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Still, no yielding, no humanity in those cool green eyes. “She won’t stay long.”
“She will take one look at this place and permanently dismiss her coachman.She is your mother. If she truly did not care for her sons, would she demand to know how you go on? Would she make this journey when all of society has gathered in London? Would she have called on my sister-in-law?”
He paced away again, this time opening the French doors. “The hour grows late, and this is none of your affair.”
Idiot man.“I am making it my affair. If you truly want your mother’s visit to be short, then you will fit this place out with every comfort. You will bring Rothhaven Hall to a high shine, at least from within. You will have the vicar to dinner here—God forbid he should cross Rothhaven Hall’s threshold for anything less than impending death—and you will escort your mama to Sunday services.”
Nathaniel stared out across an empty garden to the moors beyond. In the westering sun, the land appeared to undulate into an endless distance, as vast and unforgiving as the sea.
“And exactly why, my lady, would I work so hard to destroy the walls of privacy I’ve spent years fortifying?”
“Because your mother’s visit is an opportunity to make changes that are long overdue, in the first place, and because people who love us need to know that we’re faring well, in the second. Conduct your affairs as usual, present a bleak and cheerless picture of life at Rothhaven Hall, and your mother will banish herself here with her sons.”
Dark brows drew down. “I don’t want that. I remain at Rothhaven so that she need not. She was party to an unhappy marriage for nearly twenty-five years. She deserves her freedom, and besides, she cannot bide here. Her old friends and London acquaintances would flock to her doorstep, and she knows that will not serve.”
No true duke had ever been more stubborn. “What will not serve is for you and your brother to live in perpetual fear of discovery. Robbie is sane enough, you will never abandon him in any case, and you have all paid dearly for the mistakes of a man long dead.”
Nathaniel faced her, the sun casting half of his profile in shadow, the other half in the golden light of dusk.
“Robbie’s sanity will matter little. The first time he has a staring spell at a social gathering, the rumors will start, and Lady Phoebe and her ilk will soon paint him to be a raving lunatic. I won’t even be allowed to preserve the estate for his progeny, and a madman isn’t permitted to marry. Robbie will become a prisoner again, and the staff who has been so loyal to us will be scattered to the charity of their families. Mama will die of shame, and that will be a mercy.”
Nathaniel’s logic, so relentless, so convincingly grounded in both law and experience, had a flaw. What he said was true, but it was not the whole truth or even the most important part of the truth.
“You are all prisoners now,” Althea said, the truest thing she knew. “You admit this yourself. Your life is a falsehood. Robbie is doing his best to remain erased, your mother has gone for years without laying eyes on the only people who mean anything to her. Neither you nor Robbie can marry under the present arrangement, and the staff cannot be easily replaced. Is that really an existence worth defending?”
Nathaniel either could not or would not look at her. “It’s all we have, and it’s a damned sight better than the life Robbie endured for more than ten years. I think you should go.”
Althea slipped an arm around his waist, which was like hugging a four-hundred-year-old oak. “I think you should come to my ball. Bring your mother, cast the cut direct at anybody who looks askance at you. You’ve had plenty of practice. It’s time, Nathaniel.”
“Somebody knows,Althea.” Said quietly, wearily. “You are forgetting that somebody knows Robbie bides at the Hall, and that same somebody has threatened repeatedly to reveal the truth. Robbie has considered setting up a household on the Continent, but he doesn’t want to go, and I cannot…He would not fare well. His French is limited. He’d need servants he could trust, and those are in short supply even in England.”
“You cannot imagine banishing him,” Althea retorted, “so you and he both remain at the Hall, prisoners to a past not of your making. You remind me of myself, accepting any social slight, tolerating any cruelty, in hopes that someday I can make even a smidgen of peace with the people who should show me every courtesy.” Telling Nathaniel that was probably unkind, but kindness without honesty was for aged invalids and frightened children.
“Althea, don’t say that. You will have what you deserve, provided we give Lady Phoebe no more fodder for slander.” Nathaniel’s arms stole around her, as if he’d physically shelter her from the prying eyes of the world.
“Lady Phoebe doesn’t know exactly who or what she saw,” Althea said, snuggling close, “and I for one no longer care for her good opinion.”
“You must care. The life you deserve, of contentment and tranquility with children to love, cannot be yours unless you do care.”
Not a single sconce had been lit in the house, and thus as the sun set, the shadows in the library lengthened and deepened.
“I thought I wanted that, Nathaniel, an obscure little slice of peace and joy. I was raised to want that, to crave it and long for it, but safety and domesticity are not enough. You and Robbie have both, and both of you are unhappy. Striving for happiness takes courage. If I’m to be brave—and I am brave—I will no longer waste my time dodging Lady Phoebe’s poison darts. I have better uses for my determination and valor.”
Valor was not a word women typically used, but why not? Why not refer to childbed as a place of valor when a woman was as likely to die there as a soldier in Wellington’s army was likely to die in battle? Why not refer to taking marriage vows, which robbed a woman of her legal personhood, as an act of valor?
“Althea…” Nathaniel stepped back. “You must be careful. Promise me.”
“I have been careful. I have been careful, and wary, and timid. What has it earned me but ruined dresses, torn hems, gossip, and loneliness?”
Nathaniel took her hand, enfolding it in both of his. “I know how tempting it is to gallop headlong across the moors, Althea, but even I, on my worst days, know to ride the beaten paths. The bogs are treacherous and they have claimed many a precious life. Promise me you will observe at least that much caution.”
“Come to my ball, Nathaniel. I want to waltz with you before all the goggling squires and gossiping tabbies. I want to introduce you to my older brother and his duchess. I want to meet your mother and watch as Stephen and Robbie befriend each other.”
A low blow to point out that Robbie had no friends, also an obvious truth.
“Don’t do this,” Nathaniel said. “Please, please, don’t be rash and foolish and make a mistake from which there is no recovering. The rest of your life—”
Althea kissed him, which was neither rash nor foolish, though neither was it wise.
