A duke by any other name, p.27
A Duke by Any Other Name, page 27
Nathaniel stared out across an empty garden to the moors beyond. In the westering sun, the land appeared to undulate into an endless distance, as vast and unforgiving as the sea.
“And exactly why, my lady, would I work so hard to destroy the walls of privacy I’ve spent years fortifying?”
“Because your mother’s visit is an opportunity to make changes that are long overdue, in the first place, and because people who love us need to know that we’re faring well, in the second. Conduct your affairs as usual, present a bleak and cheerless picture of life at Rothhaven Hall, and your mother will banish herself here with her sons.”
Dark brows drew down. “I don’t want that. I remain at Rothhaven so that she need not. She was party to an unhappy marriage for nearly twenty-five years. She deserves her freedom, and besides, she cannot bide here. Her old friends and London acquaintances would flock to her doorstep, and she knows that will not serve.”
No true duke had ever been more stubborn. “What will not serve is for you and your brother to live in perpetual fear of discovery. Robbie is sane enough, you will never abandon him in any case, and you have all paid dearly for the mistakes of a man long dead.”
Nathaniel faced her, the sun casting half of his profile in shadow, the other half in the golden light of dusk.
“Robbie’s sanity will matter little. The first time he has a staring spell at a social gathering, the rumors will start, and Lady Phoebe and her ilk will soon paint him to be a raving lunatic. I won’t even be allowed to preserve the estate for his progeny, and a madman isn’t permitted to marry. Robbie will become a prisoner again, and the staff who has been so loyal to us will be scattered to the charity of their families. Mama will die of shame, and that will be a mercy.”
Nathaniel’s logic, so relentless, so convincingly grounded in both law and experience, had a flaw. What he said was true, but it was not the whole truth or even the most important part of the truth.
“You are all prisoners now,” Althea said, the truest thing she knew. “You admit this yourself. Your life is a falsehood. Robbie is doing his best to remain erased, your mother has gone for years without laying eyes on the only people who mean anything to her. Neither you nor Robbie can marry under the present arrangement, and the staff cannot be easily replaced. Is that really an existence worth defending?”
Nathaniel either could not or would not look at her. “It’s all we have, and it’s a damned sight better than the life Robbie endured for more than ten years. I think you should go.”
Althea slipped an arm around his waist, which was like hugging a four-hundred-year-old oak. “I think you should come to my ball. Bring your mother, cast the cut direct at anybody who looks askance at you. You’ve had plenty of practice. It’s time, Nathaniel.”
“Somebody knows, Althea.” Said quietly, wearily. “You are forgetting that somebody knows Robbie bides at the Hall, and that same somebody has threatened repeatedly to reveal the truth. Robbie has considered setting up a household on the Continent, but he doesn’t want to go, and I cannot…He would not fare well. His French is limited. He’d need servants he could trust, and those are in short supply even in England.”
“You cannot imagine banishing him,” Althea retorted, “so you and he both remain at the Hall, prisoners to a past not of your making. You remind me of myself, accepting any social slight, tolerating any cruelty, in hopes that someday I can make even a smidgen of peace with the people who should show me every courtesy.” Telling Nathaniel that was probably unkind, but kindness without honesty was for aged invalids and frightened children.
“Althea, don’t say that. You will have what you deserve, provided we give Lady Phoebe no more fodder for slander.” Nathaniel’s arms stole around her, as if he’d physically shelter her from the prying eyes of the world.
“Lady Phoebe doesn’t know exactly who or what she saw,” Althea said, snuggling close, “and I for one no longer care for her good opinion.”
“You must care. The life you deserve, of contentment and tranquility with children to love, cannot be yours unless you do care.”
Not a single sconce had been lit in the house, and thus as the sun set, the shadows in the library lengthened and deepened.
“I thought I wanted that, Nathaniel, an obscure little slice of peace and joy. I was raised to want that, to crave it and long for it, but safety and domesticity are not enough. You and Robbie have both, and both of you are unhappy. Striving for happiness takes courage. If I’m to be brave—and I am brave—I will no longer waste my time dodging Lady Phoebe’s poison darts. I have better uses for my determination and valor.”
