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Constance bent down and hugged Althea about the shoulders. “I looked him up in Debrett’s. He’s the nearest lofty peer to either of our properties, and I was surprised that he hasn’t married. An older brother died before succeeding to the title, and I couldn’t find any cousins. My housekeeper, who knows everything about everybody, doesn’t think the current dukehasan heir. All very odd.”
She straightened and drained the last of Althea’s drink. “Your sows have to be the most valuable pigs in all of Yorkshire. Have they ever escaped before?”
“They didn’t escape. I was curious about Rothhaven and did what was necessary to inspire him to pay a call. I doubt he’ll call again.” And that was disappointing. Very disappointing.
“His loss,” Constance said. “I’ll make your excuses to Quinn and Jane, but don’t be surprised if they dispatch Stephen to look in on you.”
“Forewarned and all that.” Stephen was a good brother. He’d ride over Althea’s tenancies with her, flirt with the squires’ daughters, and threaten to install another lift in some corner of Lynley Vale that had managed splendidly without a lift for three hundred years.
Then he’d be on his way, and neither meddle nor bear tales.
“Are you coming in?” Constance said. “The night grows downright nippy.”
“Soon. Pleasant dreams.”
“Why doesn’t a personable, relatively young, unmarried duke have a duchess, Althea? Why does he tear about the shire on horseback at odd hours as if the excisemen are after him? That cannot be a happy existence.”
“No, it cannot, but that is what he has chosen, and his neighbors respect his choice.”
Constance retreated indoors and the silence deepened, save for the sound of hoofbeats fading in the darkness.
“The time has come to separate the irises.” Robbie made that announcement as if it portended marching armies and deposed kings.
“I thought separating irises was an autumn activity,” Nathaniel replied, spooning overcooked eggs onto a plate.
“Early spring works too. It is still early spring, isn’t it?”
A man who seldom went out of doors in the winter months had little sense of the advancing season. “We’re weeks away from our last frost, so yes, I’d say early spring yet reigns. More eggs?”
“Please.”
Nathaniel exchanged plates with Robbie and took a smaller serving for himself. While Nathaniel would never, ever resent having Robbie home, conversation with his brother could be something of a burden.
What topic would I suggest to Lady Althea if she wanted to foster pleasant talk over a meal?
Robbie tucked into his eggs. From long experience, Nathaniel knew the man felt no compunction to maintain any discussion whatsoever at table. For years, Robbie apparently hadn’t been permitted to converse with his fellow diners.
“Where will you put the separated flowers?” Nathaniel asked. “Your garden is splendidly full of blooms as it is.”
Robbie downed another forkful of what had to be the most uninspired dish ever to issue from an English kitchen. “Old Mac can toss the extra on the rubbish heap. The whole bed will choke if I don’t thin them. Flowers need air, sunlight, water, and space to breathe. The garden has no more room.”
So plant them outside of your bloody garden.“You could dig a new bed, Robbie.”
“I have dug all the new beds the space will hold.”
“Hanging pots?”
“Hang them from what, Nathaniel? The garden has no trees.”
“Pot them for the back terrace.”
“Irises can’t thrive for long in pots.”
Nathaniel was no sort of gardener, and Robbie determined on a course was as unstoppable as a herd of rambunctious pigs.
“The rubbish heap it is, I suppose.” Another household would have planted those flowers along the front drive, offered them to the tenants, or given them to the neighbors. Rothhaven’s extra flowers would die beside the muck heap.
“You went out last night,” Robbie said. “Your usual Tuesday call upon the vicarage?”
