A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,6
bit on the sturdy side, and her brown velvet day dress lacked lace and frills, for all it was well cut and of excellent cloth.
What prevented Nathaniel from marching for the door was the force of her ladyship’s gaze. She let him see both vulnerability and rage in her eyes, both despair and dignity. Five years ago, Robbie had looked out on the world from the same place of torment. What tribulations could Lady Althea have suffered that compared with what Robbie had endured?
“You gallop everywhere,” she said, a judge reading out a list of charges, “because a sedate trot might encourage others to greet you, or worse, to attempt to engage you in conversation.”
Holy thunder, she was right. Nathaniel had developed the strategy of the perpetual gallop out of desperation.
“You travel to and from the vicarage under cover of darkness,” she went on, “probably to play chess or cribbage with Dr. Sorenson, for it’s common knowledge that your eternal soul is beyond redemption.”
Nathaniel’s visits to the vicarage—his sole social reprieve—would soon be over for the season. In December, a Yorkshire night held more than sixteen hours of darkness. By June, that figure halved, with the sky remaining light well past ten o’clock.
“Do you spy on me, Lady Althea?”
“The entire neighborhood notes your comings and goings, though I doubt your Tuesday night outings have been remarked upon. The path from Rothhaven to the village skirts my park, so I see what others cannot.”
Well, damn. Vicar Sorenson was an indifferent chess player, but he was a good sort who believed his calling demanded compassion rather than a sacrificial duke.
“I will hold your sows for a week,” Nathaniel said. “After that I make no promises.”
He strode for the door, lest the lady attempt to prevent his egress.
“I am poor company,” she said to his retreating back, “but I will not bore you. I must learn how to deal with local society on my own terms, and you have perfected that art. Nobody laughs at you. Nobody dares suggest that your foibles merit ridicule. You have taken a handful of peculiar behaviors and turned them into rural legend. Your life is exactly as you wish it to be and nobody would dream of gainsaying your choices. Our neighbors accept you, foibles, eccentricities, and all. I must learn to make them accept me as they do you, and you are my only possible tutor.”
Nathaniel’s common sense, the internal lodestar of all his decisions, shrieked at him to keep walking. To ride his horse straight back to Rothhaven Hall and lock himself in the walled garden until autumn.
But he was not an ogre. Not yet. He half turned. “Who laughs at you?”
“Everybody.”
“I am not laughing, thus your answer is inaccurate. Does Vicar laugh at you? Does Granny Dewar?”
Lady Althea picked up his plate of sandwiches and brought it to him. “Everybody in Mayfair. If I make any attempt to move in the circles expected of a duke’s sister, I am a walking joke. Even my sister-in-law’s good offices were not enough to protect me from ridicule, and she is a duchess. I have hope that I will do better here in Yorkshire—guarded hope. Good food should not go to waste.”
The sandwiches were not merely good, they were delicious, a reminder that chicken went down well with a dash of curry, and beef benefited from a light application of basil and black pepper. At Rothhaven Hall, old Cook rarely served fowl of any kind. Half a century ago, he’d been a potboy, then a baker’s apprentice. Now he was a cook of limited patience and even less imagination.
Lady Althea clearly employed a chef.
“Have you a dancing master?” Nathaniel asked, finishing his sandwich. “A music master? A tutor who can teach you to dabble in watercolors?”
“Do not patronize me,” she said, returning to her chair. “My brother saw to it that his siblings were exceptionally well educated. I can embroider, tat lace, dance, sing, draw, paint, plan a menu, ride, drive, manage a budget, engage and sack servants, and otherwise comport myself competently in three languages, but with polite society, I am a perennial figure of fun.”
On the table beside her chair lay an etiquette manual, A Lady’s Guide to Correct Deportment by Mrs. Harriet Norman.
“And you seek to improve your grasp of proper behavior by reading that drivel?” The third sandwich was cheese and butter with a hint of dill and coriander. Nathaniel adored cheese that had a personality. He’d forgotten such delicacies existed.