The Truth About Dukes Read online

  Stephen hobbled over, tankard in one hand, cane in the other. He made a convincing tinker, and wearing the blue-tinted spectacles and rumpled clothing, he also managed to appear older than he was.

  “I take it matters did not go well.” He remained standing, casually using the massive tree trunk for support. To any passerby, he’d be enjoying a patch of shade while perusing the market crowd. A few feet away, a lady would be doing the same on her solitary bench, while they politely ignored each other.

  “Matters went horribly,” Constance said. “Ivy is wonderful. If I try to explain the details to you now, I will end up marching back to Reverend Shaw’s house and drawing his arrogant cork.”

  Stephen took a placid sip of his ale. “That’s encouraging.”

  “Explain yourself.” Or I will draw your cork. The violence of Constance’s anger was both frightening—she never lost her temper—and inadequate. Ivy was bound for Australia, and nothing Constance could do or promise would change that.

  She was angry with Reverend Shaw and—for no defensible reason—with Rothhaven.

  “For too long,” Stephen said, “you have been content to paint away your megrims, to have a nip or three on the bad days, and keep yourself to yourself. A daughter is worth fighting for, and that you want to plant Reverend Witless Show a facer doesn’t mean you’re a devil like Jack Wentworth. You are simply a mother frustrated beyond bearing.”

  “Witless Show? Is that what they call him hereabouts?”

  “The alewives are a merry lot. Would it cause too much scandal if I shared that bench with you?”

  Such a question meant Stephen’s leg was paining him. “You had better not. Have you proper clothes with you or only the disreputable kind?”

  “I have both. Did Rothhaven abandon you at your request, or must I have a chat with him about unmarried ladies and the behavior of a proper escort?”

  “We are in Fendle Bridge, Stephen, not Mayfair. Any number of unmarried ladies are strolling the green without causing talk.”

  “And to think I have no use for life in the country with all these fair damsels wandering at large. Where is Rothhaven?”

  “Asleep, I hope.” He’d been so apologetic, and yet his staring spell could not have come at a worse time. She’d been furious with him, and that was shameful, so she’d admitted what anger she could—anger at herself. She was still angry at herself.

  “Your gallant duke is asleep?” Stephen took another sip of his ale, perhaps to buy time to marshal his own temper. “You lose the opening skirmish with Ivy’s uncle, and Rothhaven puts his feet up, catches forty winks, and leaves you to wander brokenhearted among the yeomanry?”

  “He had a staring spell as the discussion grew heated,” Constance replied. “Reverend Shaw expected the gallant duke to curry the favor of a mere country parson. Shaw was instead treated to a cold, awkward silence. Rothhaven is unhappy with himself.”

  “I am unhappy with him. What manner of staring spell?”

  “For a short time, he neither moves nor speaks. He appears to be asleep with his eyes open. I gather he could hear what was said around him, but he could not reply. Shaw took it as something like the cut direct, and I didn’t help matters.”

  Stephen shifted his weight and set the tankard on the bench, so he could brace himself on both the back of the bench and his cane.

  “You were in a towering fit of pique, and I wasn’t there to see it. Have you considered next steps?”

  “No.”

  Stephen waited with damnable fraternal patience.

  “I can write to Ivy through the housekeeper, Mrs. Hodges. She appears to care for Ivy and she’s patient with the reverend.”

  “A saint among women. I need to sit in the next two minutes or I will fall upon my arse, causing both talk and unnecessary humiliation. Go put Rothhaven out of his misery. He’s doubtless castigating himself without limit for what was probably a doomed mission to begin with. I will nose around and see what I can learn about the larger picture.”

  For form’s sake, Constance wanted to argue. To be ordered about by a younger brother who sounded unnervingly like their ducal sibling was annoying. Merely annoying, though, not enraging.

  “Take the bench,” Constance said, rising. “Can you transform yourself back into a prancing dandy and join us for dinner tonight?”

