The Truth About Dukes Page 9

  He approached, a man who always moved quietly, who even thought quietly. How on earth should she paint him?

  “Not childishness, though I indulged in much of that, particularly at first. Childlike-ness, perhaps. My saving grace became my mind, which is ironic when an illness of the mind landed me there in the first place.”

  “Explain yourself.” The green of his eyes alone would take much consideration, much experimentation, though mixing pigments was not an enjoyable aspect of Constance’s art. Some of the colors were toxic, others volatile, and yet, from those dangerous concoctions could come great beauty.

  “A child is curious,” Rothhaven replied, “to the point of folly sometimes. Because I was curious about Pierre’s accent, I learned French, albeit from a footman. I did not understand that it was a farmer’s version of the language, but I can read the proper kind now because I was curious then. I was curious about the stars—they were visible to me even in a walled garden, even through a locked window. I thus learned astronomy and how to navigate by the heavens. If and when I escaped that place, I would need that skill.”

  His room had been filled with books, maps, and strange gadgets, becoming a sort of lending library for the other residents, not that anybody had let Soames know about that.

  “You thought of escape?”

  He came a few steps closer. “For about the first five years. I filled my head with fantasies. Perhaps Papa did not know that John Coachman had left me at the madhouse instead of at school. Papa would come fetch me when he realized the error. Papa had died and Mama was searching for me. I wrote letter after letter, which Soames dutifully sealed and addressed for me. He put them in the boot boy’s sack, and when my back was turned, took them out and tossed the lot of them into the fire—after he’d read them.”

  Rothhaven regarded the rambling old pile at the end of the weedy drive. “I gave up on Nathaniel last, and that took more years.”

  “How did you not go mad?”

  He closed the distance between them, gazing down at her as if she were the subject to be painted.

  “I did, for a time. I was completely…the ice baths, the lashings, the lack of decent food, the confinement, seeing the other residents part with what reason they’d had when they arrived. I was contemplating an escape of a very permanent variety when along came a new maid. A serious, watchful girl who kept her eyes open and her mouth shut. Soames was allotting me just enough food to keep me perpetually ravenous. This maid, so quiet and so bold, managed to sneak a wedge of cheese to me between the clean linens she brought for my bed.”

  Constance indulged in another brush of her fingers through his hair. “At first I thought you were slender by nature, then I realized Soames was starving you.”

  “He was manipulating my diet to see if any particular food brought on seizures and, as it happens, his theory had merit. Too many sweets, too much alcohol, tobacco, strong tea, or coffee aggravate my condition, as does a lack of regular, adequate rest.”

  “He did not need to starve you to test that theory. An occasional bite of cheese, a few slices of ham, fresh apples…” She’d brought Rothhaven whatever she could pilfer from the larders, and had done the same for the other epileptic resident subjected to Soames’s vile science. She’d sneaked books to Miss Sophie—nobody had a family name at that wretched place—and accidentally allowed the cat into Miss Helen’s room as often as possible.

  “You saved my life, Constance Wentworth. Saved my life and also my sanity, the one being occasionally exclusive of the other.”

  Rothhaven stood directly before her, and Constance was reminded that this was not the gaunt young man who’d watched her with such rage in his eyes when she’d come to sweep his hearth. The first three days she’d undertaken that chore, he hadn’t spoken a word to her. The fourth day, he’d thanked her.

  Nobody thanked a char girl for hauling ashes, and Constance hadn’t expected thanks. Even as Miss Constance Wentworth of Highlane Street, York, nobody had thanked her for anything.

  “I viewed it as a game,” Constance said. “Whatever misery Soames inflicted—forcing a patient to bide alone in her room, depriving her of diversions, keeping decent food away—I plotted to thwart him. I wasn’t always successful.”

  “For which you were caned by the housekeeper.”

