A duke by any other name, p.23
A Duke by Any Other Name, page 23
He and Treegum hadn’t both been away from the Hall at the same time since.
“Perhaps the vicar has marital aspirations,” Robbie said. “A spot of the ready would improve his options.”
“He’s quite comfortably well-off.” Which should have been a relief, but then, the vicar was also quite single and a perfectly charming man, damn the luck.
Robbie smacked Nathaniel on the arm. “Vicars don’t offer for the sisters of dukes.”
“Vicars are considered gentlemen, and our vicar has well-placed connections in Denmark.” Very well placed. “What shall we do about questioning Soames?”
“He was in failing health, last I heard, and his missus has already gone to her reward—or her punishment. The last patient left the estate years ago.”
Robbie was withholding details, but that he had kept an eye on his former jailer should not have surprised Nathaniel.
“How do you know this?”
“The old duke was forever prying and spying, Nathaniel.” Robbie took up his tea. “You were the son spared the weight of the titleholder’s worst stratagems. Papa believed that knowledge was power, and he acquired knowledge about the neighbors, his parliamentary foes, and his employees while appearing to keep himself aloof from one and all. I have had the leisure to read his diaries, and you would be appalled at the extent of his intelligence gathering.”
“You need not elaborate. A man who will have his own son declared dead is an affront to decency. Will you accompany me to call on Soames?”
The question was mostly rhetorical, and something of a courtesy. Robbie was the damned duke, whether the world knew him as such or not, and he was also best positioned to question a doctor who’d grown rich off polite society’s secrets.
“Nathaniel…” Robbie rose and strolled the walk, hands in his pockets. “I want to go with you. I want to ride about the moors as you do, I want to attend the assemblies if only to stand around swilling bad punch and speaking too loudly to the dowagers. I want…”
He wanted a normal life, as did Nathaniel. “You are making progress, Robbie. You walked down to the river for six months without a mishap.”
Robbie slanted a glance at Nathaniel over his shoulder. “Then I had a spectacular mishap, one might even say a near disaster. If Lady Althea hadn’t happened along…”
“The staff would have eventually said something.” Nathaniel hoped they would. He’d been ready to sack the lot of them for their torn loyalties, though.
“Eventually? Just as you eventually found me among Soames’s collection of cast-off heirs and genteel oddities? What if you’d shrugged at the stray invoice from a remote establishment out on the moors, Nathaniel? What if, like Treegum, you had assumed Papa simply supported a charity and you decided you’d keep up the tradition?”
“What if you’d never fallen from your horse?” Nathaniel hadn’t posed the question aloud before, but both he and Robbie had doubtless wondered the same thing.
“I’m quits with the jaunts to the river,” Robbie said, resuming his place on the bench. “Interesting experiment, but it did not end well.”
A month ago, even a few days ago, Nathaniel would have agreed. He’d seen Althea Wentworth march away, though, never to return, and something or somebody at Rothhaven Hall needed to change.
“You appear to be hale and whole. While I grant you that wandering alone near water was a risk, anybody can turn an ankle when enjoying the countryside. Next time take a cane and don’t go so close to the water. Lady Althea owns the land, and she will see to it that you can wander in solitude.”
Robbie dumped the remainder of his tea into the crushed shells of the walkway. “I think not. I’ve begun reading the correspondence, Nathaniel. You go through it, make notes for Treegum, then set it aside. I can’t step into your shoes, but I can try to lighten your load or at least remain informed. I’m not spying on you.”
“We live in each other’s pockets, Robbie. If you’d like to take over the correspondence, please do. I bloody hate it.” Most of all, Nathaniel hated the regular reports to their mother, though another report was in order.
“You’ve been pre-occupied these past two days, so while you were seeing Lady Althea home, I went through the mail on your desk.”
Nathaniel’s pleasure at Robbie’s initiative was tempered by experience. Robbie was bored, and correspondence would soon lose its novelty. Three months from now, this interest in estate business might well fade or be supplemented by some other “experiment.”
“Did you find anything requiring a ducal signature?”
