The Truth About Dukes Page 2

  “This is…good.” The flavors and textures contrasted, which made a bland cheese and simple orchard fruit more complicated, more interesting. “I will request this pairing at Rothhaven.”

  She munched another cherry. “Is that where you’ve been hiding?”

  “I thought the interrogation wasn’t to start until we’d finished eating.”

  She laughed, a soft chortle that illuminated her features with a rare and breathtaking warmth. “Touché, vieil ami. You were never frail of mind, were you?”

  Old friend. The closest thing to an endearment Robert had heard in years. “I am invariably disoriented after a seizure. Nathaniel is concerned that I will be declared mentally unfit by a hostile court, and all our lands and wealth will fall into the hands of crooked trustees.”

  Robert was terrified about the same possibility.

  “You still seem frightfully astute to me. Do you share your brother’s concern?”

  “When I can be rendered insensate for hours, forgetful of even the words coming out of my own mouth, I must acknowledge the validity of Nathaniel’s worry.”

  Constance stabbed a piece of cheese with the butter knife and held it out to him. “Then you must have a plan in place for dealing with an attack on your mental competence. What have you in mind?”

  What Constance said made sense. Nathaniel had fallen in love with Lady Althea Wentworth, older sister to Lady Constance. A life of peaceful seclusion for Robert at Rothhaven Hall would be impossible to maintain without Nathaniel holding the reins. Another plan was needed, and quickly.

  “For the present,” Robert said, “I plan to enjoy my supper and your company. Perhaps you have a few ideas?”

  Stephen Wentworth reserved his most difficult conversations with his ducal brother for when he and Quinn were on horseback. His Grace of Walden rode with easy competence, and thus his attention when in the saddle was not commanded by the horse. Quinn chose sensible, sound mounts, up to his weight, and not given to fidgets or strongly stated opinions.

  Stephen, by contrast, was a passionate equestrian. On the back of a horse, he was the equal of any man—or woman. He needed no canes, no inordinate caution. He traded his own unreliable leg for the horse’s four sturdy limbs and enormous muscle. In the saddle, he was free from physical pain. In the saddle, he sat as tall and straight as any dragoon.

  In the saddle, and there alone, Stephen was superior to his brother in skill, fitness, and confidence.

  The other reason for bracing Quinn on delicate matters when he and Stephen rode out was practical. Quinn was seldom alone. Jane and the children claimed his heart and as much of his time as he could give them, particularly when His Grace wasn’t wreaking havoc in the House of Lords or terrorizing his bank managers.

  If Quinn walked in the park, he took his older daughters with him or wheeled the baby in her pushchair while Jane sashayed along at his side.

  If Quinn enjoyed a drink before dinner, he often did so while playing simple card games with the children on the rug in the family parlor.

  If he sat reading in the garden, Jane brought her embroidery to the same bench.

  Stephen’s brother was awash in domestic bliss, and seemed to have no clue how much difficulty that posed to any sibling seeking a private word with him. Stephen thus proposed a ride around the acreage of the Yorkshire property Quinn had earmarked for Constance to manage.

  “Constance has done a good job here,” Quinn said, giving his horse a loose rein to negotiate a winterbourne. Mungo popped over the trickling stream while Stephen’s horse, an un-confident five-year-old with more potential than sense, danced around on the near bank.

  “Constance takes management of her property seriously,” Stephen said, “as Althea has done with Lynley Vale.” Stephen, by contrast, trusted to good managers and spent little time ruralizing at his estate.

  His horse rocked back on its quarters as if facing a dragon determined to snack on equine delicacies.

  “Give the ruddy beast a proper swat,” Quinn said, watching this display from the far bank. “If he makes this much drama out of a tiny stream, he’ll unseat you the instant he’s faced with anything truly challenging.”

  The horse danced back, then took a tentative step forward while Stephen remained passive. “He’s gathering his courage, Quinn. To force him now means I don’t trust him to sort out the puzzle for himself. The problem with a tiny stream like this is that the poor lad can hear it and smell it, but when it’s barely a rill running between tussocks at his feet, he cannot see it.”

