A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,55

did not. Mrs. McCormack steered the conversation from one flattering question to the next, but she never got ’round to explaining her employer’s absence. The tray was nearly empty before Stephen even noticed that odd omission.

“So where is my sister?” he asked, offering Mrs. McCormack the last jam tart.

“Out and about, my lord. Tell me how your nieces go on. If Lady Althea misses anybody in London, it’s the children.”

“She doesn’t miss her siblings? How lowering.”

“Of course she misses you as well. Shall we have a bath sent to your room? All that travel must leave you longing for a soak and nap.”

Althea alone of Stephen’s relations kept a room for him on the ground floor of her house. She had a lift that rose as far as the first floor that Stephen himself had designed and installed, but he never resumed use of a lift until he’d first inspected it.

“A bath and a nap sound lovely, but you must be honest with me, Milly. Where is Althea?”

“Mrs. McCormack to you, sir. I honestly don’t know where her ladyship has got off to. She visits the home farm frequently, calls on the vicar to discuss various charitable endeavors, has a cup of tea with this or that tenant. She’s not like some, roosting on a velvet pillow the livelong day.”

“If I were to ride over to the home farm, would I find her?” Not that Stephen wanted to sit a horse for at least a week.

“I cannot say, my lord. When Lady Althea is in a certain mood, she isn’t to be questioned.”

Now they were getting somewhere. “And why would she be in that mood?”

Mrs. McCormack gathered up the tea things. She glanced about the parlor as if looking for a lost book. She twiddled the fringe of the pillow at her elbow.

“It’s that wretched Lady Phoebe and her miserable friends. I could not accompany Lady Althea to last night’s supper due to a touch of dyspepsia. Lady Althea was apparently treated to less than genuine hospitality. Lady Phoebe tried to spill tea on Lady Althea’s gown, then cast aspersion on His Grace of Walden’s wealth, and intimated that Lady Althea was hiding from some scandal in London by biding here in Yorkshire.”

“Althea told you this?”

“She made a few remarks when she got home. I pried the rest out of Vicar earlier today.”

“I see.” Though truthfully, Stephen was baffled. Althea’s transgression was that the Wentworths had come up in the world through a combination of luck and hard work. In London, a veritable herd of young women and their mamas apparently resented Althea’s good fortune because it threatened their own prospects, but what motivated such pettiness in rural Yorkshire?

“Althea is off somewhere licking her wounds?” She was like a cat in that regard. When injured or ill in spirit, she sought solitude, a tonic Stephen had found only marginally effective.

“That she owns this property, or as good as, is a comfort to her, my lord. Here, she can order all as she sees fit. Few women have that much authority so early in life, and she does well with it.”

Stephen did not enjoy owning property, but understood that no English gentleman would be taken seriously among the peerage without at least a few acres to his name.

“I will have my soak and my nap,” he said. “Then I’ll have a trot around the estate. Constance mentioned that Althea had some sort of dustup with His Grace of Rothhaven. Did that get sorted out?”

Mrs. McCormack had reached for the last tea cake. She paused, hand hovering over the tray. “Oh, I wouldn’t know anything about that, sir. I was visiting my sister in York. Never heard a word about it.”

Balderdash. Milly McCormack would have caught up on all the talk with the housekeeper before the teakettle had reached a boil. She would have chatted with Monsieur Henri directly thereafter, and probably exchanged a few words with the wives of the nearest Rothhaven tenants.

Stephen treated himself to a long soak and a short nap, then rose and dressed, determined on one objective: to find out exactly why his sister, who had perfected the art of avoiding social confrontations, had purposely antagonized a duke known for his sour and solitudinous disposition.

Althea knew a duke when she saw one, and Rothhaven—sitting in the pretty garden, looking tired and resolute—fit the description perfectly in all but name. His honor was unshakable, his word ironclad. His self-discipline knew no limits and his sense of responsibility toward