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“Everybody.”
“I am not laughing, thus your answer is inaccurate. Does Vicar laugh at you? Does Granny Dewar?”
Lady Althea picked up his plate of sandwiches and brought it to him. “Everybody in Mayfair. If I make any attempt to move in the circles expected of a duke’s sister, I am a walking joke. Even my sister-in-law’s good offices were not enough to protect me from ridicule, and she is a duchess. I have hope that I will do better here in Yorkshire—guarded hope. Good food should not go to waste.”
The sandwiches were not merely good, they were delicious, a reminder that chicken went down well with a dash of curry, and beef benefited from a light application of basil and black pepper. At Rothhaven Hall, old Cook rarely served fowl of any kind. Half a century ago, he’d been a potboy, then a baker’s apprentice. Now he was a cook of limited patience and even less imagination.
Lady Althea clearly employed achef.
“Have you a dancing master?” Nathaniel asked, finishing his sandwich. “A music master? A tutor who can teach you to dabble in watercolors?”
“Do not patronize me,” she said, returning to her chair. “My brother saw to it that his siblings were exceptionally well educated. I can embroider, tat lace, dance, sing, draw, paint, plan a menu, ride, drive, manage a budget, engage and sack servants, and otherwise comport myself competently in three languages, but with polite society, I am a perennial figure of fun.”
On the table beside her chair lay an etiquette manual,A Lady’s Guide to Correct Deportmentby Mrs. Harriet Norman.
“And you seek to improve your grasp of proper behavior by reading that drivel?” The third sandwich was cheese and butter with a hint of dill and coriander. Nathaniel adored cheese that had a personality. He’d forgotten such delicacies existed.
“Thatdrivel,” Lady Althea said, “is intended to aid the shopkeeper’s daughter who seeks to marry a squire, the squire’s niece who longs to wed a cit. I have searched the length and breadth of the realm. No manuals exist that tell a woman how to comport herself when she’s…”
Her brows drew down, her gaze fixed on Nathaniel’s empty plate.
“Good food shouldn’t go to waste,” he said. “My compliments to your kitchen. You were saying?”
“If you agree to hear me out, I will stuff you with sandwiches until it’s dark enough for you to risk a mere trot back to Rothhaven. Your horse might thank me.”
“Loki is a stranger to gratitude. An obliging hostess would excuse herself at this point, have a word with the footman under the guise of ordering a fresh pot of tea, and tell the kitchen to send a wheel of this cheese over to Rothhaven.”
Extraordinary how satisfying a few sandwiches could be when they were prepared with some skill.
“An obliging hostess might,” Lady Althea said, setting two more cheese sandwiches on a plate. “I am a jumped-up gutter rat draped in Paris fashions, according to a certain marchioness. Her sister the countess declared me an unfortunate oddity and amusing in a sad sort of way. If I sent you a cheese, you would likely rebuke me for my generosity with another one of your epistolary scolds. I would be the first in the shire to collect three of those setdowns, and that would only add to my notoriety.”
She held the plate out to him, and Nathaniel lacked the fortitude to refuse it. The glowering, articulate woman who’d cut him down to size with a few words was sounding more and more bewildered.
More and more defeated.
He took the chair opposite her and accepted the plate. “I don’t know as I’ve ever met a gutter rat before, much less one who can be described as ‘jumped-up.’ While I do justice to the tray, perhaps you can provide a few details regarding your unusual provenance?”
Nathaniel would listen to her tale, polish off a few more sandwiches, then gallop home. Or perhaps—Loki was young and his stamina limited—they’d travel the distance at a smart canter instead, just this once.
Wilhelmina, Duchess of Rothhaven, ran her finger over the signature inked at the corner of her son’s latest epistle. In the first paragraph, Nathaniel would inform her that a generous sum had been transferred to the London accounts for her use.
In the second, he would report on the health and well-being of the Yorkshire staff, nearly all of whom had been at Rothhaven since Wilhelmina had arrived as a bride thirty-odd years ago. If a trusted retainer had to be pensioned off, those remaining took up the slack, or—in a very few cases—Nathaniel hired a grandchild, niece, or nephew of the departing employee.
The boy was nothing if not loyal. Unlike his idiot father.
“Every time I see my son’s signature franking a letter, I rejoice, Sarah.”
Sarah looked up from her cutwork. “Because His Grace thrives, Cousin?”
“Because he thrives, because he’s so conscientious regarding his duties, because if he’s minding Rothhaven, we can continue to kick our heels here in the south.” Wilhelmina hadn’t any particular fondness for London, but she loved her offspring very much. Better for all concerned if she kept her distance from Yorkshire and let Nathaniel go on without her meddling.
“You earned your freedom,” Sarah said, adjusting the angle of her scissors. “An heir andspare in less than three years.”
The late duke had bestirred himself to leave his wing of the family seat to congratulate Wilhelmina on that feat, the only time His Grace had thanked her for anything.
Sarah offered her a smile. As girls coming of age in York, they’d dreamed of a London Season. The great day had arrived, and of all the ironies, after traveling hundreds of miles from Yorkshire, Wilhelmina had caught the eye of a Yorkshire ducal heir. She and Sarah both had, actually, but he’d offered for Wilhelmina, and an offer from a future duke was not to be refused, even if his family seat lay at the edge of the world’s most desolate moor.
And even if that future duke had had about as much personal warmth as a January gale.