  “Never very hard. She did what she could too. Compared to Jack Wentworth…”

  Constance fell silent, her attention arrested by Rothhaven’s gaze. The furious, brilliant, half-mad youth yet lurked somewhere inside him, but that younger man had learned to manage his confinement. Not to make peace with it, but to tolerate a cease-fire.

  “I didn’t want to leave,” Constance said. “I did not want to go with Quinn when he showed up that morning. I still have no idea how he found me. I worried for you so when I left, worried for all of you.” She hadn’t had the luxury of worrying only for them, though. “You received my letter?”

  “You addressed it to the housekeeper, and she kindly let me have it. I was not in a position to reply.”

  Constance let that admission pass unremarked, for now. “And after I left, then what?”

  “We managed. You taught us much. When Soames kept us apart, when he pitted us against one another with his false friendship and fleeting approval, we all suffered. When I shoved a book under Miss Sophie’s door, when I saved some of my bread to pass along to Alexander at prayers, when I slipped Miss Helen a deck of cards so she could play solitaire, we all benefited. I bought the place, you know.”

  Rothhaven was tall and strong now, also confident in a way a man who’d been spared that hell could never be. Even Quinn didn’t have quite this much…what? Awareness of self? Self-possession? Gravitas? Whatever it was, Constance wanted to paint it.

  “You bought that awful, nasty…you bought it?”

  “When Nathaniel found me, taking ownership of my prison was one of the objectives that motivated me to leave, to learn to live in the world again, albeit a world nearly as circumscribed as a hospital. In that larger world, the letters I sent reached their destinations. I had coin and influence, even without leaving the Hall. My very signature had power.”

  He relished that power now, and Constance was glad he had it. “What did you do with the hospital?”

  “Eventually, I closed it. With the exception of Miss Sophie, we weren’t mad, and she was certainly not violent.”

  “She was violently convinced Napoleon had married her during the Peace of Amiens.”

  “And that he was coming for her any day. Where is the harm in such a fantasy? She’s living with a niece now, writing letters almost daily to the deposed emperor. He writes back sometimes, courtesy of the local curate’s epistolary talents. For Miss Sophie, the Corsican has not yet gone to his heavenly reward.”

  “That is…marvelous.” Brilliant, in fact. “And Mr. Alexander?” A shy, slight fellow also given to the falling sickness.

  “In Leeds, teaching maths at a boys’ school run by Quakers.”

  “Perfect. Miss Helen?” She’d been such a sad, quiet young lady. Even at meals, she’d had an air of alone-ness.

  “Married to Alexander. I gave her my violin, and she became very proficient. She teaches music at the same school. They have a pair of boys, both rambunctious, both saddled with the middle name Robert.”

  Rothhaven was quietly pleased to report that, very quietly, very pleased. As he rattled off the whereabouts and professions of the three remaining residents Constance had known, she realized that Rothhaven had done what few people ever do—made dreams come true for others.

  “I want to shake the blossoms from every tree in this orchard and dance for joy,” she said. “I want to shout my delight to the heavens. This is better than I could have dreamed of, a triumph for the ages.”

  “It’s a half dozen people finding the lives that should never have been taken from them, Constance, but thank you. Nathaniel was very much the duke when he and I were reunited, and I was very much…not myself. I needed a project, he needed time to accommodate the notion that I was yet alive. When I had everybody settled, I realized I had yet to settle me, and thus I began my work in the garden.”

  This conversation was extraordinary for so many reasons, not the least of which was the sheer gladness Rothhaven’s news brought Constance. The lot of Soames’s patients were all safe and sound, all reasonably happy. The families who’d tried to wash their hands of inconvenient relatives, the villages relieved to see a difficult person “sent off for a respite” hadn’t had the last word.

  Not at all.

  Rothhaven brushed a few plum blossoms from her shoulders, once again giving her that bemused, contemplative look he’d turned on her previously.

  “Do you recall how you felt when you found that cheese wrapped in linen among your weekly allotment of clean bedding?” she asked.

