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Rothhaven put down his plate slowly, as if a wild creature had come snorting and snapping into the parlor. “Are you utterly demented? One doesn’t announce such a thing, and I am in no position to…” He stood, his height once again creating an impression of towering disdain. “I will see myself out.”
Althea rose as well, and though Rothhaven could toss her behind the sofa one-handed, she made her words count.
“Do not flatter yourself, Your Grace. Only a fool would seek to procreate with a petulant, moody, withdrawn, arrogant specimen such as you. I want a family, exactly the goal every girl is raised to treasure. There’s nothing shameful or inappropriate about that. Until I learn to comport myself as the sister of a duke ought, I have no hope of making an acceptable match. You are a duke. If anybody understands the challenge I face, you do. You have five hundred years of breeding and family history to call upon, while I…”
Oh, this was not the eloquent explanation she’d rehearsed, and Rothhaven’s expression had become unreadable.
He gestured with a large hand. “While you…?”
Althea had tried inviting him to tea, then to dinner. She’d tried calling upon him. She’d ridden the bridle paths for hours in hopes of meeting him by chance, only to see him galloping over the moors, heedless of anything so tame as a bridle path.
She’d called on him twice, only to be turned away at the door and chided by letter twice for presuming even that much. Althea had only a single weapon left in her arsenal, a lone arrow in her quiver of strategies, the one least likely to yield the desired result.
She had the truth. “I need your help,” she said, subsiding into her chair. “I haven’t anywhere else to turn. If I’m not to spend the rest of my life as a laughingstock, if I’m to have a prayer of finding a suitable match, I need your help.”
Chapter Two
Lady Althea sat before Nathaniel, her head bent, her fists bunched in her lap. Ladies did not make fists. Ladies did not boast of breeding hogs. Ladies did not refer to ducal neighbors aspetulant, moody, withdrawn,andarrogant, though Nathaniel had carefully cultivated a reputation as exactly that.
But those disagreeable characteristics were not the real man, he assured himself. He was in truth a fellow managing as best he could under trying circumstances.
I am not an ogre. Not yet.“I regret that I cannot assist you. I’m sorry, my lady. I’ll bid you good day.”
“Youchoosenot to assist me.” She rose, skirts swishing, and glowered up at him. “I am the only person in this parish whose rank even approaches your own, and you disdain to give me a fair hearing. What is so damned irresistible about returning to the dreary pile of stone where you bide that you cannot be bothered to even finish a cup of tea with me?”
Nathaniel was sick of his dreary pile of stone, to the point that he was tempted to howl at the moon.
“We have not been introduced,” he retorted. “This is not a social call.”
She folded her arms, her bearing rife with contempt. “That mattered to you not at all when a few loose pigs wandered into your almighty orchard. You do leave your property, Your Grace. You gallop the neighborhood at dawn and dusk, when there’s enough light to see by, but you choose the hours when other riders are unlikely to be abroad.”
Lady Althea was unremarkable in appearance—medium height, dark brown hair. Nothing to rhapsodize about there. Her figure was nicely curved, even a bit on the sturdy side, and her brown velvet day dress lacked lace and frills, for all it was well cut and of excellent cloth.
What prevented Nathaniel from marching for the door was the force of her ladyship’s gaze. She let him see both vulnerability and rage in her eyes, both despair and dignity. Five years ago, Robbie had looked out on the world from the same place of torment. What tribulations could Lady Althea have suffered that compared with what Robbie had endured?
“You gallop everywhere,” she said, a judge reading out a list of charges, “because a sedate trot might encourage others to greet you, or worse, to attempt toengage you in conversation.”
Holy thunder, she was right. Nathaniel had developed the strategy of the perpetual gallop out of desperation.
“You travel to and from the vicarage under cover of darkness,” she went on, “probably to play chess or cribbage with Dr. Sorenson, for it’s common knowledge that your eternal soul is beyond redemption.”
Nathaniel’s visits to the vicarage—his sole social reprieve—would soon be over for the season. In December, a Yorkshire night held more than sixteen hours of darkness. By June, that figure halved, with the sky remaining light well past ten o’clock.
“Do youspyon me, Lady Althea?”
“The entire neighborhood notes your comings and goings, though I doubt your Tuesday night outings have been remarked upon. The path from Rothhaven to the village skirts my park, so I see what others cannot.”
Well, damn. Vicar Sorenson was an indifferent chess player, but he was a good sort who believed his calling demanded compassion rather than a sacrificial duke.
“I will hold your sows for a week,” Nathaniel said. “After that I make no promises.”
He strode for the door, lest the lady attempt to prevent his egress.
“I am poor company,” she said to his retreating back, “but I will not bore you. I must learn how to deal with local society on my own terms, and you have perfected that art. Nobody laughs at you. Nobody dares suggest that your foibles merit ridicule. You have taken a handful of peculiar behaviors and turned them into rural legend. Your life is exactly as you wish it to be and nobody would dream of gainsaying your choices. Our neighbors accept you, foibles, eccentricities, and all. I must learn to make them accept me as they do you, and you are my only possible tutor.”
Nathaniel’s common sense, the internal lodestar of all his decisions, shrieked at him to keep walking. To ride his horse straight back to Rothhaven Hall and lock himself in the walled garden until autumn.
But he was not an ogre. Not yet. He half turned. “Who laughs at you?”
