A Duke by Any Other Name Page 6

  The second phase was the experience on the tongue—his words—and that involved sampling a small taste, rolling it about in the mouth, and pausing before actually swallowing. He delivered his lecture seated at the card table, demonstrating as he expounded, and Althea was reluctantly enthralled.

  His hand cradled the glass just so—casually cherishing fine crystal without a hint of affectation.

  He spoke with the confidence of an expert and yet his explanations were simple and clear. He focused on his topic with a controlled relish that brought Althea’s attention not to the brandy, but to the man holding forth.

  And to his mouth as he sipped, considered, and expounded.

  “The finish is not to be overlooked,” he said. “The entire experience, no matter how lovely, can be sabotaged by ignoring the finish or rushing it. Rather like”—he took another slow, considering sip, eyeing Althea over the rim of his glass—“a kiss.”

  Althea’s imagination had gone to an analogy even naughtier than kissing. This whole digression had taken on untoward overtones, and she suspected Rothhaven had done that on purpose. More behaving as he pleased rather than as he ought.

  “I find a rousing argument also needs a good finish,” she said. “A quip, a cut, a double entendre, but either I think of those clever words as I’m retiring for the night hours later or what comes to mind is more vulgar than even I am willing to say in decent company.”

  “The French call that the wisdom of the staircase. We are very clever and well spoken in our heads as we either go down the steps to climb into our coaches or up the steps to seek our beds. Shall we to the cards, my lady?”

  “I would rather you delivered another lecture.” Althea swirled her drink experimentally, then brought it to her nose.

  “I never lecture. Don’t rush your evaluation of the brandy’s appearance. Hold it up to the light, mentally compare it to others you’ve sampled.”

  She complied, though the brandy looked like brandy to her. Garnet liquid with amber fire in its depths when examined by candlelight. Quite pretty, actually.

  “Perhaps the next time you’re not-lecturing, you could impart a few insights about those witty retorts at which I fail so regularly.”

  “Look at me.”

  Never accede to a man giving orders. Never. Althea continued studying her brandy. “For a fellow who professes not to lecture, Your Grace, you certainly—”

  “I am imparting an insight. As you nose the brandy, look at me. Convey with a glance that you take your time evaluating what’s on offer, that your judgment is neither hurried nor ill-informed regarding any matter of substance. Look at me as if you’ll take the same care evaluating me, should I ever be worthy of your whole attention.”

  Althea regarded him, realizing that this little discourse on proper consumption of spirits applied to tea, chocolate, wine—any social occasion where a beverage was served. She sipped, and found that the brandy had acquired subtleties of taste, sensation, and aroma for being more carefully considered.

  Just as some people became more interesting upon closer acquaintance.

  “I daresay you have a talent for this,” Rothhaven muttered, taking up the cribbage board and extracting the pegs from the compartment on the end. “Do we cut for the first deal, or shall the lady go first?”

  Althea stalled by taking another sip of her brandy—a lovely potation, now that she bothered to notice. Warming rather than fiery, sunshine and fruit with a hint of sweetness instead of the syrupy banality of a cordial.

  Rothhaven’s question—whether to cut for the deal or observe the inane ladies-first protocol—was another test of some sort. Althea could bow to good manners and have the advantage of the points in the first crib, or she could flout convention in one detail and open the game without respect to gender niceties.

  She might not have the first crib in that case, but she would imply that convention did not always control her.

  “It’s always like this, isn’t it?” she said, setting her drink aside. “Every moment in company is an opportunity to either conform to or conflict with expectations. The choice is mine.” Why hadn’t she seen this more clearly? On an intuitive level, she’d known that breaking rules carried consequences, but she’d not considered that breaking rules could have benefits.

  Interpreting rules opened up worlds of opportunity for gaining the upper hand in society.

  “Precisely,” Rothhaven said, setting the deck before her. “You choose, and others can either accept your choices or find someone else to bore with their small-mindedness.”