“I can match your signature easily, but no. I did, though, find another threatening note.”
“Splendid.” How could such a pretty morning hold so much disappointment and botheration? “Immediately after breakfast, I’m off to interview Soames.” Come with me. Nathaniel had already asked, he would not ask again.
“Let me know what you find.” Robbie shook the last drops from his empty mug and headed back to the terrace. He paused on the steps. “I know you deserve more from me, Nathaniel. I don’t know if I’m capable of more.”
He continued into the house without giving Nathaniel a chance to reply.
“I have had the most extraordinary week.” Phoebe made that announcement before Elspeth Weatherby could launch into a recounting of the same gossip Elspeth had shared last week.
And the week before.
Elspeth was not the brightest soul, nor was she welcome in exalted circles—her father had been a mere baron—but she did like to chatter, bless her, and Phoebe had known Elspeth would be making her weekly visit to the village subscription library on Wednesday afternoon.
“Extraordinary, my lady? I heard that your Sybil took Lord Ellenbrook to pay a call on Lady Althea Wentworth. Very gracious of your dear niece, when Lady Althea is such an unknown quantity.”
“Not unknown, my friend.” Phoebe leaned closer, though other than Elspeth, only deaf old Mrs. Peabody occupied the library. “Lady Althea is unaccepted.”
“But Lady Althea goes to Town every spring, and I have it on very good authority that she’s invited everywhere. I have been meaning to call on her, truly I have, especially now that her brother is biding with her.”
Elspeth had two daughters of marriageable age. Of course she’d be inspired to call on Lord Stephen Wentworth when she’d never bothered to more than greet Lady Althea in the churchyard.
“Let’s take a turn on the green, Elspeth.”
Elspeth tossed her book into the returns box. “Such lovely weather today, it would be a shame not to take the air.”
True enough. The village was finally donning spring finery, to the best of its hopelessly rural ability. The window boxes overflowed with heartsease and the walkways were lined with tulips. The row of four giant oaks down the middle of the green was leafing out from the pinkish stage into the luminous hue of new apples.
“Such a pretty time of year,” Elspeth said, linking arms with Phoebe. “And I hope your week was extraordinary in a good way, my lady.”
“Sybil is getting on very well with Lord Ellenbrook. I would not say they are smitten, you understand, but then, young people today are so serious.”
“Lord Ellenbrook seems a most agreeable gentleman.”
“You should invite him and Sybil to dine, Elspeth.” The more a young man was treated as half of a couple, the more he imagined himself as such. “Your girls would find him delightful and Sybil needs the company of other wellborn young ladies.”
“Was that why she called on Lady Althea? She’s growing lonely? Yorkshire is lovely, but it’s not London.”
Elspeth had had a London Season, though her girls had not as yet. Mr. Solomon Weatherby was a wealthy, much-respected solicitor who had the ear of many an influential family, but his choice of profession meant neither he nor his offspring could be presented at court.
Such a pity. Phoebe’s own husband was a solicitor as well, which situation had its consolations, meager though such consolations were.
“Your comment,” Phoebe said, as they rounded the end of the green across from the church, “raises the question of why Lady Althea did not fly south to London as she usually does. I have made inquiries.”
“Inquiries? Do tell.”
The curate waved to them from the church steps. He was a frightfully friendly young man, much in need of the civilizing influence of a wife. As with most curates, he could not afford a wife, alas.
“Like you,” Phoebe said, “I found it curious that the sister of a duke would choose to bide here in dreary old Yorkshire when she’s welcome in Mayfair, but Elspeth, I am shocked to report to you that Lady Althea did not take. Rather spectacularly.”
Phoebe managed to inject a note of dismay into her tone, as if London had no business turning up its nose at Yorkshire aristocracy.
“Society can be so unfair,” Elspeth replied, “though sometimes, society’s censure is warranted.” A touch of hope colored that last observation.
“I am told Lady Althea’s behavior in London has been above reproach, but the poor woman is simply not suited to genteel entertainments. She’s clumsy, she laughs too loudly, she has no grace with the fan, glove, or parasol, and her dancing has an unnatural quality of enthusiasm.”