  “Prancing, Con?” He slid onto the bench with a sigh. “I should live so long as to ever in my life prance.”

  “One can prance figuratively. Rothhaven asked me about emigrating to Australia.” She made a production out of opening her parasol and adjusting it over her shoulder.

  “You are tempted.”

  “His Grace cannot go with me, Stephen. He can barely tolerate coach travel at night, he regulates what he eats ruthlessly, and he must have rest and quiet, which are nearly impossible to assure on board a ship. I cannot ask him to travel that far away from his brother and familiar surroundings. Not yet.”

  “And you won’t abandon him, though Ivy cannot stay here. I’m sorry, Con.”

  “I accepted his marriage proposal, Stephen. I knew what I was getting into.”

  “No,” Stephen said, examining the handle of his cane, “you did not. Neither did Rothhaven. That is the nature of marriage—a vast and perilous unknown temptingly draped in promises of romance and erotic pleasure—and why you will not find me sticking my toe or any other part of me in parson’s mousetrap. Away with you, or Rothhaven will fret himself into a twitteration thinking he’s disappointed you.”

  He had disappointed Constance, and she had disappointed Ivy, and the reverend was a disappointment all around. “We’ll hire a private dining room for supper and keep country hours—and Stephen?”

  He looked up and for a moment, Constance recalled the vulnerable, furious boy he’d been, and how fiercely he’d fought for a scrap of dignity.

  I am not the only one in the habit of keeping myself to myself. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  He touched his fingers to the brim of his top hat, a jaunty tinker flirting with a lady far above his station, as jaunty tinkers were wont to do.

  Constance crossed the street to the inn and climbed the steps to the inn’s best rooms. She and Rothhaven were Mr. and Mrs. Rothmere here, only a slight distortion of the truth. She used her key to let herself into the sitting room and came upon her duke asleep on the sofa, boots off, shirt open at the neck, a pillow behind his head.

  Constance refastened the lock, and when she turned away from the door, Rothhaven was regarding her.

  “Don’t get up,” she said, taking the chair at an angle to the sofa. “I gave Stephen the bare outline of our call on Reverend Shaw. Stephen—properly attired—will meet us for a private dinner. He asked me what my next steps will be, and I hadn’t an answer for him.”

  Rothhaven sat up and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “You must not despair, Constance. You have come far today, and Ivy herself welcomed you with open arms. For her to know that you did not willingly part from her, that you searched for her until you found her, that you want her in your life, will mean more to her than you can know.”

  He spoke from the bitter experience of a boy banished by his own father for an ailment that boy could not help.

  “What was the worst part?” Constance asked, shifting to take the place beside him. “When you were trapped out on the moors in that awful place, what was the worst part?”

  He tucked an arm around her shoulders, as if perhaps he thought better that way, and some of the misery in Constance’s heart eased.

  “Three demons converged,” he said, “to nearly steal the spark of reason from my mind and the humanity from my soul. First, I was alone. Second, I had no idea if I would ever return to a life I could enjoy living. Third, I saw no point to my continued incarceration. I wasn’t getting better, I wasn’t serving a penance for a crime I’d committed, I wasn’t earning somebody else’s happiness with my misery. The suffering of those interned in Soames’s hospital was entirely unredeemed, potentially endless, and utterly meaningless.”

  “And of those three horrors—the isolation, the lack of a hopeful future, the meaninglessness of your suffering—which was the worst?”

  He took her hand in both of his. “The isolation. Then you came along, and showed me that I did not have to be alone. Soames’s evil genius was that he managed to make a half dozen people feel alone while we literally took every meal together and dwelled under the same roof. You knew how to fight that darkness, and taught us how to fight it too. You saved my life, Constance. I want you to know that.”

  He was being kind, reminding her that she was more than the failed mother of an adolescent bound for the ends of the earth.

  “Thank you,” she said, because thanks were in order.

