A duke by any other name, p.21
A Duke by Any Other Name, page 21
For in distance lay safety.
“I am her ladyship’s younger brother. Are you Master Robbie?” Stephen’s host was at least twice as old as any Master Anybody of Stephen’s acquaintance.
More complicated emotions went flitting past. “You may call me that, but it’s best if you say nothing of this encounter. I’ll show you to the library, which is more commodious than this office.”
Who was the patient, where was Althea, and what the hell was going on in this household?
Master Robbie led Stephen down another paneled corridor, this one tastefully appointed with flowery landscapes, an interesting collection of scrimshaw carvings, and an occasional porcelain bowl of venerable pedigree.
“Who’s this?” Stephen asked, pausing before a portrait of an old gent in a splendidly embroidered coat and powdered wig. Nothing about the man suggested humor, warmth, or even human frailty. His eyes could have been chips of green ice.
“The old duke. He was hanging in the estate office, but—”
“Treegum! Treegum, where the devil have you got off to!” That sounded like Rothhaven, coming down the main stairs at a good clip. “The patient has eloped, and I refuse to lose my brother twice in two days.”
“I’m here,” Master Robbie called, which solved one mystery.
A rather large one, while it raised more riddles.
Rothhaven strode up the corridor, then came to an abrupt halt and scowled mightily at Stephen. “What in damnation are you doing underfoot?”
The footman, Thatcher, emerged from the kitchen steps at a stately pace, a silver tray in his hands. “And isn’t this just the way?” he groused. “I have Cookie put together this lovely tray for the gentleman in the estate office and now you’re making off with him. First proper guest we get in donkey’s years, and you lot can’t leave him be long enough to enjoy a plate of toast. I ought to give my notice, I really ought.”
“Now, Thatcher,” Rothhaven said quietly, “you know we’d be lost without you.”
“I’ll just retrieve a book and return to my room,” Master Robbie said. “Lord Stephen, a pleasure.” He bowed with more dignity than a man in slippers and a dressing gown ought to be able to muster, then departed in the direction of the estate office.
“Into the library,” Rothhaven said, holding a paneled door open. “Please.”
Stephen limped forward, more entertained than he had been in ages.
“And what am I to do with this tray, I ask you?” Thatcher muttered, following in Stephen’s wake. “I’m not getting any younger, and I have better things to do than watch you lot waste good food.”
Rothhaven held the door for the footman. “On the reading table, please, Thatcher. I believe it’s time for your morning tea break too.”
Thatcher set the tray on the table and fairly sprinted for the door. “I do fancy a spot of tea from time to time. Mind you finish every bite, Master Nathaniel.”
He closed the door behind him, still muttering, as Stephen took a seat at the reading table.
“So your brother is alive?” Stephen poured two cups of tea and selected a slice of golden toast soaked with butter. “Bit of a pickle, that.”
Rothhaven—or Lord Nathaniel?—took the seat at Stephen’s elbow. “It’s a bloody damned mess and has been for years. You are sworn to secrecy. Pass the jam.”
“I don’t care for secrets, especially when my sister is entangled in them.”
“That is precisely why you will keep your mouth shut. You didn’t put any sugar in my tea.”
Stephen passed him the sugar bowl. “Sugar it yourself, and tell me what in seven sulfurous hells is going on here.”
Rothhaven dropped a lump of sugar into his tea. “It’s truly better if you don’t know.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” The toast was wonderful. Cut thicker than bread was usually sliced, done to a turn, still warm, and dripping butter. Nursery food, but then, nurseries were supposed to be happy, healthy places.
Rothhaven stirred his tea and sat back, an odd smile lurking in his eyes. “You really are Althea’s brother. I suppose you should hear the tale from me, but you are not to badger Althea for more details. She doesn’t have them, and that’s for the best too.”
“Your front door is manned by Methuselah’s great-uncle, you are impersonating a peer of the realm who is very much alive, and exasperated mothers invoke your name as a curse. Who are you to be telling me anything where my sister is concerned?”