Phoebe had made up that last part, though what was clumsiness, besides ungainly enthusiasm? Apparently Phoebe wasn’t the only hostess to consider a judiciously spilled beverage appropriate in Lady Althea’s case.
“We cannot all be paragons,” Elspeth observed as they passed the blacksmith’s shop. The acrid stink of the forge was unavoidable, but must every idle male in the shire stand about chattering and smoking the afternoon away? Several of them touched their hat brims as Phoebe and Elspeth passed, and Elspeth nodded at them in response.
We cannot all be paragons, indeed. “I am inclined to believe that Lady Althea simply met with the natural reception society reserves for the less genteelly reared. She might be a duke’s sister now, but her upbringing was most unfortunate.”
“So I’ve heard,” Elspeth said, “and yet, you won’t see me snubbing a ducal family. Mr. Weatherby would say they have a way of snubbing you back at the worst moments.”
“Elspeth, I applaud your pragmatism and know you to be the most charitable of women besides. An awkward fit with London society alone should not see a woman judged harshly here in the shires, but then I happened to glimpse Lady Althea on my way home from York the other morning.”
“Was she out riding with Lord Stephen? I’ve heard he manages quite well in the saddle despite his infirmity.”
“She was on foot, walking along the wall where her land marches with Rothhaven’s.” Phoebe waited until they were well past the smithy. “She was not alone, Elspeth, and the sun was barely up.”
“She has a companion, a perfectly agreeable woman. I’ve traded recipes with her. Millicent—”
“Lady Althea was with a man, and they exchanged a most shocking embrace.”
Elspeth came to a dead stop. “A man? There aren’t any men on that side of the village. There’s Rothhaven Hall and then the moors. I suppose Vicar’s hikes can take him out that direction, but he’s getting past the shocking-embrace years.”
“Does it matter who the fellow was? Lady Althea is an unmarried woman old enough to know better. She’s attempting to gain acceptance in local society, and she acts like that, in full view of the road. I can only imagine that such untoward behavior is why London society did not warm to her.”
“You didn’t get any sort of look at the fellow?”
“He was tall, attired all in black, and he strode away in the direction of Rothhaven Hall.” Phoebe gazed off across the green, doing her best to look puzzled beyond all vexation. “I haven’t any idea who he might be.”
Elspeth patted her arm. “Then you are a hopeless gudgeon, my friend. I know of one man who exclusively wears black, who’s abroad only at dawn and dusk, and who would dare cross Rothhaven land, and that is the duke himself.”
Dear Elspeth. Dear, reliable Elspeth. “Elspeth Weatherby, that is simply not possible.”
“Rothhaven threatens to bring trespassing charges against anybody who sets foot on his property, and he’s tall. He wears black, and you of all people know how little regard a randy duke has for propriety, particularly a randy Duke of Rothhaven. Like father, like son, don’t they say?”
Phoebe resumed walking, her pique genuine. “Mind your tongue, Elspeth.”
“I don’t mean to be unkind,” Elspeth said, falling in step beside her. “I’m simply presenting the relevant evidence. You saw His Grace of Rothhaven in a shocking embrace with Lady Althea Wentworth, and at a scandalously early hour. You must say nothing about this, of course, except perhaps to seek Vicar’s guidance on the matter after you’ve searched your conscience thoroughly. A young woman’s reputation hangs in the balance and her older brother isn’t on hand to curb her reckless impulses.”
What Elspeth meant was, Phoebe should keep this vignette to herself so Elspeth could spread the tale first.
“I hadn’t thought to bring the matter to Vicar’s attention.”
“I believe you must. Lady Althea has no one to counsel her, and she’s likely unaware of the example the late duke set for his son. Vicar can have a word with Lord Stephen if he’s not inclined to confront her ladyship directly.”
Their circuit of the green was nearly complete, and Phoebe’s objective all but accomplished. “You are so sensible, Elspeth, and I am so glad we ran into each other. You will invite Ellenbrook to dine, won’t you?”