  As if to emphasize Stephen’s words, his horse—Beowulf—craned his neck, raising and lowering his head.

  “For God’s sake,” Quinn said, “he’s dithering for the hell of it. You’ll ruin him by indulging these histrionics.”

  This advice came from a man who’d never given any of his children a proper swat, who’d never raised his voice to them, who had never once been heard to publicly express opinions differing from those of his duchess. He’d spanked Stephen exactly once, nearly twenty years ago and for a serious transgression. Quinn doubtless still felt guilty over it.

  “Your tone of voice, Your Grace, is not helping the poor fellow to locate his courage, or me to maintain my patience. Walk on, please, and Beowulf will vault the dreaded chasm rather than be separated from Mungo.”

  Quinn obliged, and Beowulf—from a near standstill—gave a mighty leap to clear a stream a puppy could have gamboled over.

  “Good lad,” Stephen said, patting the horse soundly on the neck. “Well done, young man. Well done.”

  Beowulf trotted forward as if parading before the royal standard, then kicked out behind in an exuberance of high spirits.

  “I will never understand why you prefer ill-mannered youngsters to settled mounts,” Quinn said as the horses resumed walking side by side. “You, of all people, know what an injury can mean.”

  “I, of all people, know what a severe blow to one’s pride and confidence can mean, and when I see a young horse condemned to a life of misery by poor training, I intervene where I can.”

  “And then a year later, you sell them for less than they’re worth.”

  Quinn understood money the way Constance understood portraiture and King George understood lavish self-indulgence. Money was to Quinn what grass was to a horse. The sine qua non of all noteworthy endeavors, the intuitive metaphor for any undertaking.

  Though sometimes, Quinn’s grasp of finances made him blind to other truths.

  “I find my horses suitable homes,” Stephen said, “and price them according to the owner’s means. I am compensated, the horse is well situated, and the new owner is thrilled with his or her purchase. I am not thrilled with the acquaintance forming between Constance and the neighborhood duke.”

  Quinn glanced back in the direction they’d come, though Stephen had raised this topic early in the ride, before Quinn could challenge him to a homeward gallop.

  “Constance and Rothhaven shared supper, Stephen. They appeared to chat amiably. Given that Rothhaven has all but hidden from polite society for who knows how long, I don’t see how he and Constance could be acquainted. She was merely being sociable.”

  “Constance is never sociable, Quinn. She is polite, she is agreeable, she is so unrelentingly well mannered she could be wallpaper in some vicar’s guest parlor.”

  Quinn glanced over at Stephen. His Grace was the taller sibling by at least two inches, but Stephen had the taller mount and the better seat, thus putting him at eye level with his brother.

  “That is an unkind thing to say about your own sister, Stephen.”

  “Bugger kindness, I speak the truth. Althea tried very hard to gain society’s approval and got a lot of gossip and spite for her efforts. Constance has perfected the art of being ignorable. Two nights ago, she all but monopolized the company of a man every matchmaker in England will be fascinated with. Why? Rothhaven is a dry stick who apparently suffers a serious unwillingness to leave his own property.”

  And that version of events glossed over the more titillating facts. As best Stephen could pry the tale from Althea, the current duke—Robert—had been declared dead in his minority by his own father, who dreaded the notion of an heir with the falling sickness. The younger brother—Nathaniel—had taken up the title without realizing his older sibling was not only alive, but housed in some private madhouse out on the Yorkshire moors.

  That Robert, as firstborn, was now willing to take on the title and the station of a duke would occasion attention from the sovereign himself—surely the king would have to formally reinstate the correct duke in place of the younger brother?—and talk at all levels of society.

  “You fail to note,” Quinn said, “that a connection between Rothhaven’s house and ours has formed through Althea and Nathaniel. Constance’s cordiality toward Rothhaven makes sense. He has a retiring nature; she has learned to be unassuming. A crooked pot needs a crooked lid, if only to endure a long and difficult evening.”

