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“I met him less than a week ago.” She opened the door and allowed Stephen to precede her through. For him to have to manage both his cane and the door latches was an unnecessary risk. “I do like him, though.”
And he likes me. He likes that I abhor London. He thinks I’m kind.All very…very what? Charming? Althea could muster no more enthusiastic term, not when she longed to take herself back across the fields to lurk in a certain walled garden, not when she would gladly give up all social aspirations forever if it meant Rothhaven could be free of his obligations.
She missed him already, and more significantly, she worried for him.
Stephen took the reading chair by the hearth, though the fire hadn’t been lit. He pulled a hassock closer and propped his foot upon it.
“You also made the acquaintance of the resident recluse,” Stephen said. “Tell me about him.”
Althea took the other wing chair. The cat jumped into Stephen’s lap and commenced purring—the traitor.
“There isn’t much to say,” she replied. “Rothhaven prefers to keep to himself. He’s civil, a conscientious head of his household, and a generous landlord, but his privacy matters to him.”
Ellenbrook, by contrast, was genial, sociable, and admiring of Althea’s character, so why had she been nearly relieved to bid the viscount farewell, and why was she still fretting about a duke who had all but sent her packing?
“I vow that woman grows more tedious by the year.” Wilhelmina, Duchess of Rothhaven, passed her bonnet to the waiting butler. “In Mr. Johnson’s lexicon, Lady Partridge ought to be listed under the definition ofsilly.”
“Last year you consigned her to the definition oftiresome,” Sarah replied, handing off her cloak. She paused for a moment by the mirror, touching two fingers to curls gone strawberry-blond with age. Sarah had been a redhead, and like most redheads, she had aged splendidly. Beautiful skin, thick hair going blonde rather than gray, lovely green eyes that in her youth had been the subject of sonnets.
She still had an impish smile, which she aimed at Wilhelmina in the mirror.
“And yet,” Wilhelmina said, “you allowed me to accept her invitation once again. Next year, when she invites us to her infernal Venetian breakfast, please spare us both from an eternity of boredom dining in the company of fortune hunters and other insects. Develop a turned ankle or a head cold, if you please, or remind me to.”
“I shall make a note in my diary. Are we in the mood for tea?”
“A tot of brandy, I think. The breeze was a bit nippy.” The breeze had been mild, the day sunny. The chill Wilhelmina felt was one of loneliness, though saying that would insult Sarah. Every year, another old friend became too ill to journey to London for the Season, another girlhood companion celebrated the birth of a fifth or fifteenth grandchild.
Every year, another crop of lovely young women made their come-outs, and Nathaniel remained immured in the north, tending his acres and…what? Playing chess with Vicar Sorenson? While poor Robbie puttered in a walled garden by day and roamed the Hall at night.
“Brandy it is,” Sarah said, leading the way to the duchess’s private parlor. “Is it Lady Partridge that has you in a brown study or the prospect of Mrs. Abernathy’s ball next week?”
“May providence spare us the tedium of that occasion. I swear I will toss myself down the steps rather than listen to her bleating all evening about Lady Hubert this and Lady Hubert that.”
“A marquess’s spare for a son-in-law was the answer to Mrs. Abernathy’s prayers.” Sarah lifted the stopper on the decanter on the sideboard. “How chilly are we feeling?”
“Damnably.” Though what a pleasure to be able to speak honestly with an old friend and family member. “It might be time I found a dower property, Sarah. Feel free to abandon ship if that plan doesn’t suit you, but one of these days, I will say something regrettable to these inane people who can’t think beyond the latest scandal or stupid fashion.”
Sarah poured two drinks, both modest. “You are a duchess. You are permitted to pronounce difficult truths, and people will call you wise.”
“To my face, but behind my back they will conclude I am growing querulous and unsuited to proper company.” Wilhelmina accepted her drink and took a swallow of smooth, soothing fire. “From there, it’s a short hop to vagueness and dementia. I could not live with myself if Rothhaven had to deal with such talk about his own mama.”
The talk about Robbie had been bad enough. Sympathetic murmurs that hid unkind speculation, and those conjectures had been aimed at a dear, helpless child.
“I think you are homesick,” Sarah said, carrying her drink to the window. “Yorkshire in spring is lovely, and your only son bides there. People will think you estranged from Rothhaven if you never visit him. As it is…”
She took a sip of her drink, and the afternoon sunshine caught her at exactly the right angle that for a moment, she could have been her much younger self—quietly pretty, curvaceous, hands gracefully wrapped around delicate crystal.
Where had the years gone? “As it is?” Wilhelmina prompted.
“As it is, Rothhaven himself causes talk, refusing to leave the family seat, a recluse despite being sound in mind and body, as far as anybody knows.”
“He is quite sound in mind and body.” Painfully sound. The old duke had insisted that his second son become a robust athlete, excelling at everything from horseback riding to archery to rowing. Nathaniel hadn’t been allowed to neglect his scholarship either, or to slight the social graces. He had been groomed to become a paragon, and instead…
“Who has cast aspersion upon Rothhaven, Sarah?”
She stalled with another ladylike sip of brandy. “Mrs. Abernathy joked that His Grace must have a squint or a stammer, to be so perennially shy about taking a duchess.”
The spirits curdled in Wilhelmina’s belly. “When did she say this?”
