A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,56
his family and dependents was bottomless.
What a lonely business, being a duke without a duchess. The least Althea could offer Rothhaven was companionship and affection, and that was doubtless the most he’d permit himself to accept.
“You have allowed a good-faith mistake to turn into a fiction perpetrated on the entire world,” Althea said. “Why?” And will you put your arm around my shoulders again?
“You have not seen one of Robbie’s more spectacular fits. He falls to the ground shaking. In the worst cases, he loses control of his bladder. He thrashes and twitches for the longest minutes in creation and is then exhausted and foggy, as you saw him at the river. In that state, he is not mentally fit to care for himself. He tried to hide his seizures from me at first because he feared I would return him to Dr. Soames’s care.”
“Then he doesn’t know you very well.”
Rothhaven’s lips quirked. He clearly wasn’t about to thank her for a compliment though.
“His own father betrayed him, my lady, and I benefited from that betrayal. What sort of brother am I, that I accepted years of excuses about perpetual school terms or one holiday after another spent with friends? What sort of brother am I, that I didn’t question years of unanswered letters?”
Oh, that was miles past the outside of too much and proof everlasting that Rothhaven had become the duke in truth.
“What sort of mother allows her sons to suffer through such a fiction? Her Grace had to have known where Robbie was, at least in a general sense, and she didn’t communicate that truth to you even when you approached your majority. Let’s get away from these walls, shall we?”
“The duke did not tell his duchess where he’d stashed her firstborn, only that Robbie was receiving good care. Then Robbie supposedly died before I attained my majority, and he…”
“Is sleeping.” Althea rose, because a flowery little haven had abruptly become too confining. “Your orchard has started to bloom. Let’s enjoy that fleeting beauty while it lasts.”
Rothhaven was silent as they passed through the gate, and Althea marveled that he was sane, much less civil. An older brother erased, a father without an ounce of paternal tenderness, a mother kept in ignorance…And all of it landing on the shoulders of a blameless young man with no allies to aid him.
“What did your steward say when you asked him about the funds your father had sent year after year to some obscure asylum on the moors?”
“I haven’t asked him. Treegum doubtless concluded my father was making a charitable donation.”
Proving that Rothhaven had at least considered the question. A winterbourne crossed the path to the orchard. Althea gathered her skirts to step over and found herself grasped by the elbows.
“On three,” Rothhaven said. “One, two…” He lifted her over the water as if she were one of the little sheep dotting the Cheviot Hills—mostly fluff and bleating.
And then, neither of them moved, until Rothhaven slipped his arms around her waist. “I have not put this story into words, ever. You make me reconsider my assumptions, and that is uncomfortable.”
His embrace, by contrast, was very comfortable. He held her as a man holds a woman from whom he has no secrets.
“Your father likely made no charitable donations beyond his tithes,” Althea said, “and yet, the steward, who had to know the heir had been banished, never questioned that expense. The adults all around you refused to question why Robbie never wrote to his parents, which every schoolboy is expected to do at least monthly. They never questioned why he spent all of his holidays anywhere but at the only home he knew, with the brother he’d been inseparable from as a lad. The local vicar never challenged this situation. If the adults around you weren’t raising those questions, you learned quickly that those questions weren’t to be asked.”
She let him go, furious with a duke long dead for scheming against his own family. And for the sake of what greater good? Pride? Appearances?
“Why don’t you simply have yourself appointed Robbie’s guardian?” Althea asked. “If he’s truly unsound of mind, you can protect him and his assets by obtaining legal authority.”
The orchard lay up a slight hill and the trail Althea traveled was smooth. She wanted either an exhausting climb or a few stones to kick, but the path obliged with neither. The orchard walls were not quite as high as those of the garden, the objective being to keep out hungry