“Of course. Friday suits. I’ll send over an invitation.”
“And do include Sybil. She would love to see your girls.”
“Yes, Sybil too. I must be off. No rest for the weary! Please give my regards to Vicar.”
“Certainly, my dear. Certainly.”
Elspeth bustled away to her pony cart, while Phoebe considered the relative merits of consulting with Vicar Sorenson sooner rather than later. If she didn’t apprise the vicar of what she’d seen, Elspeth would eventually mention it, and then Vicar’s reaction to the situation would be harder to gauge.
“No time like the present,” Phoebe muttered, turning her steps once again toward the church.
“You plan to eradicate poverty from Yorkshire with an army of piglets,” Vicar Sorenson said. “Now you make a foe of illiteracy as well. Might I have another cup?”
He’d asked Althea to pour out, though she suspected he was trying to distract her from the purpose for her call. Pietr Sorenson had a friendly gaze and quietly charming ways, but he was nonetheless shrewd. She obliged and topped up her own cup.
“Illiteracy is a formidable enemy, Vicar. I’ve seen its ravages firsthand.”
He accepted his tea, his fingers brushing hers, though he appeared not to notice. “Did you come late to your letters?”
“I was eight years old before an elderly woman who lived in our alley took it upon herself to teach me the rudiments. I picked up the rest myself and passed along what I knew to my younger siblings. A child who can read is…”
Vicar sipped his tea, apparently content to let the silence expand to the proportions of the Yorkshire sky over the moors.
“A child who can read has a skill others will pay her for,” Althea said. “She can learn to linger at the door of the posting inn when the mail arrives and offer to read letters for those whose eyesight is dim or who haven’t the ability to read. She need not beg for spare pennies.”
“I see.”
Althea rose because she need not sit like a penitent at confession either. Nathaniel had taught her that.
“You do not see. The present Duke of Walden came late to his letters, as you put it. A cousin who was a teacher eventually instructed him, though by then my brother was in domestic service. His Grace learned to read and write with the same ferocious tenacity he brings to everything, but his lack of education has always bedeviled him. Walden escaped a life in livery only because he’d become literate, and because even a boy who can’t read can become highly proficient with numbers.”
Quinn also had a gargantuan memory, which Cousin Duncan, who had taught him to read, said was typical of the illiterate. Unable to record any part of life in written form, they carried it in their heads instead.
“So you want to open circulating schools,” Vicar said, sipping his tea with all the complacence of a dowager at her tatting.
“If half of Wales can learn to read because of the tenacity of one preacher, certainly I can take on a few of York’s worst alleys.” This compulsion to do something, to engage the world constructively, had grown since Althea had turned her back on Nathaniel nearly a week ago. She’d forbidden herself to walk by the river at any hour, and she’d closed all the curtains on the windows that looked out on Rothhaven land.
She’d even let Milly and Stephen talk her into planning a ball, of all the demented notions, but her interest in entertaining, in anything social whatsoever, had sunk to a new nadir. Her energies were absorbed in grieving a future with Nathaniel that could never be. Finding a distraction from that sorrow had grown imperative.
“I will speak to my colleagues in York,” Vicar said. “Give me a fortnight. How do you fare otherwise, my lady?”
What was he asking?
“You look surprised at the question,” he said, setting his teacup aside. “I am more than just a brilliant biblical orator, you know, more than the agreeable fellow to make up the numbers at Squire Annen’s dinners.” His tone was humorous rather than bitter. “I am your neighbor, and I know that you’ve chosen to bide at Lynley Vale rather than join your family in London this spring. I suspect that’s why Lord Stephen has troubled himself to visit. He’s worried about you, as others might be.”
Others, meaning Pietr Sorenson?
“I am well.” Except for a severe case of heartache. “Stephen’s company enlivens life at Lynley Vale, though he’s a younger brother.” Or he used to be. Now he was a gentleman of independent means and a very independent nature. Althea could no longer guess his thoughts, just as she could no longer carry him piggyback through the backstreets of York.