  Interesting point of view for a man who chose to hole up in his manor house like a fox in his covert.

  “So what is your pleasure, Lady Althea? Shall you have the first deal or do we cut the deck?”

  “You are my guest,” she said. “Why don’t you decide?”

  He snorted, whether with humor or derision Althea couldn’t say, and she probably wasn’t supposed to care. He picked up the deck and began dealing, which hadn’t been one of the options under discussion.

  Ladies did not take strong spirits as a rule. Nathaniel’s mama, however, had been very clear that what applied to delicate flowers in the south of England was inapplicable to the hardier specimens contending with northern winters. Even her companion, the formidable Cousin Sarah, took an occasional nip.

  Lady Althea made sipping brandy into a feminine production. She combined grace, daring, self-restraint, and a subtle sensuality that proved ladies should not take spirits because gentlemen got ideas merely observing the process.

  Nathaniel tried to focus on his cards, though the game was going badly. Lady Althea played with assurance, and she made prudent choices.

  “You are enjoying a run of luck,” he said, discarding an eight and a seven. In the next instant, he recalled that the crib—the third hand that alternated between the two players—belonged not to him but to her ladyship this round. He’d just put very valuable cards into her ladyship’s crib.

  Who named this wretched game anyway?

  “I like cribbage,” she replied. “No other two-handed game comes close for balancing luck and skill.”

  Nathaniel could think of at least one other two-handed game where luck and skill were in even greater demand.

  He lost. He lost not because he was the victim of bad luck, but because he liked watching Lady Althea shuffle the deck, because he’d had a bit too much brandy too quickly for a man who typically abstained, and because he wanted to watch her enjoy her victory.

  He narrowly beat her in the second game and went down to defeat again in the third.

  “I have earned my cheese,” he said, draining the dregs of his drink. “And enjoyable labor it was too. You have a head for probabilities.”

  She collected the pegs and returned them to their compartment. “I thought I was merely lucky.”

  “In the first and third games, you were lucky. In the second, you evidenced good mathematical skill, but alas, not quite good enough.”

  She gathered up the cards and tidied them into a stack. “I never know when somebody is teasing me or making a jest at my expense. Were you insulting me just now?”

  Good God, she was so earnest. Of course polite society had no idea what to do with her. “If I insulted you, I am no gentleman, am I?”

  “If I am a lady, I give you the benefit of the doubt—up to a point. Ladies are gracious and kind. Nobody ever says why they are, but it’s expected of them.”

  Not expected of us, but rather, expected of them. She did not see herself as a lady. She saw herself as a woman impersonating a lady.

  “I do not see myself as a duke,” Nathaniel said slowly. “I am a man impersonating a duke. I do the best I can, but I often fail.”

  Her ladyship gave him that intense, blue-eyed perusal that made him want to provoke her to smiling. Anything to give her a reprieve from the unrelenting seriousness that she wore like a widow’s black veils.

  “You might consider receiving the occasional guest,” she said, putting the cards into a drawer. “Dukes entertain. The occasional smile might enhance your chances of pulling off this impersonation. I know several other dukes and can claim one as a brother. I have seen him both smile and entertain guests”—she closed the drawer and leaned closer—“at the same time. Dukes do.”

  “Regardless of how dukes behave in the general case, I do not entertain.” Nor did Nathaniel quite know how to react to her teasing, if that’s what she was about. “The hour grows late and I should take my leave of you.” The brisk Yorkshire night breezes would slap some sense into him and snatch away useless fancies about earnest women who played a good game of cribbage.

  Nathaniel rose and so did her ladyship.

  “Why did you come here tonight?” she asked, holding up his coat for him.

  He slid his arms into the sleeves and faced her. “Because I was out for a ramble and saw your lamps were still lit.” In fact, he’d been debating this visit for three days. Her ladyship’s raised brow suggested she knew a bouncer when she heard one.

  “I’ll walk you to the front door.”