  Beowulf shied at nothing at all, a dodge sideways that might have unseated a lesser rider.

  “Steady on.” Stephen gave the horse a nudge with his knees. I’m still here, lad. I’m not ignoring you.

  “Steady on to the knacker’s yard,” Quinn muttered. “If that horse causes you further injury, I will shoot him myself.”

  I love you too. “Rather how I felt about your duchess when it became apparent she had married you in earnest.”

  “You felt murderous?”

  “Protective, Quinn, not quite the same thing. Just as I am feeling protective where Constance is concerned. You talk about pots and lids while I am focused on Constance’s happiness. She has become all but invisible, a figure in a shadowed corner of her own paintings.” Damned skilled paintings they were too.

  “What a pity we can’t all be like you, commanding attention for the sheer deviltry of it.”

  “I am no longer seventeen and full of ill temper, Quinn. Please attend the topic at hand. Invisibility served Constance when Jack Wentworth was swinging his fists, but thank the infernal imp of hell, our father is dead and gone. Have you never wondered who or what Constance hides from now? Why a duke’s sister courts the next thing to anonymity?”

  Mungo grabbed a mouthful of leaves from the low-hanging limb of a locust tree.

  “Leave our sisters alone,” Quinn said, making no move to correct his mount’s rudeness. “If Constance wants polite society to view her as a boring cypher, she doubtless has her reasons. I’ll race you to the stile beyond the orchard.”

  For Quinn that was an awkward change of topic, which only reinforced Stephen’s conviction that nothing good could come from this acquaintance between Constance and the reclusive duke next door. Constance apparently had reasons for remaining in the shadows, reasons Quinn knew or suspected, but had decided to keep to himself—for now.

  Stephen nonetheless allowed the subject to drop, and instead focused on beating Quinn to the stile by a margin that allowed an older brother to call the defeat a very near thing indeed.

  Chapter Two

  “Althea and I will wed by special license, I think,” Nathaniel said, spearing a mushroom sautéed in brown sauce. “We’ll wait the usual interval and hold the ceremony in Rothhaven’s chapel. It’s about time the old place got a thorough airing.”

  Robert did not care for food served with sauces. The sauce could hide an off flavor—or medication—and more bothersomely, sauces made separating the various types of food on one’s plate nearly impossible. He lacked the heart to complain about the kitchen’s efforts, though, when the Rothhaven staff had been so stoutly loyal for so many years.

  “Aren’t the specifics of the wedding the province of your bride?” Robert asked, choosing the smallest mushroom first.

  Nathaniel beamed at his mushroom. “What a lovely phrase—my bride. Of course I will discuss every detail with Althea, but as regards the special license, I am confident she won’t want a long engagement. More wine?”

  “No, thank you. When do you intend to speak your vows?”

  “Althea’s family is here now. We might as well hold the ceremony soon.”

  Robert drove his fork into the next smallest mushroom. “A date, Nathaniel. I am asking for a date.”

  Out of long custom Nathaniel sat at the head of the table, Robert at his right hand. The staff had spent years supporting the pretense that Nathaniel was the duke, and they had done so at Robert’s insistence. As far as polite society knew, Robert had only recently returned to Rothhaven Hall, when in fact, Nathaniel had brought him home more than five years ago.

  The man reclaimed from the asylum had been the furthest thing from a duke. Robert wasn’t convinced the years at Rothhaven Hall had seen all that much progress in a ducal direction either.

  “What difference does the date make?” Nathaniel spread a pat of butter on his bread and took a second pat. “You aren’t the lucky fellow looking forward to your wedding night.”

  In all the time Robert had been at Rothhaven Hall, he and his brother had never once quarreled. They discussed, they even debated in a theoretical sense, and one of them occasionally made an abrupt change of subject, but they’d avoided a true difference of opinion.

  That feat was doubtless a testament to fraternal guilt on both sides.