Rothhaven’s lashes swept down, his head remained bowed for a moment, and in his silence Stephen lit upon the answer to his own question: Rothhaven was the man who’d fallen in love with Lady Althea Wentworth, a woman determined to take her place in society, a woman connected to one of the most prominent—some would say notorious—families in the realm.
While Rothhaven was determined on a life of secrecy and obscurity.
His Pseudo-Grace took a sip of tea—no hurrying this fellow—and set down the cup and saucer. “Who am I? I am the man who will see you ruined if you take the smallest risk with your sister’s happiness. You will say nothing of her presence here and nothing of what you’ve seen. Do have some more toast. It’s about the only thing Cook prepares well.”
“A fine speech, but a bit of work on the particulars of your threat will make it more convincing.” Stephen helped himself to more toast. “Now why have you spent years lying to all of society, pretending to be somebody you are not, and very possibly breaking the law?”
The seizure came without warning in the darkest hours.
Robbie had dozed off shortly before midnight, his temperature warm but not alarmingly so. Althea remained awake in the chair beside his bed while Rothhaven was across the hall napping. He’d told her that if Robbie had a seizure, there was nothing to do but roll him onto his side and safeguard him from anything that might fall upon him. The bedroom had a double thickness of carpet both because that helped keep Robbie’s chambers quiet and because he was less likely to injure himself if he fell to the floor.
When Robbie had awakened, she’d bathed his brow and hands with cool water, something he seemed to enjoy now. If he had any fever it was mild, and his cough was subsiding with regular applications of a honey, lemon, whiskey, and ginger tisane.
He had seemed in every way to be regaining his health.
Althea had been reading aloud to him from Tom Jones when she became aware that the bed had begun to tremble. Robbie’s expression went from a fixed stare to a faint, and then his limbs commenced to shake. She rolled him to his side—not easy when a large man was thrashing and twitching—and waited a small eternity for the convulsions to cease.
She didn’t want to watch, and yet she could not look away. Years ago, on the streets of a bad neighborhood in York, she’d seen an older woman overcome with a seizure right on the walkway. Passersby had stopped and stared, though nobody had offered a word of derision. The woman’s daughter had been with her, and when the shaking had stopped, she’d helped her mother to her feet and onto the nearest bench.
This seizure was worse for befalling Robbie in his very home. The one place where he ought to be able to bar his door against all evils, Robbie was not safe.
He quieted, seeming to fall into a doze while Althea straightened the bedclothes. On Nathaniel’s orders, she was not to offer Robbie even water until he was awake and somewhat clear-headed.
“I did not wet myself.” He spoke slowly, like an inebriate. “I ought not to say that. Lady present.” He was still lying on his side, as if truly felled by strong spirits.
“Would you like to sit up?”
He pushed himself to his back with a great sigh. “I would like to die.”
Stephen had said the same thing on many occasions. He’d even made plans to end his life when adolescence had begun changing the body he’d barely learned how to manage as a boy.
“Are you in pain?”
Robbie turned his head on the pillow to regard her. “Not of the physical variety, but for a slight headache.”
“Ah, then you are simply feeling sorry for yourself. Shall I fetch your brother so he can feel sorry for you too? Perhaps you’d like the staff to stand about your bed with long faces, muttering prayers for the dying and composing your eulogy.”
His smile was like Nathaniel’s, but more bitter. “Let my brother sleep. It’s the least he deserves, and Nathaniel’s pity is unbearable. Tell me about Lord Stephen. How did he acquire that limp?”
The question was intended to shift the focus from Robbie’s seizure to something else—anything else. Althea allowed the change in topic because Stephen’s situation was relevant.
“Our father broke Stephen’s leg when Stephen was four years old. Stephen was hungry—he was always hungry—and Papa had filched a loaf of bread from somebody’s windowsill. He enjoyed tormenting his children by eating in front of them, bite by bite, knowing they longed for even a stale crust. Sometimes he’d toss a bit of food to the floor for them to fall upon like stray dogs, sometimes he’d eat the lot and laugh at the children’s silent misery.”