  Nathaniel did not relish the thought of vaulting over the balcony, but neither could he risk being discovered with her. “I would prefer not—”

  “The staff has long since gone to bed,” she said. “Come along.”

  He followed rather than argue, mostly because he wanted to see more of her house. The appointments were exquisite, the housekeeping ruthlessly thorough. Every mirrored sconce was polished to a gleaming shine, and not a single cobweb clung to the gilt of the picture frames or pier glasses. Even the wood floors bounced candlelight into a mellow sense of order and peace.

  Not like Rothhaven Hall, where the maids were old enough to be Nathaniel’s grannies, and the foo
tmen even more venerable.

  “Your house wants flowers,” he said as they approached the front door.

  “I haven’t a conservatory, Your Grace, and the garden has yet to yield much in the way of blooms. Thank you for an enjoyable evening.”

  Nathaniel waited for the words that would put a crimp on the whole excursion—you must come again sometime—but her ladyship remained with one hand on the door latch, her expression merely pleasant.

  “My thanks as well,” he said, “and I’ll bid you a good evening.” He possessed himself of her free hand and bowed over it, but rather than allow that gesture to remain perfunctory, his tired, somewhat brandy-soaked brain instead noticed the hand he held.

  Her nails were clean and neatly trimmed—no surprise there—but the pads of her fingers were rough, and minute scars crisscrossed her knuckles. A serious gash had healed at the base of her thumb, without benefit of stitches if the irregular scar was an indication.

  “You see the evidence of picking oakum,” she said, “among other unladylike endeavors. I never go out without my gloves.” Her gaze had grown wary, her posture straighter.

  Nathaniel stood for a moment more or less holding her hand while he pondered an appropriate rejoinder. She was braced for a setdown, and he wanted to put out the lights of any man who’d ever delivered her one.

  Lady Althea withdrew her hand. “If you’d like to call again, Your Grace, please do send a note. Be punctual and I will receive you myself at the front door.”

  “And if I don’t care to use the front door?” He honestly didn’t care for skulking along hedges and hoisting himself over balustrades.

  “Then I will not receive you at all. Enjoy the walk home.”

  He’d hoped for a smooth, urbane conclusion to the evening and was instead on the receiving end of a chilly dismissal. What fool had announced that the finish mattered? Though her ladyship had the right of it: He was better off adhering to the routines that ensured privacy at the Hall, and this departure had been unwise, for all he’d enjoyed it.

  Enjoyed it very, very much.

  He took her hand again, and this time kissed her knuckles, an enormous breach of protocol. He held her hand one moment longer and looked her directly in the eye.

  “Exquisitely done, my lady. Exquisitely done. Good night.”

  He left her smiling, her right hand grasped in her left. The flame in the sconces created a halo of fiery highlights in her dark hair, and her blue eyes were for once devoid of wariness.

  A lovely image to remember her by.

  Sleep refused to oblige Althea, but then, she’d never needed much sleep.

  Poverty forced a distance between creature needs—for rest, safety, sustenance, companionship—and the realities of life. Working exhausted, functioning when terrified, thinking clearly in the midst of horrendous anxiety became normal for any child cursed to have Jack Wentworth as a father.

  “Old Jackie is dead,” Althea murmured, giving up the battle for rest. Dawn would arrive soon, though by summer, dusk and dawn would be within kissing distance of each other. She climbed from her bed, changed into two shifts and an old walking dress, and put on her most disreputable half boots.

  What the boots lacked in style they made up for in sturdiness.

  Wandering at dawn was another habit left over from girlhood. The world was quiet and innocent at dawn, full of hope and good smells. Baking bread, scrubbed front steps, freshly mucked-out stables. The odors of abundance, domestic industry, and order had been a comfort to a child who later in the day would not have dared to venture into the better neighborhoods.

  “But first thing in the day, the world belongs to those willing to wander.” She gave Septimus a pat on the head and left the bedroom door cracked for him.