  The last few petals clinging to her shoulders, he blew away. “I was intoxicated with hope, with glee, with the certain knowledge that somebody saw my circumstances and was outraged enough on my behalf to take action. The power of that, of being seen and cared for by a person with the courage to act, made all the difference in the world.”

  She took him by the lapels. “That’s how I feel when I’m with you, Rothhaven. Seen, cared for, by somebody with great courage and integrity. I am full of good, powerful feelings. May I kiss you?”

  “No,” he said, his lips quirking. “I have earned the right to kiss you first.” He brushed his mouth over hers, and even in his kiss, Constance tasted joy and sweetness and—yes, that was the word—tenderness.

  Chapter Seven

  Robert had spent years longing to return home, imagining that beautiful day, and conjuring explanations to excuse his father’s betrayal. In his mind’s eye, he’d seen the ducal coach-and-four pulling up to the front door of Rothhaven Hall, the servants lined up to welcome him home. His parents would stand at the top of the terrace steps, beaming proudly and a little awkwardly, for they would have much explaining to do.

  He’d seen himself as the wronged party, welcomed home with open arms.

  He’d eventually replaced that fantasy with a return of the conquering hero, victor over many tribulations and injustices, worthy of the title awaiting him. For in that version of events, the old duke had died, and very likely been sent to perdition for treating his firstborn so disgracefully.

  In reality, Robert had little memory of his exodus from captivity. At his own request, he’d been dosed with laudanum, the better to fortify him for the ordeal of leaving the premises. By then, fear of the out-of-doors, of being touched, of varying his routine had all held him in a powerful grip.

  He’d insisted on a night journey, lest the sight of the open sky relieve him of his remaining wits. Nathaniel had half carried him into the Hall under cover of darkness, and Robert had hidden in his rooms for months thereafter.

  Standing in the orchard with Constance, watching her eyes light with rejoicing over confidences Robert had never shared with even his own brother, all the imaginings and daydreams about returning to the Hall faded away.

  Those dreams had served their purpose, and now that Constance had taken Robert by the lapels and asked to kiss him, those dreams would never be needed again.

  He touched his lips to hers, his heart full of reverence for the moment, so unlikely and perfect, for this was homecoming. This was reunification with a past he was proud of, and a foundation for a future shared with someone he cared for deeply.

  Constance Wentworth, of all the women in all the world, had seen him at his worst and taken his part. She’d grasped how to survive against long odds, and better still, how to not simply endure, but to triumph.

  He kissed her with all the gratitude in him, all the passion channeled so carefully into learning and self-control, and, may the Deity hold her forever in heaven’s most benevolent light, she kissed him back with equal fervor.

  “Purple and orange,” she murmured against his mouth, “with bright greens, like the tropics. Exotic, brilliant, delicious…”

  “Silk and flannel,” he replied, “softness and warmth, precious spices and mountains of pillows.”

  She drew away half an inch, smiling like a houri. “Pillows, Rothhaven? Shall I paint you as a pasha?”

  He rested his forehead against hers. “I’m not describing a painting, Constance.”

  She drew back farther, her brows knit. “You want me.” She stroked a hand over his falls, as bold as polished brass. “You desire me.”

  For the rest of my life. “You don’t seem surprised.” Or shocked or horrified. That terrible childhood had taught her much of value.

  “Intrigued.”

  She repeated the gesture and Robert had to close his eyes. Watching her explore his responses was too much pleasure.

  “Surprised. Pleased. We are behind four sturdy walls, Your Grace.”

  “If you’re that familiar with my person, might I be Robert to you?” And what had walls to do with anything?

  Constance wrapped her hand around his nape and partook of his mouth while he fisted his hands at his sides and tried to think of chess puzzles.

  “I could be more familiar with your person, right here, right now,” she said. “I’m not some sheltered blossom with no experience of the world.”

  He opened his eyes, which was unwise, because now he was fascinated with the curve of her lips and the curve of her waist.

  “I am a sheltered blossom,” he said. “I have experience of women—some—but I want more from you than a tumble against the orchard wall. Much more.”