Valor was not a word women typically used, but why not? Why not refer to childbed as a place of valor when a woman was as likely to die there as a soldier in Wellington’s army was likely to die in battle? Why not refer to taking marriage vows, which robbed a woman of her legal personhood, as an act of valor?
“Althea…” Nathaniel stepped back. “You must be careful. Promise me.”
“I have been careful. I have been careful, and wary, and timid. What has it earned me but ruined dresses, torn hems, gossip, and loneliness?”
Nathaniel took her hand, enfolding it in both of his. “I know how tempting it is to gallop headlong across the moors, Althea, but even I, on my worst days, know to ride the beaten paths. The bogs are treacherous and they have claimed many a precious life. Promise me you will observe at least that much caution.”
“Come to my ball, Nathaniel. I want to waltz with you before all the goggling squires and gossiping tabbies. I want to introduce you to my older brother and his duchess. I want to meet your mother and watch as Stephen and Robbie befriend each other.”
A low blow to point out that Robbie had no friends, also an obvious truth.
“Don’t do this,” Nathaniel said. “Please, please, don’t be rash and foolish and make a mistake from which there is no recovering. The rest of your life—”
Althea kissed him, which was neither rash nor foolish, though neither was it wise.
“Don’t beg, Nathaniel—never beg, you said—for my mind is made up. Come to the ball. Come by yourself or bring your mother, but know that I will save my supper waltz for you and you alone.”
She eased away from him and strode out through the front door, not even pausing to collect her hat.
“How comes the dower house?” Robbie asked, sprinkling salt on his roast beef.
“The maids have waged war on the dust,” Nathaniel said, sawing away at his steak. “The footmen have aired every room and beaten every carpet. It’s clean enough.” But not welcoming, not cozy. Althea had seen that in the first instant, recognized it for a strategy, and known what to do about it.
“You are worried about Mama’s visit.”
Nathaniel gave up on the overcooked insult to cuisine lying on his plate and put down his fork and knife. “Change should worry us both.”
“The staff will be discreet.” Robbie never drank more than the single glass of claret necessary to wash down Cook’s roasts, but his wine was nearly gone while his plate remained full.
Robbie was worried too.
Nathaniel filled his brother’s glass halfway. “The staff at the dower house has been augmented by a pair of village women suggested by Vicar Sorenson. That in itself is a risk. Cousin Sarah might not be content to bide over the rise. She’ll want to see the Hall, and God help us if Thatcher should cross paths with her or the new maids. If Mama goes to services, that will cause talk, and if she does not go to services, that will cause more talk.”
Robbie sat back, clearly defeated by the steak. “You are brooding about Lady Althea, aren’t you? That’s what this mood is about.”
Everything was about Lady Althea. The sunset, the scent of cherry blossoms, the aching loneliness that welled from places inside Nathaniel he’d sealed up years ago. She’d stirred in him a longing for the impossible: babies, contented evenings reading with his wife by the fire, calls upon the neighbors, and an occasional pint at the posting inn with a local squire or two.
Althea could still have the feminine version of that domestic bliss, but she threatened to toss it all aside—and for what? A petty war with an even pettier society.
“Lady Althea and I have bid each other farewell.”
“Do you suppose she’s the one who’s been sending us threatening notes?”
Robbie had an ability to think on a problem until it lay in tiny pieces at his figurative feet. Of course he would fixate on the notes.
“My candidate is Lady Phoebe. She has a family connection to us and thus might have spies among the staff. The notes were sent locally and were written by an educated hand. Lady Phoebe meets both criteria and has a motive for bringing shame on this house.”
Robbie took another bite of his mashed potatoes, which even Cook could not render inedible. “But we can similarly bring shame upon her. A word here or there about Miss Price’s antecedents, and old gossip finds new life.”
