A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,38
chest, Nathaniel could not step away.
She remained in his arms, her back to the wall, her fingers stroking his nape. He seized more details to savor when the company of brandy and philosophers had paled, as it inevitably did.
Her ladyship wore no stays, and her figure was natural and full. When Nathaniel grazed his nose along her cheek, she shivered a bit, suggesting he’d found a sensitive spot. The floral scent of her soap concentrated where her neck and shoulder joined, and he resisted—barely—the urge to taste her there.
That, he must not do. His body would have happily turned the moment into an interlude for which his honor would never forgive him.
“You ought to be going,” he said, making no move to let loose of the lady. Had five words ever torn a larger hole in a man’s heart?
Retrieving Robbie from the hell the old duke had consigned him to hadn’t been a choice. When Nathaniel had pieced together the truth, he’d simply acted, certain that Robbie would have done the same for him had their circumstances been reversed. No loving sibling left his ailing brother to rot upon the moor in the care of strangers.
Only gradually had the consequences of that choice become apparent. Robbie hadn’t been prepared for rescue, and while he’d longed to return to Rothhaven Hall, he’d imposed conditions that Nathaniel had agreed to too readily.
Anything for my only brother.
And now, anything had become everything.
And everything had expanded to include dealings with a woman who, in the space of a single kiss, could bring back to life a heart that had become as shuttered and bleak as Rothhaven Hall itself.
Althea stroked a hand over Nathaniel’s chest. “I know something now.”
While I have been rendered nearly witless. “What do you know?”
She gave up the support of the wall and purely held Nathaniel. “You do not want to be alone. Not really. You choose it, though I haven’t a clue why and I dislike this decision of yours exceedingly.”
He endured her caresses as he would strokes with the lash, and he held still lest she cease petting him. “Interesting. I dislike the thought of you currying favor with gossips and tabbies. Any man worthy of you won’t like it either.”
Althea kissed his cheek, sighed, hesitated, then slipped from his embrace. “I have learned something else, something about myself.”
She looked a fright, her hair half-undone, her hems damp, her boots muddy, and yet, she was the loveliest sight he’d ever beheld.
“What else do you know?” He tucked a curl dangling behind her left ear back among its kin.
“I know that I will never curry favor with anybody again. I will socialize, I will favor my neighbors with my company, I will condescend in the most gracious sense of the word, and in a few worthy cases I will offer friendship, but my days of currying favor are over. Thank you for that, Rothhaven.”
His was not a worthy case. She stated her conclusion politely but clearly, as a lady ought. “I am pleased to hear it.” He could not tell her to go, not again.
“Farewell, Rothhaven. If ever you have need of me…”
He shook his head. The cruelest cut of all would be to leave matters between them unresolved—cruel to them both. He could not offer to be her friend, not now.
“Good day, my lady, and my thanks for your many kindnesses.”
She looked up the path, which led around the walled garden and onto the portico off the estate office. She looked down the path, where the last of the mist was drifting away from the fields and pastures.
Then she turned without another word and walked away. Nathaniel ducked back into the garden and stood alone until long after her footsteps had faded.
“Well, here I am,” Mrs. Millicent McCormack said, bustling into Althea’s informal parlor with a workbasket over her arm, “and I don’t mind telling you, my lady, I was relieved to get your letter.”
Althea had summoned her companion home, but she hadn’t expected her back quite so soon. “Relieved, Milly?” She remained seated at her desk, Milly having established early in their relationship that they needn’t stand on ceremony.
Millicent McCormack was that perennial social conundrum, the wellborn widow fallen on hard times. Althea had met her at a meeting of the York Charitable Association, liked her humor and candor, and liked even more that a woman with limited means would still try to better the lot of others. Althea had offered Milly a post as her paid companion