befell me.

  “Time after time, if I was made to sit gazing out at the trees for one of those early morning journeys, I would succumb to my malady. Soames never made the connections, but I soon did, and I refused early morning or late afternoon outings if I could.”

  Constance hurried through the door, wanting to be away from the garden walls and from the eyes of anybody observing from the house.

  “I hate Soames. Hate him with an unrelenting fury. He had better be dead, or I will be tempted to make him dead. To torture a boy like that and call it science…No wonder you dread travel, no wonder you abhor coaches and sunshine. Why are we out here?”

  She would return to the house with him, she would shut herself up in that house with him, if that was what his condition required.

  “I wanted to enjoy the plum blossoms with you before they fade.”

  Oh, this man. This dear, wonderful, man. “Will you kiss me again? I’ve a notion to more than kiss you. I came over here to tell you that Quinn has heard from the College of Arms. King George has kindly signed some letter or modification or parliamentary whatever and the honors of your station have been restored to you. George is quite the Tory these days, and he expressed sympathy for the offspring of so difficult and devious a man as your papa.”

  She had taken Rothhaven’s hand in the midst of that babbling. His calm was contagious, a balm to a troubled soul.

  “Do I owe Walden more than my thanks for this bit of political sorcery?”

  What did he—? Oh. “Quinn did not raise the topic of money. You fellows can sort that out if necessary. I suspect money did not change hands, it being only just that you assume the title that never should have been denied you. Quinn has no patience for bribes.”

  They reached the orchard, though rather than pass through the gate, Rothhaven stood at the top of the hill, gazing upon his family seat.

  Constance slipped an arm around his waist. “You are considering how to explain what you said earlier, about having set me aside once before. That was at the hospital, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. You were too young; I was too ill for more than friendship.”

  She rested her head against his shoulder. “You were my friend, though. You sought nothing from me, and after what I’d been through with that bounder…I did not believe a male to whom I was attracted could be a friend.”

  He continued to gaze at the house nestled on the undulating green fields below, and the silence took on a peculiar vacant quality. Rothhaven’s gaze was vacant as well, as if his focus had gone not merely inward, but elsewhere entirely.

  “Rothhaven?”

  He appeared not to have heard her. Before alarm could take root, Constance realized this was a staring spell. He’d had them when she’d known him before, and they always passed. A subtle shift in his posture a few moments later suggested the interlude was over.

  “As I was saying,” she began, “I did not believe a male to whom I was attracted could be a friend.”

  “Your trust had been violated too.” He kissed her brow. “I just went away, didn’t I?”