A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,32
was correct: He’d been not simply unfair, but ridiculous. Increasingly, he was ridiculous and the whole charade had passed tiresome years ago.
“I am sorry, my lady, for startling you. For indulging in the bad though effective habit of solving as many problems as possible by being somewhat disagreeable. For receiving you so uncordially. Now may I have my walking stick?”
She considered the handle, which was plain silver, but good and heavy, and sized to fit Nathaniel’s grip.
“My brother Stephen has a pair just like this one,” she said, passing the walking stick over, “serviceable and elegant. Too good for hiking the fields, Rothhaven, and not as much of a weapon as some others would be.”
Nathaniel set the walking stick against a statue of St. Valentine. At one time, decades ago, this had been called the lovers’ garden, because it was safe from the world’s eyes. Now it was simply the walled garden, Master Robbie’s retreat.
“You could make that apology convincing by inviting me to breakfast,” Lady Althea went on, strolling along a border of red, white, and yellow tulips.
Nathaniel fell in step beside her, the better to monitor her snooping. “My staff would have a collective apoplexy if I invited anybody to breakfast.” Robbie might have an apoplexy in truth. The provocations for his illness were mysterious, though he’d apparently outgrown the worst of the violent fits.
“Then replace your staff. You are entitled to entertain as you please, Rothhaven. Another plate at breakfast is no trouble at all.”
“My staff does not deal well with change.”
“Neither do you, but then, I have been known to treat my first supper invitation from Lady Phoebe as if she’s dropped a sovereign in my begging bowl, haven’t I? I should be bored of accepting invitations by now. Beyond bored, though I never thought to receive any invitations, except perhaps the invitation to rot my life away in the poorhouse.”
Sweet thundering Valkyries. What was he to say to that? “Revising one’s outlook takes time. In all of history, how many beggars have had to adjust to the constraints of ducal expectations?”
She stooped to disentangle a pair of tulips that had yet to bloom. “Not enough of us, apparently. Polite society is the most ossified, pointless, ridiculous excuse for a human institution ever there was.”
Such bitterness in those words, and such truth. “Then why work so hard to gain polite society’s approval?”
She subsided onto a bench that faced another border of tulips. Pink and white, though a stray yellow specimen bobbed among the others like a sheepdog amid its flock.
“I don’t care for polite society, Rothhaven, but I have nieces. Please do have a seat.”
Nathaniel could not fathom what nieces had to do with enduring an evening of Lady Phoebe’s sniping and braying. He took the place beside Lady Althea, the bench faintly damp.
“Explain yourself.”
His lack of manners earned him a peevish look.
“Won’t you be so good as to explain yourself, rather.”
Her ladyship’s gaze fixed on the errant yellow tulip. “My nieces are precious and trusting and unpredictable, and they have brought my brother revelations nobody else, not even his dear Jane, could have brought him. He reads them stories, he walks at a child’s pace the length and breadth of Kew Gardens, one daughter on his back, another holding his hand. He pretends to be a bear, down on all fours, prowling about the nursery as the children hop away like bunnies, laughing uproariously. It breaks my heart.”
That last was said softly, an honest admission of pain.
“And this man is a duke?” When Nathaniel’s father had roared, nobody had laughed, ever.
“First, Quinn was less than nothing. He was Jack Wentworth’s worthless get, though there’s apparently some doubt about Quinn’s actual paternity. His mama ran off and died. Then Jack married my mama, who died before she could run off, alas for her. Quinn worked himself to exhaustion trying to keep his siblings fed. Thank the kind powers Jack Wentworth expired of too much bad gin, and Quinn’s luck shifted. He has a head for business, and our fortunes steadily improved.”
A relief to know Althea’s brother was dutiful where his sister was concerned. “Go on.”
“We were managing quite well, then some old title had nowhere else to go, and Quinn got stuck with that too. He became a duke, he married Jane, and she became a duchess, and they…they are happy despite their lofty status. Polite society has to take them seriously, for they are a formidable couple. I was simply dragged along, like a branch