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I will cheerfully give you the rest of my life.Nathaniel didn’t say that, but somehow, he’d find a way to convey his sentiments to Althea before this night ended.
She glided away on a rustle of silk and disappeared behind the privacy screen. “What does your father’s situation have to do with you—and Robert—attending my ball?”
Nathaniel joined her behind the screen and took a few hairpins from her hand. “Papa regarded periodic seizures as a reason to shut his heir away, which resulted in Robert acquiring more complicated problems than the occasional staring spell or shaking fit. Papa did not shut himself away, though. The former duke voted his seat from time to time despite his infirmity. He rode to hounds, he had affairs and children, and the whole ducal bit. I pointed this out to my brother, knowing Robert has ever had a competitive streak.”
Althea’s coiffure was a complicated arrangement of several braids, the lot of it secured with scores of pins.
“Robert is not about to be out-duked by a man long dead,” Nathaniel went on. “The matter will require time and determination, but when I challenged Robert to attend a neighborhood ball with me and Mama as a first step, he allowed himself to be persuaded—particularly because I told him I’d go with or without him, and I’d go as Lord Nathaniel Rothmere. I promised my brother I’d play the duke as long as he needed me to, not as long he fancied to putter in his garden. How did you stand all these pins? They cannot have been comfortable.”
“How did you stand to walk into a ballroom full of people who have long believed you to be the duke? What of the deception, Nathaniel? Who are you now, and what made you change your mind?”
In the mirror over the washstand, Althea regarded him steadily. This question was doubtless the reason she’d allowed him to bear her company at such an hour, the reason he was not hiking home across the fields—yet.
“The deception is not entirely over.”
Her shoulders sagged. “Then this conversation must be. I will not hide away—”
“Please hear me out. You once asked me to at least listen to a recounting of your situation, and I did you that courtesy. Cousin Sarah gave me a means to reconsider what you call the deception and I call the most well-intended, ill-fated series of unfortunate blunders a family could make.”
Althea moved away from him and shimmied out of her dress. Her stays tied in front, and she wiggled out of those next.
Was she trying to drive him mad?
“Who is Cousin Sarah?” she asked, slipping into a blue velvet dressing gown and taking a seat on her vanity stool.
“I hardly know, when you disrobe so casually.”
That earned him a small, feminine smile. “I am exhausted, Nathaniel, and you are stalling.” She untied the ribbons securing her braids, while Nathaniel flailed about, trying to recall what in blazes—
Ah, yes.“Cousin Sarah is my mother’s companion, and as it happens, the previous duke considered courting her. She learned of his malady, and he swiveled his gunsights to Mama. Both women were well dowered, having had the good sense to claim a wealthy grandfather among their antecedents. I could brush your hair for you.”
Althea was winnowing her fingers through her unbound hair, erasing the evidence of the various braids and creating a riot of dark, cascading curls.
“If you don’t finish this tale in the next five minutes, I will have my brothers toss you from the premises. I am weary, I am confused, and I want more than a waltz to scotch the neighbors’ gossip. I refuse to accommodate any deception that paints me as merely your friendly neighbor or your, your”—she waved a hand toward the bed. “I am done with compromises and fictions and contorting myself for the approval of others. Finish your tale.”
She was right to insist on a clearing of the air. Entirely right. Also entirely luscious. “You were magnificent tonight, you know. Lady Phoebe was making a serious mistake. I could see you preparing to deliver her the cut direct.”
“I was preparing to do no such thing. To deliver even that setdown would have been to imply that her games deserved my notice. Tell me how you mean to go on with Robert. He still has the falling sickness and he was still declared dead at one point.”
“As to that, Cousin Sarah, like the rest of polite society, believed Robert dead. That’s what Papa wanted them to believe, that’s what both Mama and I believed for a time. Cousin Sarah came upon Robert in the walled garden, knew him instantly for who he was, and promptly went into strong hysterics.”
“Oh, dear.” Another hint of a smile. “How did Robert deal with that?”
“He was dismayed, I suppose, while Sarah was overjoyed. Lazarus risen from the dead did not meet with more sincere jubilation, and she assumed Robert had only recently rejoined the household at the Hall.”
Althea took up a length of blue silk ribbon, then passed it to him and turned on the vanity stool to once again present Nathaniel with her back. “Why did she assume that?”
“Because it makes sense.” He gathered Althea’s hair into one thick skein. “Am I supposed to braid all of this?”
“Loosely. Sarah assumed that if you’d known Robert was alive, you would not have taken his place as duke. So where does she think Robert has been for the past five years?”
“She assumed he was enjoying a quiet, isolated existence unaware that he was needed at the family seat.” He divided Althea’s hair into three sections and began the braiding.
“We told her the truth,” he went on, “but the crux of the matter becomes the death certificate and the old duke’s deception. Fortunately, the doctor housing Robert for all those years has recently signed an affidavit attesting to the fact that the ducal heir was well known to him and was very much alive at the time of the funeral, though afflicted with a mild case of the falling sickness. Very fortunately, we are still within the seven years when missing heirs can come forward.”
“Butyouknew Robert was alive for the past five years.”
“Therein lies the difficult part, the part that will require some creativity.”