  “But you are still heartbroken, I know. Let’s go to bed, shall we? You slept as poorly in your brother’s coach as I did.”

  She could say no without offending him, could claim a need to think, or to draft her first letter to her daughter. Rothhaven would considerately leave her in peace and finish his much-needed nap in the big bed in the other room.

  But Stephen’s words repeated in her head: You keep yourself to yourself.…And where had that landed her? Painting in her bare feet and hiding from the world. Simply touching Rothhaven, talking to him, hearing his voice, brought her comfort.

  “I don’t want to be alone right now,” she said, turning her face into his shoulder. “I am more upset than I have ever been. I don’t want to lose her just as I’ve found her, Rothhaven. I cannot.”

  He rose and drew Constance to her feet. “Dwell on the positive aspects of the situation for now. She won’t leave for weeks, she is a wonderful girl, she wants to know you better, and we have many resources. You are tired and have had an overwhelming morning. Come to bed.”

  Constance went into the bedroom hand in hand with Rothhaven, and he undressed her as she let fatigue and sheer shock steal over her. She had met her daughter. Her lovely, delightful, stubborn, outspoken daughter. She could lose that daughter without ever seeing her again, and that was unbearable.

  When Rothhaven had Constance down to her shift, he gave her a gentle push toward the steps beside the bed.

  “You will join me?” Closeness with him, the man who knew her secrets, who shared her burdens, had become imperative.

  “Not until I’m wearing less than you are, but yes.”

  Rothhaven peeled his shirt over his head, stepped out of his breeches, and neatly folded his clothing on the clothes press. Constance had seen him all but unclothed before, but this mundane display was more dear. She would see him like this often, moving around a bedroom in the altogether, preparing for sleep. His hair was tousled, his eyes ringed with fatigue, and yet, he was a splendid specimen—lean, muscular, well proportioned, and hers to love.

  “Come to bed,” she said, holding up the blankets.

  Rothhaven climbed in beside her and spooned himself around her. He was mildly aroused, which Constance considered normal when a mostly healthy man contemplated sharing a bed with his lover. She drifted off on the thought that this was the tonic she needed.

  Rothhaven’s arms around her, his company, his warmth. The challenge of Ivy’s situation was daunting, and it might never be happily resolved, but at least Constance would not face that pain alone.

  You appear to have lost your shift, my dear.

  Robert was unable to offer that observation aloud because Constance was kissing him. He’d awakened to find her straddling his lap, her breasts a feminine benediction against his chest.

  “I didn’t want to impose,” he whispered, when she paused to nuzzle his ear. “Didn’t want to bother you.”

  “You bother me. You bother me without ceasing.” She switched to his other ear. “I dreamed I was bothering you right back and awakened full of ideas.”

  “This isn’t why I suggested we nap.” Though Robert’s masculine accoutrements thought Constance had lit upon the best idea in the whole world.

  “We napped. Now I’m suggesting we move on to other agreeable activities.” She rocked her hips, and agreeable became the most spectacular understatement in the language.

  “Again, please.”

  She was a fiend, eventually sliding to his side to fondle him in ways that sent reason flying out the window. Her hand was an instrument of naughty, delightful inspiration, and her mouth…

  “I’ll spend,” Robert whispered, eyes closed, hands fisted in the sheets. “If you don’t cease this instant…”

  She licked him slowly, like a favorite ice on a hot day, then desisted, only to straddle him again and sink down over his arousal on a single, sure glide of her hips.

  “A moment,” Robert rasped. “Please allow me a moment.”

  Constance folded onto his chest, her breath fanning across his shoulder. “I love being this close to you. Love touching you wherever I please.”

  “And I love touching you.” Rejoiced in it, in fact. “For years I dreaded every tactile interaction with another person. You touch me, and I am saturated in pleasure.”

  She kissed his cheek. “Do you still own that awful place?”

  “Gave it to a charity.”

