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Sweet thundering Valkyries. What was he to say to that? “Revising one’s outlook takes time. In all of history, how many beggars have had to adjust to the constraints of ducal expectations?”
She stooped to disentangle a pair of tulips that had yet to bloom. “Not enough of us, apparently. Polite society is the most ossified, pointless, ridiculous excuse for a human institution ever there was.”
Such bitterness in those words, and such truth. “Then why work so hard to gain polite society’s approval?”
She subsided onto a bench that faced another border of tulips. Pink and white, though a stray yellow specimen bobbed among the others like a sheepdog amid its flock.
“I don’t care for polite society, Rothhaven, but I have nieces. Please do have a seat.”
Nathaniel could not fathom what nieces had to do with enduring an evening of Lady Phoebe’s sniping and braying. He took the place beside Lady Althea, the bench faintly damp.
“Explain yourself.”
His lack of manners earned him a peevish look.
“Won’t you be so good as to explain yourself, rather.”
Her ladyship’s gaze fixed on the errant yellow tulip. “My nieces are precious and trusting and unpredictable, and they have brought my brother revelations nobody else, not even his dear Jane, could have brought him. He reads them stories, he walks at a child’s pace the length and breadth of Kew Gardens, one daughter on his back, another holding his hand. He pretends to be a bear, down on all fours, prowling about the nursery as the children hop away like bunnies, laughing uproariously. It breaks my heart.”
That last was said softly, an honest admission of pain.
“And this man is a duke?” When Nathaniel’s father had roared, nobody had laughed, ever.
“First, Quinn was less than nothing. He was Jack Wentworth’s worthless get, though there’s apparently some doubt about Quinn’s actual paternity. His mama ran off and died. Then Jack married my mama, who died before she could run off, alas for her. Quinn worked himself to exhaustion trying to keep his siblings fed. Thank the kind powers Jack Wentworth expired of too much bad gin, and Quinn’s luck shifted. He has a head for business, and our fortunes steadily improved.”
A relief to know Althea’s brother was dutiful where his sister was concerned. “Go on.”
“We were managing quite well, then some old title had nowhere else to go, and Quinn got stuck with that too. He became a duke, he married Jane, and she became a duchess, and they…they are happy despite their lofty status. Polite society has to take them seriously, for they are a formidable couple. I was simply dragged along, like a branch caught in the axle of a post chaise. It’s almost as if, having been forced to accept Quinn and Jane, the biddies and lordlings are doubly determined not to accept me, though I know that can’t be the case.”
Very likely, that was exactly the case, and now Nathaniel ought to join the ranks of those who condescended, slighted, and subtly insulted Lady Althea Wentworth. Nothing could come of her neighborliness, not with Nathaniel, not ever.
“And your nieces?”
“They have given Quinn a reason to put up with all the nonsense, somebody to love and protect. For him, being a papa is a far more compelling challenge than being a duke. In their way, those little girls have guarded his spirit, just as Jane has guarded his heart. I want that, Rothhaven. I want that badly.”
Nathaniel did not dare admit his own thoughts on the fraught topics of family loyalty and unguarded hearts. “Wait here,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
He retrieved his walking stick from St. Valentine and left Lady Althea alone to prowl about unsupervised in his walled garden.
The walled garden was a revelation to Althea.
As an edifice, Rothhaven Hall was no more forbidding in appearance than a tipsy dowager napping off her cordial among the wallflowers. The old dear would awaken in a bad humor, not a kind word for anybody, but mostly, she’d be embarrassed to have lapsed in public.
Rothhaven Hall, from the front drive, was lapsing. Winter-dead weeds clogged what had once been flower beds, rain and snow had pitted the lane with potholes. The flagstones of the front terrace were buckling and heaving with the changing seasons, and the windows Althea had been able to see on her previous non-visits needed a thorough cleaning.
Years of neglect had turned the exterior of the house crotchety, but the walled garden told a different story.
Here, nature’s whimsy and man’s order were in gracious harmony. A bed of roses had been neatly pruned and mulched the better to snuggle through the cold months. The Holland bulbs were everywhere, tidy rows of color that bobbed this way and that in a slight breeze.
The garden had no fountain, but rather, two birdbaths, each a chubby, smiling Cupid with a giant clamshell balanced on his shoulders and wings. No lichens blighted the angels’ gleaming white stone, no chips or cracks marred their cheerful perfection.
Somebody loved this place. Somebody spent hours here, turning a rectangular patch of Yorkshire sod into a private paradise. The landscaping was more formal than Althea preferred, but later in the season, as the borders burst forth on long sunny days and tender annuals bloomed in the central beds, the look of the garden would evolve toward something more carefree.
“You did not flee.” Rothhaven stood on the terrace near a statue of some old fellow holding a crosier with one hand and an enormous quill with the other. The duke carried a tray, and such was his gravitas that he still managed to look like a duke even when doing a footman’s job. “A sensible woman would have departed.”
“Who would want to leave this place?”
Consternation flickered across Rothhaven’s features, or perhaps exasperation. “You should. But first I will offer you tea, and then you must be on your way.” He came down the steps and set the tray on Althea’s bench.
