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“I had the great misfortune to run into her and Lady Hubert in the park yesterday. I assured them His Grace was plagued more by a love of his estate than by any failing. I doubt they believed me.”
“They do not want to believe you. They would rather invent unkind fictions than accept a boring truth. Nathaniel has seen London, he’s still young. He’ll take a bride when he pleases to.” The lie should not have caused a lump in Wilhelmina’s throat after all these years, but it did. Oh, it did.
Sarah’s gaze was sympathetic. “I’ve often wondered if you didn’t do me a favor when you accepted the late duke’s proposal. He was a difficult man. I can believe he’d be the father of a difficult son. I’d happily go with you, if you chose to journey north. I can admit to homesickness even if you refuse to. The staff at the Hall was always most attentive.”
Sarah was being honest rather than unfeeling, but she could not know how her words cut. The late duke had been colder to his wife than any Yorkshire winter, and even worse to his sons.
“Perhaps we’ll nip up to Yorkshire next year,” Wilhelmina said, setting her drink on the mantel. “We’re in London now. We’ll plan an entertainment of our own. A musicale, where we can do a spot of matchmaking and inflict some culture on the young people. No more talk of journeying north, and we will most definitely not invite Lady Hubert or her dratted mother to our little gathering.”
Sarah carried her drink to the escritoire, took out paper and ink, and flourished a quill pen. “No Mrs. Abernathy. We are agreed. Whom shall we invite?”
Wilhelmina tried to get into the spirit of the undertaking, considering which unmarried lady and which fellow might benefit from an introduction, who might convincingly perform a romantic duet, but her heart wasn’t in it.
As Sarah had suspected, Wilhelmina’s heart was in the north, where she would most assuredly not be journeying anytime soon. Nathaniel had no hostess at the Hall. He thus had an excuse for never entertaining, and he had the locals believing he was as sour-natured and arrogant as his father had been. Wilhelmina, by contrast, had been raised in Yorkshire and had been lady of the manor for decades.
She had no credible reason for turning away the social overtures of girlhood friends or neighbors. So she bided in London, slowly losing her wits to boredom as she counted the days between one letter from Nathaniel and the next.
Chapter Eleven
Arguing with Robbie had wasted precious hours, and thus when he finally capitulated, Nathaniel simply donned a coat and hat and took off across the moonlit fields. Sending a note would have wasted more time, and besides, what could Nathaniel have said?
Please come. We need you.The truth, but what if a servant read such a missive? What if Lady Althea, whom Nathaniel had sent packing earlier that same day, wasn’t in the mood to be summoned?
What if she wasn’t at home? Truly was not at home? Normal people traveled into York from time to time. They had dinner with the neighbors.They socialized.
Nathaniel faced a choice as he gained the main drive to Lynley Vale: To use the front door or the parlor on the first floor, where a soft glow in the windows suggested her ladyship was spending the evening. Time was of the essence, and if Nathaniel wasn’t precisely a duke in truth, he was still the son of a duke.
He marched up to the front steps and rapped the knocker smartly.
An eternity passed before Lady Althea herself opened the door. A young man stood behind her, his hands braced on a cane.
“Your Grace, won’t you come in?” Her gaze was wary, which was better than angry.
“Thank you, but I have not the luxury of tarrying. There is…illness in my house. I’ve been asked to fetch you rather than send for a physician.”
The younger man—dark-haired, slim, tall, attired as a gentleman but lacking a coat—watched this exchange with interest. Who the hell was he, to be removing his coat in the presence of a lady after dark?
“Fever?” Lady Althea asked.
“Yes. Cough, aches. The ankle appears to be improving, but lung fever is setting in.”
“No, it is not,” she countered, stepping back. “Not this soon. A spring cold, influenza, a bit of both, but there hasn’t been time for full-blown lung fever to develop.”
The younger fellow showed no intention of taking himself off, as any polite guest might have done. His eyes were a vivid blue, a noticing sort of blue that put Nathaniel in mind of Althea.
“Lord Stephen Wentworth, I presume?” Nathaniel asked.
“At your service.” He bowed, balancing his weight on his cane. “You are Lynley Vale’s nearest neighbor, the duke of curdled milk and colicky infants, I gather?”
“Rothhaven, at your service, and now is not the time for tedious attempts at humor.”
His lordship’s brows rose—brows very like Lady Althea’s. “Thea, you’d best go with him. His Grace might take to demanding sacrificial maidens or the village’s most handsome youths if his whims are not immediately indulged. I, of course, would be compelled by inherent nobility to offer myself as the first casualty in that event. You know how dukes can be.”
Althea drew Nathaniel by the arm into the house and closed the door. “I know how brothers can be. The patient turned an ankle and as a result spent several hours half-immersed in my stream. He’s an otherwise fit man of about thirty years.”
“But he’s taken chill,” Lord Stephen said, gazing off into the middle distance. “Whiskey with honey and lemon for the cough, willow bark tea for the aches. Avoid laudanum, because he might have taken a knock on the head when he slipped.”
A duke’s heir would not normally study medicine, but his lordship sounded quite confident of his advice. “Are you a physician?” Nathaniel asked.
