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“My father was an angry, dutiful man,” Nathaniel said. “He married where he was told to, when he was told to, and then treated his wife like a burdensome stranger. He did his duty at court. He was a conscientious steward of the Rothhaven estate, though he had little head for investing, and our holdings did not prosper under his management. He regarded his heir as his compensation for all indignities, as my grandfather had regarded his heir.”
Nathaniel rested an arm along the back of the bench, though reciting this tale in this lovely little Eden was a sacrilege.
“Go on,” Althea said.
Nathaniel heard no judgment in her tone, no dismay. That would doubtless come later.
“Mama presented His Grace with an heir and spare in quick succession. We were sturdy, lively boys who managed to have happy childhoods despite our father’s severe disposition. Mama did what she could, choosing tutors with a sense of humor and governesses who held us in genuine affection. His Grace tolerated that until Robbie was eleven, and then the game changed.”
Althea remained right beside him on the bench, as if she listened to the makings of great scandal every day.
“Our father decided that we must embark on the path to manhood, and our first step was to graduate from ponies to horses. We loved our ponies, but were excited at the prospect of full-sized mounts. His Grace would not listen to the stableboys who counseled prudence, and instead he bought us handsome, half-wild youngsters. The duke thought we ought to learn to train our own mounts, a job many a grown man would shrink from. Robbie came off his horse frequently, as did I, but one day, Robbie came off and didn’t get up.”
The morning Robbie’s fate had changed had been like this one—sunny, benign, Yorkshire in her spring glory. Nathaniel had perched on the rail as Robbie had come off his horse yet again. Nathaniel had called encouragement to his brother and cursed the horse as manfully as he was able to at ten years of age. Elf had known something was amiss, though, and had dashed across the arena to wave the colt away from the fallen rider.
“The horse wasn’t a bad animal,” Nathaniel said. “He was simply young and lacked training. My father had made a bad choice and could not admit it, even when that bad choice put his heir at risk for grievous harm.”
“Doubtless,” Althea said, “the fault was with the boy for coming off the horse, with the horse for being too fractious, with the very ground for being too hard. The hubris of some men beggars description and seems to be inversely proportional to their human decency.”
Nathaniel let his arm rest ever so lightly around her shoulders again. “Just so, my lady. Exactly so. My brother lay unmoving in the dirt, and the duke stood over him, bellowing for Robbie to get up, to stop being a coward, and to climb back on the damned horse. He ordered a bucket of cold water tossed on his own child, and still Robbie did not awaken.”
Althea scooted around as if the hard bench were uncomfortable. The result was that she sat infinitesimally closer to Nathaniel.
“My father used to rail at Stephen,” she said, “forlimping. Accused him of faking and shirking, and Stephen could not run away. I think Papa delighted in the fact that he could abuse a boy who had no means of escape.”
Nathaniel knew Althea would not have left her brother alone with such a monster, but where was that brother now, when she had been all but hounded from London?
A question for another time. “Robbie did not awaken until that night,” Nathaniel went on, “and when he did, he had no memory of coming off his horse. The physicians said that wasn’t unusual, so we all breathed a sigh of relief. The physicians also said Robbie ought not to ride again or otherwise risk another injury to his head for at least a month, but the duke would not listen. Three days later, he insisted Robbie resume his riding lessons. Robbie insisted too, said he wanted to show the horse what was what. But then, what could he have said, with the old man threatening him with every punishment known to English boyhood?”
“Somebody should have put your idiot father on that horse.”
Exactly what Elf had suggested. “His Grace told Robbie that if he didn’t get back in the saddle, I would be made to ride the beast. At the time, I was the smaller brother, and I was not a confident rider. Robbie climbed aboard, and all seemed to go well at first.”
The next part was hard to relate and impossible to forget. “The horse walked and trotted to the right well enough. Robbie rode across the middle of the arena to change directions, and then simply…left his body is the only way I can describe it. He stared at a fixed point, the horse became more and more unruly, and Robbie did nothing to correct the animal. We shouted, and he appeared not to hear us. He simply stared and bounced about in the saddle like a marionette on loose strings. When the horse bolted, Robbie came off again. He has had the falling sickness ever since.”
There was more to the tale, much more, most of it bad.
“I’m sorry,” Althea said. “I’m sorry you had an arrogant beast for a father, sorry you had to watch your brother all but destroyed for the sake of a grown man’s pride.”
Destroyed—that was the word Nathaniel had instinctively shied away from, the word that fit the situation exactly.
“His Grace did, eventually, destroy Robbie in fact, or as good as. Robbie began to have seizures as well as staring spells. I woke up one day and was told Robbie had been sent off to school. My mother refused to come out of her rooms for two weeks. My father eventually left for London, though they had been estranged while living under the same roof. I did not see my brother again for years.”
Althea slipped her hand into Nathaniel’s. “He wasn’t at school.”
“He was placed with a physician, a Dr. Soames, who claimed to provide humane care for the insane. Robbie wasn’t insane when he went there, but he nearly was by the time I brought him home. I don’t even know the whole of it—ice baths, restraints, purgings, bleedings, beatings, long confinements indoors, strange diets—but either Soames eventually deduced that Robbie was merely ill, not insane, or Robbie learned how to outwit the lunacy that passed for care there. Then too, Robbie was heir to a dukedom. Abusing a ducal heir is seldom smart.”
“I take it your father died and you were able to extricate your brother from this hell?”
Althea’s hand in Nathaniel’s was warm, a comfort freely offered and dearly appreciated. Not what Nathaniel had expected, but then, this was Althea Wentworth, who knew what it was to have a monster for a father.
“Shortly before I turned twenty-one, my father called me into his study and informed me that my brother—the one perpetually at school, then at university, then traveling to distant capitals—had succumbed to an influenza that had become a lung fever. Robbie was dead, I was the heir, and no more need be said on the matter. The house observed mourning. A coffin eventually arrived and was buried in the family plot. I have since confirmed that all we buried was a large bag of sand.”
“Your father told you that your brother wasdead?”
“Told me, my mother, the vicar, the world. He accepted all the condolences a grieving father was due, and I believe, for my father, Robbie was dead. A Duke of Rothhaven who fell to the ground shaking, who stared off at nothing for minutes at a time, who could not ride to hounds or swim or even miss a night’s sleep without risking public humiliation…my father could never countenance such a thing, so Robbie was simply erased. For a duke, erasing the life of a boy is appallingly easy, and in Papa’s mind, he was erasing a disastrous family scandal at the same time.”
