A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,104
kiss, but then, what had she expected?
She pulled off her riding gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of her habit. “If you know the invitations have gone out, then you know that the nominal hosts are Their Graces of Walden, and that my role in the affair, along with Stephen’s, is secondary.”
And what a pile of work that had been, to reword dozens of invitations. Stephen had at least not gloated overmuch when Althea had conceded to his strategy.
Nathaniel glanced around the foyer, which boasted not a single tulip or dried rose, nor so much as a sketch on the walls.
“Are you to be invaded by family too?” Nathaniel asked.
“Show me the dower house,” Althea replied, unpinning the collection of feathers that passed for her hat. “And no, I am not being invaded, scolded, brought to heel, or otherwise chastised. Stephen and Jane assure me that when my family shows up to preside at my first venture as a rural neighbor, they are merely being supportive.”
One corner of Nathaniel’s mouth lifted. “I tell Robbie the same thing, frequently. Althea…”
He set her hat on a hook near the door, and such was the depth of Althea’s foolishness that she relished even the sight of Nathaniel’s back filling out the exquisite tailoring of his riding jacket.
“You need flowers in this foyer, Nathaniel. Bright colors, nothing formal. Set your gardeners to scything the verge to the drive and get a few pots of salvia onto the terrace. First impressions matter, and I hope your mother matters to you as well.”
He set off down a corridor that led to the left off the foyer. “How did you know Her Grace was visiting?”
“Your mother called on my sister-in-law.” The emptiness of the house was sadder even than the neglect Rothhaven Hall’s exterior suffered. No pretty little vases, no gleaming pier glasses, no domestic touches in a dwelling that was meant to be the comfort of a woman’s old age.
“When duchesses are conferring with one another, the realm is in peril,” Nathaniel said. “Nobody has lived here for two generations. My father used this manor only as a guesthouse for his rare shooting parties. Its best feature is that it has no view of the Hall.”
The library was small, more of a study, but then, books were expensive and fragile. If nobody lived in the house, storing unread tomes here would have been an invitation for mice to take up residence.
And yet, despite empty shelves and bare walls, the library was pleasant in a way more imposing chambers could not be. The hearth was large enough to generate significant heat, the French doors looked out over an old-fashioned formal garden that somebody had kept in trim.
“Move some of the tulips from your walled garden to that bed,” Althea said, gesturing to bare dirt surrounding a dry fountain. “Fill the fountain, and you will attract birds even if the water merely sits there. The flowers might attract butterflies, and the color will be cheering.”
Nathaniel remained across the room, where Holland covers had been folded and neatly stacked in a reading chair.
“Why have you come, Althea?”
Because I missed you. Because I am worried for you. Because you didn’t respond to my invitation. “Because you are making a mistake.”
“That’s what we Rothmeres do, apparently. We make mistakes. My father was terribly mistaken to put his son on a half-trained colt. He was even more mistaken when that son became injured and His Grace insisted the boy climb back into the saddle almost immediately. That’s how mistakes are. They have progeny.”
He crossed the room, his boots thumping on the wooden parquet floor. “Now you have joined in the mistaking, coming here when you know we’ve already been caught in one indiscretion.”
He glowered down at Althea, once again the Dread Duke, not an ounce of humor or warmth in his bearing.
Althea fluffed his cravat. “The mistake you make now is in trying to present your mother with a house so lacking in comfort that she’ll hare away to the south, never again inconveniencing you with her presence.”
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?”