A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,22
Her gaze had grown wary, her posture straighter.
Nathaniel stood for a moment more or less holding her hand while he pondered an appropriate rejoinder. She was braced for a setdown, and he wanted to put out the lights of any man who’d ever delivered her one.
Lady Althea withdrew her hand. “If you’d like to call again, Your Grace, please do send a note. Be punctual and I will receive you myself at the front door.”
“And if I don’t care to use the front door?” He honestly didn’t care for skulking along hedges and hoisting himself over balustrades.
“Then I will not receive you at all. Enjoy the walk home.”
He’d hoped for a smooth, urbane conclusion to the evening and was instead on the receiving end of a chilly dismissal. What fool had announced that the finish mattered? Though her ladyship had the right of it: He was better off adhering to the routines that ensured privacy at the Hall, and this departure had been unwise, for all he’d enjoyed it.
Enjoyed it very, very much.
He took her hand again, and this time kissed her knuckles, an enormous breach of protocol. He held her hand one moment longer and looked her directly in the eye.
“Exquisitely done, my lady. Exquisitely done. Good night.”
He left her smiling, her right hand grasped in her left. The flame in the sconces created a halo of fiery highlights in her dark hair, and her blue eyes were for once devoid of wariness.
A lovely image to remember her by.
Sleep refused to oblige Althea, but then, she’d never needed much sleep.
Poverty forced a distance between creature needs—for rest, safety, sustenance, companionship—and the realities of life. Working exhausted, functioning when terrified, thinking clearly in the midst of horrendous anxiety became normal for any child cursed to have Jack Wentworth as a father.
“Old Jackie is dead,” Althea murmured, giving up the battle for rest. Dawn would arrive soon, though by summer, dusk and dawn would be within kissing distance of each other. She climbed from her bed, changed into two shifts and an old walking dress, and put on her most disreputable half boots.
What the boots lacked in style they made up for in sturdiness.
Wandering at dawn was another habit left over from girlhood. The world was quiet and innocent at dawn, full of hope and good smells. Baking bread, scrubbed front steps, freshly mucked-out stables. The odors of abundance, domestic industry, and order had been a comfort to a child who later in the day would not have dared to venture into the better neighborhoods.
“But first thing in the day, the world belongs to those willing to wander.” She gave Septimus a pat on the head and left the bedroom door cracked for him.
The garden called, though it wasn’t much of a garden. Some previous owner of Lynley Vale had seized about half an acre from the surrounding moors to level into parterres, added a fountain and a buffer of rolling lawn, and then gone back to raising sheep.
“It’s enough.” Althea stole into the misty gloom by way of the library terrace. Rothhaven had come this way the previous night, and from there he’d invaded Althea’s dreams.
“Or my nightmares.” Althea walked the crushed-shell path that ran around the garden’s perimeter, though the wilder terrain beyond called to her.
Rothhaven would like knowing he’d disturbed her sleep. A brooding recluse who galloped free in the evenings and strode the fields by night wasn’t entirely content to remain behind his castle walls.
“So why pretend otherwise?” And why—why, why, why?—plant that sweet, tender kiss on her less-than-ladylike knuckles?
That thought sent her to the foot of the garden, where somebody had left a bucket of muddy tubers. Irises, from the looks of them, very recently dug up and in need of replanting. Althea’s gardener was a conscientious soul, and irises would make a nice addition to the staid privet hedges and empty urns.
“So would daffodils.” She left the garden by way of the groundskeeper’s shed and retrieved a trowel and bucket, then ambled along a foggy track toward the river. Closer to the water, the mist was thicker, imparting a half-eerie and half-enchanting fairy-glen quality. A lanky hare loped across the path, then stopped several yards on, wiggling its nose in a fashion that suggested Althea had brought an unwelcome scent with her.
“Good day to you.”
The hare hopped away, not in any particular hurry.
She found her quarry—a bank of daffodils not yet in full bloom—and proceeded to soak her hems and get her hands filthy filling