A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,53

has had the falling sickness ever since.”

There was more to the tale, much more, most of it bad.

“I’m sorry,” Althea said. “I’m sorry you had an arrogant beast for a father, sorry you had to watch your brother all but destroyed for the sake of a grown man’s pride.”

Destroyed—that was the word Nathaniel had instinctively shied away from, the word that fit the situation exactly.

“His Grace did, eventually, destroy Robbie in fact, or as good as. Robbie began to have seizures as well as staring spells. I woke up one day and was told Robbie had been sent off to school. My mother refused to come out of her rooms for two weeks. My father eventually left for London, though they had been estranged while living under the same roof. I did not see my brother again for years.”

Althea slipped her hand into Nathaniel’s. “He wasn’t at school.”

“He was placed with a physician, a Dr. Soames, who claimed to provide humane care for the insane. Robbie wasn’t insane when he went there, but he nearly was by the time I brought him home. I don’t even know the whole of it—ice baths, restraints, purgings, bleedings, beatings, long confinements indoors, strange diets—but either Soames eventually deduced that Robbie was merely ill, not insane, or Robbie learned how to outwit the lunacy that passed for care there. Then too, Robbie was heir to a dukedom. Abusing a ducal heir is seldom smart.”

“I take it your father died and you were able to extricate your brother from this hell?”

Althea’s hand in Nathaniel’s was warm, a comfort freely offered and dearly appreciated. Not what Nathaniel had expected, but then, this was Althea Wentworth, who knew what it was to have a monster for a father.

“Shortly before I turned twenty-one, my father called me into his study and informed me that my brother—the one perpetually at school, then at university, then traveling to distant capitals—had succumbed to an influenza that had become a lung fever. Robbie was dead, I was the heir, and no more need be said on the matter. The house observed mourning. A coffin eventually arrived and was buried in the family plot. I have since confirmed that all we buried was a large bag of sand.”

“Your father told you that your brother was dead?”

“Told me, my mother, the vicar, the world. He accepted all the condolences a grieving father was due, and I believe, for my father, Robbie was dead. A Duke of Rothhaven who fell to the ground shaking, who stared off at nothing for minutes at a time, who could not ride to hounds or swim or even miss a night’s sleep without risking public humiliation…my father could never countenance such a thing, so Robbie was simply erased. For a duke, erasing the life of a boy is appallingly easy, and in Papa’s mind, he was erasing a disastrous family scandal at the same time.”

Althea rose and strode off. “He erased your brother? Blotted out the life of his own son?”

“Noted Robbie’s death in the family Bible, ten years to the day from when my brother was sent away. His Grace was nothing if not thorough. I suspect he gave Robbie ten years to outgrow his illness, which Robbie failed to do.”

Althea whirled, her swishing skirts making the tulips bob. “Your father was a thorough devil. I cannot believe…but then, Yorkshire might as well be Cathay as far as most of London society is concerned, and many a family secret has been buried on the moors. How did you learn that your brother yet lived?”

Nathaniel wanted her back by his side, wanted her hand in his, but he also wanted to see her reaction when he told her the last of it.

“I almost didn’t find him. Thank the blessed powers for small mercies, my father died less than three years after telling me Robbie was gone. Lung fever, oddly enough. I went through the usual rituals of investiture, took my place in the House of Lords, and prepared to get on with my duties. One of those duties was tending to the family finances.”

Althea bent to brush her hand over a greening border of lavender. “Nobody keeps a secret for free, do they? Dr. Soames wanted his thirty pieces of silver.”

“My father had paid an annual fee—a staggering sum—and the next installment came due. Either Soames was so backward as to fail to note the passing of a duke or he assumed I would continue my father’s scheme. He