“We are gentlemen. We would never speak ill of a lady, much less of our half sister.” Another half sister had been born to the wife of a viscount down in Leeds.
Robbie considered a forkful of potatoes. “What could Papa have been thinking?”
“Perhaps he was lonely.”
Robbie looked up from his plate. “You are lonely. I suspect I am too, but the condition has become my natural state. I have been wondering, Nathaniel, if it might be time for me to die again.”
Nathaniel’s wine went sour in his belly. “Don’t talk nonsense. You have made enormous progress lately and if you were anybody but a duke, you’d simply become like the relation who went off to war and came back somewhat the worse for the experience. None of this skulking about, secrecy, and threatening the village children would have been necessary.”
“What a flattering analogy,” Robbie replied, “though the only war I fought was to maintain my sanity. Mind you, I am not proposing to take my own life, but I was pronounced dead once. Why not simply pronounce me dead again, in a manner that convinces the staff I am well and truly expired, and then you can set aside all the whatnot and marry Lady Althea.”
The idea was preposterous and demanded sacrifices of Robbie that Nathaniel could never ask. “Assuming the invalidity of a marriage undertaken under a false identity is never raised—though eventually, it would be—what becomes of you?”
“I go back out on the moors,” Robbie said, casually voicing his worst fear. “I suspect that’s why I’ve dreaded them so. I always knew they would reclaim me. This time I can be Mr. Smith, an eccentric gentleman who made his fortune in trade. Perhaps Scotland should be my home.”
Robbie had made a fortune in trade, indirectly. Several fortunes that would likely end up reverting to the Crown, of all the damned injustices.
“Have you located a property already? Contacted a hiring agency? Determined how you will explain this scheme to the mother who has waited years to see you again?”
Robbie stopped playing with his potatoes. “We have had five good years, Nathaniel, and I thank you for them, but you must marry, or what have those years been for? Lady Althea is up to your weight socially, she’s smitten, and so are you. For God’s sake, you cannot turn your back on an opportunity like that simply to keep me puttering in Yorkshire’s largest walled garden. We will both go mad in truth.”
For the past several years, Nathaniel had comforted himself with the belief that as long as he worried for his sanity, he was likely of sound mind. The notion no longer quelled his anxieties.
“You saw her ladyship’s invitation,” he said. Robbie was conscientiously handling the correspondence, as he’d said he would. Nathaniel should have been relieved to be free of the tedium, but instead he worried that his brother had taken on an unnecessary burden.
“Thatcher put the invitation on the top of the stack. Of course I saw it.”
“And you think I should attend her ball? I have so far not publicly held myself out as His Grace of Rothhaven, not since discovering you lived. I ride around on Loki, I sign correspondence with a signature that’s identical to yours, but I never claim to be Rothhaven.” Which was likely of no legal significance when Nathaniel tacitly encouraged everybody to assume he was still the duke. “If I attend that ball, there is no turning back, Robbie. No pretending I was unaware my own brother was declared dead in error.”
Robbie rose, the flickering sconces bringing out his resemblance to their late father. “If you refuse to go, if you refuse to let me wander away to a life of quiet obscurity on the moors, then you will have become worse than our father. You will have incarcerated both of us, rather than only me. I can adjust to the notion of being Mr. Smith. I’ll hire a pretty, friendly housekeeper, and content myself with reading, music, and tending a walled garden. You and I will correspond as you and Mama do, and you will marry Lady Althea. Compared to what I endured previously, that is a lovely little existence.”
A thousand retorts sprang to Nathaniel’s mind: At the first seizure, Robbie’s staff would flee. They’d steal him blind in the hours when he was groggy and muddled after a fit. They’d gossip about him and start talk that he was deranged. They’d determine who he truly was and do worse than send threatening notes.
“A plain Mr. Smith who doesn’t get out much,” Robbie said, “can suffer the falling sickness with much less drama than can a duke who’s afraid of the open moors, Nathaniel. It’s time to move on to the next phase of the deception.”
