AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Watching that coach disappear down the drive,” she went on, “knowing my darling boy would be alone among strangers for the first time in his life, deceived, betrayed…I wanted to die. I very much wanted to die, but there was still you to consider, Nathaniel. There was always you, and I could not see you abandoned as well. The duke intimated, though he never quite threatened, that a mother too selfish to accommodate her sons’ best interests was perhaps herself of unsound mind. One thwarted that blasted man at one’s peril.”
What in thirteen accursed purgatories was Nathaniel supposed to say to that? “I’m glad he’s dead,” came out of his mouth, an understatement for the ages.
“What sort of fits did he have?” Robbie asked quietly.
“I saw only the one,” Sarah said. “I had torn the hem of my ballgown’s underskirt—dresses weren’t so practical decades ago—and sought an alcove to await my abigail. Lord Alaric already occupied the one nearest the terrace, though none of the candles had been lit.”
“He likely blew them out,” Robbie said, “the better to hide in the dark.”
“He cursed at me,” Sarah went on, “told me to take my damned self off immediately. I thought he was foxed, but then he fell to the floor and shook most violently.”
“You saw this?” Mama asked, as Thatcher shuffled out of the house.
“With my own eyes, Wilhelmina.”
Robbie took the place beside Mama on the bench. “Sometimes, I can tell when a seizure is about to descend.”
“That is news to me,” Nathaniel said. “I thought they struck like the proverbial bolts from the blue.”
Thatcher stacked cups and saucers on the tea tray, for once not offering anybody any toast.
“Often there’s no warning,” Robbie said, “but sometimes odd sensations happen first, feelings that are hard to describe. A little dreadful, a little light-headed, like a touch of hashish only…different. Papa likely knew a fit was coming on, but he couldn’t chase Cousin Sarah away in time.”
Nathaniel pondered his father’s coldness, his adherence to discipline and duty. His insistence that Nathaniel become some paragon of athletic and academic accomplishment, likely not because of the ducal succession, but out of fear that both sons would develop the falling sickness.
“Damn him,” Mama said, softly. “Damn that wretched, awful, misguided man.”
Thatcher was taking an inordinate amount of time to tidy the tea tray.
Because he was listening to every word.
Thatcher straightened slowly, not with the stiffness of an old fellow growing infirm, but with the wariness of a spy caught at his trade. Thatcher had been all but eavesdropping on Vicar Sorenson’s recent call, he ever-so-helpfullysorted the mailfor Robbie each day, and he’d allowed Lord Stephen Wentworth access to the Hall despite strict orders to refuse all visitors. He’d also very likely left the garden door unlocked, and on purpose.
Nathaniel met Thatcher’s gaze, saw the hint of defiance therein, and realized Thatcher had had an accomplice in these petty insurrections, perhaps an entire staff of accomplices. The handwriting Nathaniel had seen on the threatening notes—tidy, but not quite the same as what he’d been perusing each month for years—identified at least one other culprit.
Nathaniel had told Lady Althea to slightly disguise her handwriting when replying to Lady Phoebe’s invitation, a ploy Treegum had taught him when pretending His Grace of Rothhaven was corresponding through a secretary or underling.
“Leave the damned tea, Thatcher,” Nathaniel said, “and explain to us why Treegum sent those vile notes.”
Thatcher stood straight, casting off the stooped posture of an elderly domestic. “I promised the old duke I’d look after you—we all did—promised him never to leave your service, but even the old duke can’t keep a body from dying. Belowstairs, we discussed all the possibilities and decided that giving you and Master Robbie a nudge was the best way to go forward.”
“Youdecided?” Robbie asked. “The lot of you belowstairsdecided?”
Nathaniel hadn’t seen Robbie in a temper for years. Though his voice was calm, his ire was unmistakable.
While Nathaniel was feeling everything from bewilderment—what other revelations were yet to come?—to relief—perhaps the old duke hadn’t been a complete demon—to rage—the old duke had been demon enough—to concern for his mother and brother.
“We decided,” Thatcher said, setting down the tea tray. “And it worked. Here’s Her Grace and Miss Sarah, sorting out what needs sorting. You’re not the same fella who came home from the moors, Master Robbie, and that’s all to the good, but Rothhaven Hall needs for somebody to be the duke in truth. We can deceive everybody from the innkeeper at the Drunken Goose to the king himself—and we have—but we cannot cheat death.”
“He’s right,” Mama said. “The situation has grown untenable.”
Robbie took to pacing before St. Valentine’s statue, hands fisted at his sides. “If anybody, ever, calls me Master Robbie again, I will not answer for the consequences. I will be Lord Alaric Robert Rothmere, or Robert, or your perishing numbskull-ship, or the Damned Duke of Perpetual Twitching Darkness, but I am done being Master Robbie.”
Mama sat up straighter. “Language, Robbie—er, my dear.”
“Language?” Robbie shot her an incredulous look. “I have the falling sickness. Napoleon is rumored to have had seizures. Socrates had the falling sickness, Julius Caesar,my own father…they all managed rather competently despite their ailment, but I alone was relegated to a gothic horror of a life because of it. Now the servants have decided how my brother and I should be going on, as if Nathaniel has contracted some wretched infirmity of the wits too. I willnotwatch my bedamned perishing language, and I will not answer to a child’s form of address.”
About time.“Excellent notion,” Nathaniel said. “But will you become Robert, Duke of Rothhaven?”
