A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,11
disdain. Althea did not care for the experience even so. She walked with him to the front door and passed him his hat and spurs.
“I will revile your execrable manners in the churchyard if you like, and assure all and sundry that your breath is sulfurous. Mightn’t you pay a call or two on me when planting is finished?”
He opened the front door, letting in a gust of fresh, peaty air. “Could you intimate that I was fearsome rather than malodorous?”
“Very well.” Althea accompanied him down the steps to the mounting block. “I will inform any who care to listen that the measure of your step is ominous and that a lift of your eyebrow inspired me to paroxysms of terror.”
“I’d settle for a frisson of dread. One doesn’t want to shade into melodrama.”
One didn’t want to part from Rothhaven never to see him until autumn, when he’d gallop past Althea’s park at dusk on Tuesday evenings.
“I would appreciate even a proper morning call,” she said. “A mere quarter hour of your time.”
A groom walked the duke’s gelding along the path that led from the stables, and Althea felt a sense of having come desperately close to attaining a goal, only to have it slip through her fingers.
That would not do. Not at all. Rothhaven was clearly the right resource for the challenge she faced, he simply needed more motivation to assist her.
“Never beg,” Rothhaven said, buckling on his spurs. “Never give quarter, never beg. With time and determination, I’m sure your situation will improve. My thanks for your hospitality.”
Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me. That heart-cry belonged to a young girl watching her mother’s still form being carried from the cramped, dank quarters that had qualified as home. The same girl had thought those words when Quinn had left York to take a job in service at a country manor. As a woman, Althea had again bit back that plea when Quinn had been led off to Newgate.
Rothhaven was barely an acquaintance, but Althea had pinned her hopes on his cooperation—how much trouble would it be for him to pay a few morning calls?—and now he was leaving too.
He checked the snugness of the horse’s girth, let down his stirrups, and swung into the saddle. The great black beast began capering around on the drive, clearly ready for another dash across the countryside.
“I play chess,” Althea said, “and backgammon and cribbage. You could come here on Tuesday nights, and nobody in the village would know. Nobody would know anywhere.”
The horse danced in a little circle, then propped on his back legs.
“Settle, imp,” Rothhaven growled.
The horse gave one halfhearted buck, then stood like a lamb.
“Please,” Althea said, gazing up at the duke. “The cut direct is helpful, but there’s so much more…”
He touched his hat brim. “Never, ever beg. Good day, my lady.” And then he was off down the drive, galloping as if the devil were at his heels.
Chapter Three
“The days grow longer,” Nathaniel said. “I enjoy these evenings at the vicarage tremendously but must turn my attentions to the estate for the nonce. Spring has arrived at last.”
Dr. Pietr Sorenson set aside the chessboard, the scene of a pleasant if uninspired match all around.
“And when spring arrives,” he said, “you are off to tend your herds and acres, consigning me to the dubious comforts of Leviticus. I would rather not end the winter’s play on a note of defeat. Can’t you spare me one more week?”
Sorenson was a widower, and he’d once remarked that evenings were the time when sorrow hung most heavily.
“This is my second one-more-week, Pietr. I cannot argue with the sun.” To emphasize the point, Nathaniel began putting his pieces away.
“Defeat it is, then. I did not see your rook, you naughty fellow. I absolutely did not see him prowling about there at the periphery. You grow more subtle in your stratagems while I bumble about like a hog rooting through the middens.”
Sorenson had a subtlety all his own, as any good vicar did. “You saw her ladyship’s prodigal pigs returning to the fold?” Hannibal crossing the Alps with his pachyderms would have been less of a spectacle.
“I was out for a ramble. Hard to miss so much splendid livestock on the move.”
In the three days Lady Althea’s swine had tarried in Nathaniel’s orchard, he’d grown accustomed to seeing them there, accustomed to their happy grunting and sighing. Pigs were in truth tidy creatures, and her ladyship’s herd was well behaved. They didn’t tear