She had Robbie’s attention. In fact, he looked like he wished she’d say no more, but Althea denied him that indulgence.
“On one occasion,” she went on, “Stephen refused to remain silent. A four-year-old boy can hold a lot of rage, especially when his own father taunts him for being hungry. He railed at Papa, and Papa—who was perennially drunk—either tripped over him or purposely stomped on his leg. In either case, the result was a child better suited to begging effectively, and Jack Wentworth saw that as an advantage.”
Robbie closed his eyes, which was wise of him. If he renewed his lamentations regarding a condition that had befallen many a hapless soul, one to which no shame or disfigurement ought to attach, Althea would…
She’d do nothing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know your situation is not purely a case of the falling sickness, and you have suffered much.” As has your brother.
Robbie remained quiet for so long she thought he’d gone back to sleep. Seizures apparently left him tired as well as foggy, while Althea was wide awake.
“You refer to your father’s children in the third person,” Robbie said, eyes still closed. “‘They longed for even a stale crust.’ I cannot set my disability at the same distance, my lady. At any moment, I can collapse, shaking on the ground like some helpless, pathetic…Old people still think the falling sickness is the work of demons, while I regard it as a curse.”
Robbie was bedeviled, of a certainty, but the seizures alone were not the problem. “Would you like a drink of water?”
He sat forward. “You do not feel sorry for me.”
“I hope I have a normal complement of compassion for anybody afflicted with difficulties.” Knowing she would leave in the morning, knowing Robbie’s troubles afflicted his brother, their servants, and others outside Rothhaven Hall, Althea’s sympathy for Robbie was tempered with frustration. He could have been a duke, could have had his pick of duchesses, taken his place in the Lords, and made a life outside the Hall, or simply lived in quiet obscurity without creating a whirlpool of intrigue and deception.
Her judgment assumed, though, that the man who’d chosen to remain a stranger to the world years ago had also been the same articulate, intelligent, reasonably fit specimen Althea beheld now.
“My choices seem to be self-pity or self-disgust,” he said. “When I have good days, I exhort myself to do more and be more, and when the good days come along in succession, I start to hope. Hope is a wretched torment. Then another bad day comes, and I’m reduced to…well, you’ve seen the result. I cannot remain upright, I cannot form a complete sentence, and I cannot see past the complicated situation here at the Hall.”
“Are you apologizing, Your Grace? If so, then I think the party deserving of your words is asleep across the corridor.”
His brows rose.
The form of address had been unintentional, though Althea did not regret it. “My brother Quinn wanted no parts of a title. He was willing to die—horribly—to avoid it, but he’d married his Jane, and he had me, Stephen, and Constance to consider. Quinn is defined by the need to not be what Jack Wentworth was. Petty, selfish, ugly inside and out, a creature without morals. Quinn is a competent duke, but only because he’s a spectacularly determined and honorable man. I wish you could meet him.”
Althea missed Quinn, which came as something of a shock. He was significantly older than his half siblings, and in Althea’s childhood, Quinn had always been off trying to earn coin. And yet, he and Althea had had an alliance, she being the oldest of the children forced to remain in Jack’s care. Quinn would slip her the bulk of his pay or leave it in a hiding place she kept secret from Jack.
Quinn had relied on her to shield Stephen and Constance from the worst of Jack’s temper, and he’d always let her know how to reach him. He’d shown her how to protect herself from men bent on mischief and told her quite plainly to protect herself from Jack in the same manner if the need arose.
“Having had the pleasure of meeting Lord Stephen,” Robbie said, “I can only imagine what the Wentworth patriarch must be like. I do fancy a sip of water, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”
Althea passed him the glass as the clock struck three.
“I see the patient is awake.” Nathaniel closed the bedroom door. He wore no coat, only shirtsleeves and waistcoat, but he looked rested and tidy.