  “Drat. I would have loved to help you burn it down.” She began to move, igniting an altogether different sort of fire, and words became impossible. She raised herself off his chest, took his hands and put them on her breasts, then hung over him, panting while he tried not to lose his mind.

  “You first,” he managed.

  “You…” She came at him harder without speeding up.

  Robert held out, somehow, while she drove herself against him with all the passion and determination one courageous soul contained. When he could withstand the battering no longer, he bowed up to wrap her in his arms.

  “Together, Constance.”

  She keened against his shoulder, a sound as much of grief as of pleasure, and he held her until she collapsed against him, then sank back with her against the mattress.

  “Damn you,” she panted, several minutes later as he smoothed his hands over her hair. “Damn you, Rothhaven.”

  As scolds went, that one was endearingly pathetic. “If you wanted a lap dog in your bed, you should have accepted a proposal from one of the Town dandies lusting after your settlements.”

  She lifted up enough to peer at him. “I did want to be in charge. For once.”

  “You want to be in charge, while I am in love.” He brushed her hair back from her cheek, adoring the sight of her rosy and replete. “In charge ought not to signify, Constance. Not here. We will find a way for you to be together with your daughter. I promise you that. I am your ally in that fight, and I will not desert you.”

  Robert had no idea how to keep that promise, but he knew very well that he would not part a child from the mother who longed to be with her. When Constance again tucked close, Robert held her gently, as if she might break, as if he might soon have to let her go forever.

  Unhappy couples in Stephen’s experience all exuded the same combination of resentment, despair, and bitterness. Some went about it silently, some sniped and carped at each other before company, others pretended harmony in public, though never very convincingly.

  The misery was obvious to him, no matter its form.

  Happy couples, by contrast, exhibited variety in the joy they took in their couple-dom. Quinn and Jane, for example, had learned to hide most of their shared passion, and yet it smoldered beneath polite manners, parenting discussions, and exquisite social deportment. A casual brush of hands when Quinn removed Jane’s cloak, and a spark would waft up on the marital breeze. Jane would smile and declare a need to retrieve a book from her private sitting room. Quinn would offer to help her find it, and off they went, chatting about some infernal bill in the Lords that Quinn was determined to see tabled.

  Cousin Duncan and his Matilda were even more obvious. They could make a chess game into an erotic pavane without saying a word. At the conclusion of the game, Duncan would declare himself defeated and determined on revenge. Matilda would smile and note that the hour grew late. The combatants would wander up the steps to bed, ostensibly discussing queens adept at capturing unsuspecting knights.

  Hardly subtle.

  Rothhaven and Constance went about the whole business differently. Rothhaven seated Constance at the table, no little whispers or stolen touches tucked into his courtesies. Constance barely acknowledged his assistance, but when she took up the bottle of wine, she served her duke first.

  “So what have you learned, Stephen?” she asked, filling Stephen’s glass as well.

  Rothhaven took his seat, to appearances quite the serious aristocrat, but when he gazed at Constance, his eyes gave away a fondness more palpable than attar of roses at close range.

  “Half a glass for me,” Rothhaven said, switching his full glass for Constance’s empty one. “Your lordship, welcome. Your report would be appreciated.”

  Constance did as somebody told her to for once and poured His Grace only half a glass of merlot.

  “I learned that Fendle Bridge is a typical English village,” Stephen said, hooking his canes on the edge of the table. “Everybody lives in everybody else’s pockets. Nobody has anything truly awful to say about Reverend Shaw, but they wish him good luck in the Antipodes rather enthusiastically.”

  “Any debts, scandals, or criminal issues in the reverend’s past?” Rothhaven asked.

  The merlot was passably good. “Alas, no. As the oldest son, he inherited the most from the parents. Two younger brothers now manage the engraving business in Leeds that Shaw came into upon his father’s death. Shaw takes a share of the profits, while they do the work. Shaw tried his hand at teaching, but hadn’t the patience for it as a younger man. His career as a vicar has been one unhappy patron after another.”