Nathaniel remained seated, weary in body and spirit. “I cannot protect you if you attempt this new charade, and I will never be the duke in truth.”
“She loves you, Nathaniel, and I love you. I’ve lived in obscurity for most of my life. I’m used to it. Plase say you will consider my suggestion.”
This wasn’t a suggestion. Robbie’s proposal was an abdication of hope.
“At least, Robbie, while you’ve been here at the Hall, you have been who you know yourself to be. The staff and I recognize you for the firstborn Rothmere son, and you need never pretend otherwise. Leave here, and you must perpetrate a fiction that grows heavier and more complicated with time. I know of what I speak, and I advise you to reconsider.”
“My thanks for your opinion.” Spoken with all the gracious forbearance of a very patient and determined duke.
Robbie finished his wine and left, and Nathaniel had never—never in all the years of managing a vast falsehood, never even when he’d believed Robbie dead—felt so alone or so angry.
“Perhaps we ought to send Lady Althea our regrets,” Elspeth said, emptying the basket before her and rearranging the sacking in the bottom so it didn’t show above the wicker sides. “If we pretend we don’t know of Lady Althea’s wanton acts, we are tacitly approving of them. Why are we giving the poor perfectly good sacks?”
The sacking, as Phoebe well knew, was intended to make the baskets look fuller without adding strain to a donor’s generosity.
“Everybody needs a sack on market day.” Phoebe tied a short length of twine around a small bundle of dried lavender. The string wasn’t quite long enough to fashion a bow, but then, the poor did not need bows. Being poor and without much coin, they probably didn’t need sacks on market day either.
Thank heavens one could pray that the poor developed the fortitude their unfortunate circumstances so often required.
“I am glad you have given the matter of Lady Althea’s ball some thought, Elspeth, for I confess the very question you raise has vexed me exceedingly. You need lavender for your basket.”
“Why do the poor need a lavender sachet?” Elspeth asked.
Not even a sachet, for sachets required cloth or lace. “To keep bugs away from their hovels, I suppose.” Then too, every proper squire’s garden had a lavender border, so the pile of dried flowers had been free. “I fear if we decline Lady Althea’s invitation, Their Graces of Walden will learn of it.”
Elspeth put together a spray of lavender from the bundle in the center of the table. The church assembly room was the best place for the charitable task of putting together poor baskets—dried lavender could make quite a mess—though the chairs were exceedingly hard.
“Their Graces of Walden are only the nominal host and hostess,” Elspeth said. “I can’t believe they will trek all the way up to Yorkshire to watch a bunch of yokels hop about in evening clothes and swill punch until the moon sets. Pass me the twine.”
Phoebe obliged and paged through the improving tract that was also being gifted to the unfortunates of the parish. In lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than themselves…With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love.…Holy Scripture offered such comforting words.
“Their Graces of Walden have left London,” Phoebe said, “and the talk is, they are journeying north, not that our decision should rest on whether your daughters or my niece have an opportunity to stand up with a duke. We must be guided by conscience. Not so much lavender, Elspeth. We have eight baskets to fill.”
And any left over would go home with Phoebe for use in her linen closets.
“Conscience says we decline the invitation of a woman with loose morals,” Elspeth replied. “My girls will be disappointed if we don’t go, but they understand the need to safeguard their reputations. Is this too much lavender?”
“A bit less.” Phoebe stashed the tract into the nearest basket. “I believe duty compels us to attend Lady Althea’s ball, much as the prospect troubles me. These are rather large jars of marmalade.”
Pandora Biddle was as generous with her marmalade as she was sparing with the sugar her recipe called for. The stuff was downright bitter, which might be why nearly every manor in the shire had donated a jar, minus Pandora’s Christmas label.
“The poor have too many children,” Elspeth said. “They need large jars or there won’t be enough marmalade to go around. I would like to see the ballroom at Lynley Vale, and that nice Lord Stephen was ever so gracious to my girls in the churchyard. He barely limps at all, though I doubt he dances. It’s not his fault his sister is a strumpet.”
