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He closed the door behind him, still muttering, as Stephen took a seat at the reading table.
“So your brother is alive?” Stephen poured two cups of tea and selected a slice of golden toast soaked with butter. “Bit of a pickle, that.”
Rothhaven—or Lord Nathaniel?—took the seat at Stephen’s elbow. “It’s a bloody damned mess and has been for years. You are sworn to secrecy. Pass the jam.”
“I don’t care for secrets, especially when my sister is entangled in them.”
“That is precisely why you will keep your mouth shut. You didn’t put any sugar in my tea.”
Stephen passed him the sugar bowl. “Sugar it yourself, and tell me what in seven sulfurous hells is going on here.”
Rothhaven dropped a lump of sugar into his tea. “It’s truly better if you don’t know.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” The toast was wonderful. Cut thicker than bread was usually sliced, done to a turn, still warm, and dripping butter. Nursery food, but then, nurseries were supposed to be happy, healthy places.
Rothhaven stirred his tea and sat back, an odd smile lurking in his eyes. “You really are Althea’s brother. I suppose you should hear the tale from me, but you are not to badger Althea for more details. She doesn’t have them, and that’s for the best too.”
“Your front door is manned by Methuselah’s great-uncle, you are impersonating a peer of the realm who is very much alive, and exasperated mothers invoke your name as a curse. Who are you to be telling me anything where my sister is concerned?”
Rothhaven’s lashes swept down, his head remained bowed for a moment, and in his silence Stephen lit upon the answer to his own question: Rothhaven was the man who’d fallen in love with Lady Althea Wentworth, a woman determined to take her place in society, a woman connected to one of the most prominent—some would say notorious—families in the realm.
While Rothhaven was determined on a life of secrecy and obscurity.
His Pseudo-Grace took a sip of tea—no hurrying this fellow—and set down the cup and saucer. “Who am I? I am the man who will see you ruined if you take the smallest risk with your sister’s happiness. You will say nothing of her presence here and nothing of what you’ve seen. Do have some more toast. It’s about the only thing Cook prepares well.”
“A fine speech, but a bit of work on the particulars of your threat will make it more convincing.” Stephen helped himself to more toast. “Now why have you spent years lying to all of society, pretending to be somebody you are not, and very possibly breaking the law?”
The seizure came without warning in the darkest hours.
Robbie had dozed off shortly before midnight, his temperature warm but not alarmingly so. Althea remained awake in the chair beside his bed while Rothhaven was across the hall napping. He’d told her that if Robbie had a seizure, there was nothing to do but roll him onto his side and safeguard him from anything that might fall upon him. The bedroom had a double thickness of carpet both because that helped keep Robbie’s chambers quiet and because he was less likely to injure himself if he fell to the floor.
When Robbie had awakened, she’d bathed his brow and hands with cool water, something he seemed to enjoy now. If he had any fever it was mild, and his cough was subsiding with regular applications of a honey, lemon, whiskey, and ginger tisane.
He had seemed in every way to be regaining his health.
Althea had been reading aloud to him fromTom Joneswhen she became aware that the bed had begun to tremble. Robbie’s expression went from a fixed stare to a faint, and then his limbs commenced to shake. She rolled him to his side—not easy when a large man was thrashing and twitching—and waited a small eternity for the convulsions to cease.
She didn’t want to watch, and yet she could not look away. Years ago, on the streets of a bad neighborhood in York, she’d seen an older woman overcome with a seizure right on the walkway. Passersby had stopped and stared, though nobody had offered a word of derision. The woman’s daughter had been with her, and when the shaking had stopped, she’d helped her mother to her feet and onto the nearest bench.
This seizure was worse for befalling Robbie in his very home. The one place where he ought to be able to bar his door against all evils, Robbie was not safe.
He quieted, seeming to fall into a doze while Althea straightened the bedclothes. On Nathaniel’s orders, she was not to offer Robbie even water until he was awake and somewhat clear-headed.
“I did not wet myself.” He spoke slowly, like an inebriate. “I ought not to say that. Lady present.” He was still lying on his side, as if truly felled by strong spirits.
“Would you like to sit up?”
He pushed himself to his back with a great sigh. “I would like to die.”
Stephen had said the same thing on many occasions. He’d even made plans to end his life when adolescence had begun changing the body he’d barely learned how to manage as a boy.
“Are you in pain?”
Robbie turned his head on the pillow to regard her. “Not of the physical variety, but for a slight headache.”
“Ah, then you are simply feeling sorry for yourself. Shall I fetch your brother so he can feel sorry for you too? Perhaps you’d like the staff to stand about your bed with long faces, muttering prayers for the dying and composing your eulogy.”
His smile was like Nathaniel’s, but more bitter. “Let my brother sleep. It’s the least he deserves, and Nathaniel’s pity is unbearable. Tell me about Lord Stephen. How did he acquire that limp?”