  The garden called, though it wasn’t much of a garden. Some previous owner of Lynley Vale had seized about half an acre from the surrounding moors to level into parterres, added a fountain and a buffer of rolling lawn, and then gone back to raising sheep.

  “It’s enough.” Althea stole into the misty gloom by way of the library terrace. Rothhaven had come this way the previous night, and from there he’d invaded Althea’s dreams.

  “Or my nightmares.” Althea walked the crushed-shell path that ran around the garden’s perimeter, though the wilder terrain beyond called to her.

  Rothhaven would like knowing he’d disturbed her sleep. A brooding recluse who galloped free in the evenings and strode the fields by night wasn’t entirely content to remain behind his castle walls.

  “So why pretend otherwise?” And why—why, why, why?—plant that sweet, tender kiss on her less-than-ladylike knuckles?

  That thought sent her to the foot of the garden, where somebody had left a bucket of muddy tubers. Irises, from the looks of them, very recently dug up and in need of replanting. Althea’s gardener was a conscientious soul, and irises would make a nice addition to the staid privet hedges and empty urns.

  “So would daffodils.” She left the garden by way of the groundskeeper’s shed and retrieved a trowel and bucket, then ambled along a foggy track toward the river. Closer to the water, the mist was thicker, imparting a half-eerie and half-enchanting fairy-glen quality. A lanky hare loped across the path, then stopped several yards on, wiggling its nose in a fashion that suggested Althea had brought an unwelcome scent with her.

  “Good day to you.”

  The hare hopped away, not in any particular hurry.

  She found her quarry—a bank of daffodils not yet in full bloom—and proceeded to soak her hems and get her hands filthy filling her bucket with robust specimens. Activity felt good, just as putting Lynley Vale in order had felt good, but realizing that her home had no flowers—Rothhaven had seen that in one casual glance—was daunting.

  “When will I learn?” she asked the dewy morning air. “When will I feel as if I’m who and where I’m supposed to be?”

  Something twitched at the edge of her vision, another hare perhaps. Foxes could thrive near moorland as did game birds, but this movement felt…less benign.

  Althea rose and stuffed her trowel into the bucket of uprooted flowers. “Is somebody there?”

  She was on her own land, and a scream would bring help, but if she screamed over a nesting grouse she’d feel quite the fool.

  The mist swirled on an unseen current of air and revealed the outline of a man, bareheaded, his greatcoat brushing the tops of field boots. He stood a good twelve yards away, so utterly still Althea might have missed him, but for the darkness of his attire against the pale fog.

  “Good morning.” Althea was ready to hike her skirts and run, but nothing about the fellow was menacing—nor did he seem friendly.

  He turned and strode off, the mist swallowing him up before he’d gone six strides.

  Had it been Rothhaven? The height hadn’t seemed quite impressive enough, the walk not as decisive as Rothhaven’s, but then, she’d not seen His Grace previously in pre-dawn half-light. Perhaps the vicar had gone for a constitutional to help compose one of his lofty, articulate sermons and hadn’t wanted small talk to interrupt his train of thought.

  Though the man had taken the path that led to Rothhaven Hall, the opposite direction from the vicarage.

  Althea collected her flowers and made her way back to her own garden, no longer quite as charitably disposed toward solitude at such an early hour.

  The encounter had been odd. Very odd indeed.

  Chapter Five

  The night air had failed to slap any sense whatsoever into Nathaniel. Instead he’d wandered home by way of the lanes, in deference to his boots and also because he’d been reluctant to return to Rothhaven Hall.

  The manor had sat like a black hulk against the moonlit sky, the sight melancholy rather than menacing. Without a single lamp glowing in a window, Nathaniel’s home had looked more like a prison than the haven it was meant to be. Sleep had been elusive after that unhelpful thought had taken root, and Nathaniel had tormented himself with second thoughts.

  The wisdom of the well-punched pillow suggested he ought not to have kissed Lady Althea’s hand. Perhaps he should have kissed her cheek, or perhaps he should have let himself out through the French doors and bolted across her garden hotfoot.