“Not much of a patient,” Althea said. “I believe the fever has all but departed, leaving only the restlessness of a man on the mend.”
Robbie handed her back the glass. “We were enjoying the adventures of young Tom Jones. Perhaps you’d like to pick up where her ladyship left off?” His tone was casual, and apparently the seizure was not to be mentioned.
Althea had kept much from Quinn’s notice, unwilling to burden him regarding problems he could not solve. Robbie was clearly intent on the same courtesy where Nathaniel was involved.
“I’ll catch a nap,” she said, “and plan on leaving in the morning.”
“We’ll miss you,” Robbie replied, while Nathaniel said nothing as he took up the book and assumed the seat Althea had vacated.
“Trying to sneak away?” Nathaniel asked.
Althea had her basket over her arm, though now the basket was empty. She opened the door to the walled garden and let a gust of damp, dewy air into the house.
“I thought to get home before anybody is abroad. Robbie is all but recovered, and…”
And there’s nothing for you here. “And you would never impose,” Nathaniel said, “even to ask for an escort onto your own land. Robbie has been snoring peacefully for the past two hours. Let me fetch my cloak.” He waited for her to nod before he left her by the side door.
Althea’s departure should be a relief. She and her rubbishing nosy brother were a disruption, a disturbance in a routine of privacy that had been established for very good reasons. As Robbie lay dozing the night away, Nathaniel had reviewed those reasons and still found them compelling.
Robbie was not well in body or mind, at least some of the time.
Enlightened thinkers attached no stigma to the falling sickness, but much of society remained downright backward about any illness, muttering about tainted blood, curses, and worse. If Althea could be ridiculed for years simply because she had humble origins or held her fan incorrectly, Robbie would face even worse judgment.
And for Nathaniel himself?
He snatched his cloak from a peg in the foyer, grabbed Althea’s straw hat, and trotted back to her side rather than ponder his deserts. What became of him did not matter in the slightest, except that Robbie needed and deserved an ally. The staff needed and deserved guidance.
“You waited,” he said, passing Althea her straw hat.
“The morning has obliged us with a mist. I will not be seen crossing the fields.”
A mist, less than a true fog. “We’d best be going, then.” He did not offer his arm, he did not take her hand. The morning air was brisk, but did nothing to clear his head.
“Robbie had a seizure last night, didn’t he?” Nathaniel said as they crossed the garden.
“Why do you ask?”
Althea was back to being the cool, self-possessed lady he’d met at Lynley Vale, and that was for the best.
“Robbie always sleeps without moving after a fit, and he was too cheerful about Tom Jones’s tiresome behavior.”
They reached the garden gate. Althea opened the door with no assistance from Nathaniel and marched right on through it.
“Was Tom’s behavior tiresome, or was he born into a tiresome society?” Althea rejoined. “When a wealthy squire doesn’t know who his own nephew is, when lawlessness and licentiousness are held up as amusing, when a hanging is supposed to be hilarious…I believe Mr. Fielding must have been a savagely angry man, and rightly so.”
Althea was savagely angry, and rightly so, while Nathaniel was…annoyed, but resigned. He’d been annoyed but resigned for so long the habit fit him like old boots.
“Things have changed some since Fielding’s day,” Nathaniel said. Outside the garden, the mist was thinning. Althea’s decision to depart early had been wise and considerate, though some small, selfish part of Nathaniel wanted to carry her back into the Hall and beg her to bide there just a little bit longer.
Never, ever beg. What fool had said that? “What will you do with yourself today, Althea?”
She slanted a glance at him, half-amused, half-exasperated. “I will be interrogated by Stephen and Milly, and refuse them any information relating to you, Robbie, or the Hall. How much did you tell Stephen?”
“The basics. Robbie was and is in no fit state to be the duke, his death was believed genuine because my father made it seem so, the situation is in hand provided…”
Provided nothing ever changed. Annoyance acquired an edge of despair.
“I will probably spend the day going over my books,” Althea said. “I will hear the latest family news from Stephen, and I will take a nap.”
