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“Would you like to take some daffodils with you?” she asked, getting to her feet with the aid of Rothhaven’s walking stick. “The blooms are abundant here. You could take an armful and leave twice that many.”
He took another step back. He regarded Althea as he did so, as if his gaze alone could communicate as effectively as words.
“Perhaps you’d like some of my transplants?” she asked, shaking out her skirts. “I already have plenty, and because this is my land, I can fetch more whenever I please.”
If he tarried much longer, the sun would begin burning off the mist, and Althea could get a good look at him.
He took another step back.
She advanced two steps.
He moved again, his progress in the direction of Rothhaven Hall.
A sensible woman would wish him good-morning and get back to her gardening. Althea wasn’t feeling particularly sensible. She picked up her bucket and advanced two more steps.
Her visitor turned then, and in no particular hurry at all, continued ambling down the path.
Althea debated with herself for perhaps two entire seconds before she stripped off her muddy gloves and laid them over the edge of her bucket, then followed in the wake of the man who had something of Rothhaven about him.
A lot of Rothhaven.
Chapter Six
Nathaniel had been haunted by the damned note. Of the few who knew the family’s secrets, who among them would send threats through the mail? Why send threats? Why not simply spout a tale to some London tattler about a mad ducal heir, unable to travel in a coach, unwilling to leave his property even on horseback, and likely to stare off into space for entire minutes, oblivious to all around him?
To distract himself from those worries, Nathaniel had stayed up late estimating costs and cubic feet of stone for extending the walled garden to the orchard. The project would serve many purposes, not the least of which was expanding the space available to Robbie for wandering, puttering, painting, and gardening.
Nathaniel sat on the bench nearest the house as the morning mist swirled and danced across the fields. By the river, the fog was still a downy cloud come to earth, softening the transition from night into day.
Here in the garden, pearlescent twilight prevailed, a peaceful place for a man to argue with himself over all manner of trivialities.
The staff, though aging, would benefit from having the garden expansion project to focus on. They needed to know the Hall wasn’t stagnating, despite the reclusive habits Nathaniel cultivated of necessity. The new walls could be built at a snail’s pace, if need be.
Nathaniel himself could lend a hand and work off any foolish temptation to again call on Lady Althea. If last night had proved nothing else, it had proved that his acquaintance with her was at an end. She had revealed an affectionate aspect to her nature—had hugged him—and that was not to be borne. But for the stupid cheese he’d held, he would have comported himself like the world’s largest barnacle and hugged her right back.
Would still be hugging her right back.
Lady Althea had a vitality that brought to mind trite analogies—moth to flame, warbling sirens, and so forth. Her lively mind, her outspokenness, her courage, they drew him. The image of her as a child, forced to beg, forced to protect herself from the one man who should have been protecting her…
Paternal evil was apparently not limited to ducal families, but that Lady Althea had been its victim wrecked Nathaniel’s hard-won composure.
“And the worst transgression of all,” he murmured to the fresh morning air, “is not that she stirs my sentiments, but that she is so very damneddesirableas she does.”
Somewhere outside the garden, a door latch clicked, probably a maid off to fetch the day’s milk from the dairy or honey from the apiary. The estate was all but self-sufficient, by design. Rothhaven Hall was close enough to York to acquire any necessity in a matter of days, but Nathaniel had to plan for the time when Robbie would be left alone, no brother to buffer him from the demands of the outside world.
Something as simple as a tumble from the saddle could change everything.
Movement across the garden stopped that dolorous line of thinking. Somebody had entered from the far gate.
Nathaniel remained unmoving on his bench. If the under-gardeners sought to scythe the grass, they asked Nathaniel’s permission first, and he scheduled an afternoon to review the books with Robbie. Robbie either didn’t notice or didn’t care to mention that the grass seemed to scythe itself.
The staff took the order to avoid this place seriously, so who…?
Nathaniel knew that walk, knew that purposeful swish of skirts. His reactions to seeing Lady Althea marching about his garden at dawn went in all directions.
Sheer shock, to see somebody striding along with that much purpose in a space given over to tranquility and repose.
Delight, that she would come to the Hall for any reason.