  She stepped back, expression disgruntled. “Right, you want a portrait, some landscapes. I can do that, though posing you—”

  “Constance Wentworth.” He took both of her hands in his, lest she march off down the hill, leaving him alone and—ye gods, what a day—aroused. “I want everything with you. I’m not much of a bargain. I will doubtless be declared incompetent before the year is out, and all manner of scandal will result, but as it is yet within my power to marry, and we are well disposed toward one another…should I go down on one knee?”

  Perhaps he was daft after all, because proposing to Constance had previously hovered only at the edges of his mind, another fantasy in a head full of them—though a pleasant fantasy. A lovely dream in fact that had turned into erotic pleasure late at night behind the locked door of Robert’s imagination.

  “You are proposing to me? Proposing marriage?”

  “I thought I’d made it plain that I was proposing rather than propositioning.”

  She raised her hand as if to worry a nail, then brushed her fingers through his hair instead. “You could do both.”

  “I am proposing to you now. We can discuss the other later. One wants pillows for such a momentous undertaking. Wouldn’t do for the Rothhaven heir to be conceived while my duchess’s comfort is thwarted by a disobliging tree root.”

  She glanced at the place below his waist. “If I am conceiving your heir, I suspect I will be oblivious to anything so paltry as a tree root. Are you sure, Rothhaven? I will come to the supper table with smears of paint on my sleeves, smelling of linseed oil and turpentine. I am no sort of hostess and never will be. I don’t keep a regular schedule, and my family can be troublesome.”

  Why was she trying to talk him out of handing her a tiara? Robert was certain that his malady meant nothing to her, on the order of being left-handed or having a poor memory for numbers. The world did not share her opinion. She knew exactly what the world thought of men who became insensate without warning and dramatically lost control of their limbs.

  “I know that you love your art,” he said, “and I’d be dealing with your family anyway because of Nathaniel’s marriage to Althea. Is there another reason why you hesitate, Constance?”

  She looked around the orchard, a beautiful place, now that Robert had stopped longing to return to the Hall. The cherry trees were leafing out in a gauzy green canopy to the left, the plums were in full bloom overhead, while the apples waited their turn to the right. Spring in all its glory imbued the hilltop with light and hope, and the promise of succulent fruit in a few months’ time.

  “I do not hesitate on my own behalf,” she said. “I am surprised, is all. We have known each other in some ways for but a very short time.”

  “And in other ways,” he said, holding out his hand to her, “I know no woman better than I know you. I esteem no woman more highly than I esteem you. Be honest with me, please. I have been precipitous, I know, but my regard for you is genuine and time, unfortunately, is of the essence. If you cannot be happy with me, say so, and we will remain friends.”

  He’d keep that promise, somehow. Constance deserved every happiness and he was asking much.

  She took his outstretched hand. “I will be happier with you than I could be with anybody else, but please give me three days to contemplate the question. I expect I will accept, but I have learned caution, and I must be certain my choice is not a triumph of selfish impulse over consideration for a man I esteem greatly.”

  She didn’t want to take advantage of him. Of all the outlandish…“You are concerned that you are somehow inadequate to marry me?”

  She gave a terse, self-conscious nod. “I am no bargain, Your Grace. I lack charm, I lack…much.”

  “And have I any charm to speak of?” Robert paced away and marched back to her. “Do I command any respect in the Lords? Am I a host of any renown? I cannot waltz, I have no small talk, I will not drink a full glass of port to save myself, I have never driven a dog cart, much less a high perch phaeton, nor have I sat a horse since childhood. Some duke I am, but I will make it my life’s work to ensure that we suit. I promise you that.”

  He kissed her then, really, truly kissed her, wrapping her in his arms and silently vowing that he would make her happy, that he would make her dreams come true…once she confided to him what those dreams might be.

  “Are we going shopping?” Althea asked. “Or am I spending most of the morning on my own, then meeting you at the coach and pretending you never left my side?”