AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You are protective of us.”
“Somebody ought to be. Your staff grows too old, Robbie is restless, your own mother can’t be bothered to lend her assistance, and nobody is taking up foryou.”
Nathaniel rose, the better to remain near to her. “And you must not be that person, Althea. If Lady Phoebe has decided to avenge old wrongs now, that is more than enough reason to keep your distance from me. She saw us kissing, she will not be silenced, and now she’s somehow figured out what’s afoot at the Hall. Your best option is to pretend you cannot abide a man of my arrogance and conceit.”
“You are advising meto lie?”
Althea’s question was endearingly indignant. “My entire life is a lie, my lady. Falsehood has served well to protect my brother. His welfare matters more than the theoretical preferences of honor.”
“Fine for him, Nathaniel, but what of your welfare?”
He hadn’t an answer for her. Lying was wrong. He knew that. Putting Robbie at risk to be incarcerated, ridiculed, experimented upon, and tormented for the rest of his life was more wrong still. Even the most humane legal option—the appointment of guardians for Robbie’s person and property—meant he’d not be able to manage his own investments or even take a wife.
“You have always given me such good advice,” Althea said, stalking past him. “For your own situation, you have no wisdom to apply.”
“Sorenson said you’re planning to host a ball.”
She came to a halt and turned like a guard before some general’s tomb. “And?”
“Don’t do it, Althea. Not now. Lady Phoebe has taken you into dislike, she has taken me into dislike, and she has seen us in a compromising situation. She has significant social influence and can blight your aspirations for all time.”
Blue eyes blazed with indignation. “Do you think I care what she can do to my aspirations compared to what she can do to you and Robbie?”
“If you care for us, you will not call attention to yourself just now. You will bide your time, let tempers cool, and choose another moment to put yourself forth as a hostess. Wait until Miss Price has made a match, wait until I have flushed Lady Phoebe from her covert. Blackmail is a crime.”
“And caring about you is gross stupidity,” Althea said, “and yet I most assuredly do. I am not canceling my ball. That is exactly what she would want me to do, and I refuse to allow her to shut me up at Lynley Vale the way Robbie was jailed in an asylum.”
She kissed Nathaniel soundly on the mouth. Then, before he could react, she marched away, spine straight, skirts whipping. Nathaniel wanted to call her back—wanted to kiss her and do more than kiss her—but he let her go.
Shemost assuredlycared about him. Fool that he was, her declaration had him smiling all the way back to the Hall.
“Today is a day for unusual epistles,” Jane, Duchess of Walden, said as she took the place beside her husband on the sofa.
Quinn tucked his arm around her shoulders, his casual affection as precious to Jane as it was familiar. “You noticed that Stephen has deigned to pen me a note. Such an occasion begs for an announcement from a royal herald. Who has been writing to you?”
Jane insisted on having this hour of the late afternoon in private with Quinn as a defense against the obligations of their station, and against Quinn’s sense of duty. He was a duke who actually attended many sessions at the Lords. He was also the owner of a burgeoning financial empire and father to three rambunctious little females.
His wealth and position earned more attention from the sovereign than he liked; his decency and honor made him the love of Jane’s life.
“I have a letter from a Lady Phoebe Philpot,” Jane said. “She’s a neighbor of Althea’s, or so she claims.”
“The gossip has started already. Is she complaining about Stephen?”
“She’s expressing her concern about Althea.”
Quinn nuzzled Jane’s temple, a thoughtful sort of nuzzle rather than a playful or amorous overture. “She’s spreading tales, then, under the guise of a charitable impulse.”
“Precisely. She couches her accusation in reluctance and uncertainty, but she claims to have seen Althea enjoying a romantic interlude nearly in the middle of the high street, and with a man of dubious reputation. Lady Phoebe dares—her word—to suggest we send a regiment of chaperones to bring Althea back to the family fold.”
“Those chaperones would need pistols, swords, and chains if Althea is disinclined to come south.”
Jane would have wagered on Althea’s stubbornness being equal to even those challenges.
From boyhood on, Quinn had been able to escape Jack Wentworth’s household to search for work. Althea, as a female, and one fiercely protective of her younger siblings, had remained under her father’s thumb. Having been burdened with an eccentric and self-absorbed father herself, Jane well knew the demands fortitude could make on a daughter.
“Althea has come south often enough to know what awaits her here,” Jane said. “She has not had an easy time of it. I did what I could, but had I taken more of a hand in her situation, she’d have been accused of hiding behind my skirts. That would very likely have made her situation worse. Now she’s in Yorkshire where I have no connections, and where the challenge is one of managing rural mores, about which I am entirely ignorant.”
Quinn scooped Jane up and settled her in his lap. He was approaching midlife, though he grew only more handsome and formidable with the passing years. In private, his humor was more apparent, and his already affectionate nature frequently turned doting.