  “I am not looking forward to a wedding night, true,” Robert said, selecting the next smallest mushroom from among those on his plate. “I am instead facing responsibilities you have shouldered for years. I must meet with tenants who have long presumed me dead. I must deal with the awkward moments when somebody asks where I’ve been all these years. I must at all times present myself to be of sound mind, despite a lamentable tendency to stare off into space when I’m not twitching and shaking on the floor.”

  Nathaniel put down his bread. “You are angry. I am sorry. I know that taking up the reins here will be a challenge, but you are ready for it.”

  Whether Robert was ready or not, Nathaniel was too deserving of happiness to be denied a future with Lady Althea.

  “I need a plan.” Lady Constance’s words had not left Robert’s mind since she’d uttered them. “Five years ago, you devised a plan to give me the time I needed to heal from that place, and I thank you most sincerely. I need another plan now, one that frees you to jaunt down to London and take your new wife shopping. Have you considered where you and Lady Althea will live?”

  Nathaniel stabbed a third pat of butter, then beheld his bread and set the knife down, the butter still on it.

  “I had assumed we’d dwell at Lynley Vale. Althea’s property is well appointed and shares a boundary with Rothhaven Hall.”

  “I suggest you bide at Crofton Ford for at least part of the year.” Robert had given the matter much thought, and though the words were painful, Nathaniel looked intrigued.

  “Crofton Ford is a good twenty miles from here,” Nathaniel said.

  “I suspect a new bride wants a home she can consider her own. Not a property allotted from her brother’s ducal holdings, but her own hearth and haven. You hold the deed to Crofton Ford outright, it’s comfortable and closer to York. If your bride’s charitable projects take her into the city with any frequency, Crofton Ford is the more convenient property.”

  Nathaniel poured himself more wine. “Are you banishing me, Your Grace?” The question was offered with a smile.

  “Yes, in a sense. I have put more demands on you than any brother in the history of brothers, and you have never failed me. Go forth and be happy, Nathaniel. Provide me with lots of little nieces and nephews I can spoil and tell tales about your wicked childhood. Have the life you were meant to have before you learned that I was moldering away among the lunatics.”

  “Two days ago, you did not want to attend Lady Althea’s ball. Now you’re holding the door for me and wishing me off on my wedding journey.”

  Oh, God, the wedding journey. “Have you made those arrangements yet?”

  “Althea has only just agreed to be my wife.” Another smile, even more fatuous than the last. “The wedding journey hasn’t been a priority. She’d probably enjoy Paris.”

  Paris wasn’t too far away, not as far away as Rome, Lisbon, or Greece, for example. “If you are leaving on that journey in a mere few weeks, you had best begin planning it. These mushrooms are actually quite good. How is that possible?”

  Their cook, a venerable relic from the last century, had neither skill in the kitchen nor any ambition to acquire same, but he’d never betrayed the family’s privacy outside the estate. That had mattered more than fancy dishes or an interesting selection of wines.

  “Althea’s Monsieur Henri paid a call here yesterday,” Nathaniel said, “and I’m told some cooking and trading of recipes was involved by way of professional recreation.”

  “Our staff is receiving callers now, Nathaniel?” For years, the house staff had rarely so much as gone into the village for a pint, lest awkward questions be asked about the doings up at the Hall.

  “We’ll be receiving callers here soon too,” Nathaniel said gently. “Althea will come by frequently and I daresay the vicar will be close on her heels. The floodgates will open after that, but I will be here to help manage the neighbors.”

  Exactly what Robert did not want. “You will be planning your wedding journey. You will be wooing your bride. You will be taking her for a visit to Crofton Ford, because that will become her home. I must learn to manage the neighbors.”

  Even saying the words held no appeal. Good God, going to divine services loomed as an ordeal though the church was not two miles away.

  “You needn’t, you know.” Nathaniel tore off a bite of bread and sopped it in his sauce. “Simply put it about that the Hall is still not receiving guests. I eschewed the tea-and-crumpets drill when I was presumed to be the duke, and a lack of social obligations allowed me to accomplish much in the course of a day.”

  I haven’t the luxury of following that example. “A little socializing will be necessary to appease the curious.”