A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,5

Althea for the dance and escorted her to her next partner with all the courtesy in the world, and she’d been the butt of another joke.

“I cannot oblige you, Your Grace,” Althea said. “My swineherd is visiting his sister in York and won’t be back until week’s end. I do apologize for the delay, though if turning my pigs loose in your orchard has occasioned this introduction, then I’m glad for it. I value my privacy too, but I am at my wit’s end and must consult you on a matter of some delicacy.”

He gestured with half a sandwich. “All the way at your wit’s end? What has caused you to travel that long and arduous trail?”

Polite society. Wealth. Standing. All the great boons Althea had once envied and had so little ability to manage.

“I want a baby,” she said, not at all how she’d planned to state her situation.

Rothhaven put down his plate slowly, as if a wild creature had come snorting and snapping into the parlor. “Are you utterly demented? One doesn’t announce such a thing, and I am in no position to…” He stood, his height once again creating an impression of towering disdain. “I will see myself out.”

Althea rose as well, and though Rothhaven could toss her behind the sofa one-handed, she made her words count.

“Do not flatter yourself, Your Grace. Only a fool would seek to procreate with a petulant, moody, withdrawn, arrogant specimen such as you. I want a family, exactly the goal every girl is raised to treasure. There’s nothing shameful or inappropriate about that. Until I learn to comport myself as the sister of a duke ought, I have no hope of making an acceptable match. You are a duke. If anybody understands the challenge I face, you do. You have five hundred years of breeding and family history to call upon, while I…”

Oh, this was not the eloquent explanation she’d rehearsed, and Rothhaven’s expression had become unreadable.

He gestured with a large hand. “While you…?”

Althea had tried inviting him to tea, then to dinner. She’d tried calling upon him. She’d ridden the bridle paths for hours in hopes of meeting him by chance, only to see him galloping over the moors, heedless of anything so tame as a bridle path.

She’d called on him twice, only to be turned away at the door and chided by letter twice for presuming even that much. Althea had only a single weapon left in her arsenal, a lone arrow in her quiver of strategies, the one least likely to yield the desired result.

She had the truth. “I need your help,” she said, subsiding into her chair. “I haven’t anywhere else to turn. If I’m not to spend the rest of my life as a laughingstock, if I’m to have a prayer of finding a suitable match, I need your help.”

Chapter Two

Lady Althea sat before Nathaniel, her head bent, her fists bunched in her lap. Ladies did not make fists. Ladies did not boast of breeding hogs. Ladies did not refer to ducal neighbors as petulant, moody, withdrawn, and arrogant, though Nathaniel had carefully cultivated a reputation as exactly that.

But those disagreeable characteristics were not the real man, he assured himself. He was in truth a fellow managing as best he could under trying circumstances.

I am not an ogre. Not yet. “I regret that I cannot assist you. I’m sorry, my lady. I’ll bid you good day.”

“You choose not to assist me.” She rose, skirts swishing, and glowered up at him. “I am the only person in this parish whose rank even approaches your own, and you disdain to give me a fair hearing. What is so damned irresistible about returning to the dreary pile of stone where you bide that you cannot be bothered to even finish a cup of tea with me?”

Nathaniel was sick of his dreary pile of stone, to the point that he was tempted to howl at the moon.

“We have not been introduced,” he retorted. “This is not a social call.”

She folded her arms, her bearing rife with contempt. “That mattered to you not at all when a few loose pigs wandered into your almighty orchard. You do leave your property, Your Grace. You gallop the neighborhood at dawn and dusk, when there’s enough light to see by, but you choose the hours when other riders are unlikely to be abroad.”

Lady Althea was unremarkable in appearance—medium height, dark brown hair. Nothing to rhapsodize about there. Her figure was nicely curved, even a