A Duke by Any Other Name by Grace Burrowes Page 0,85
her? Miss Price is pretty, agreeable, and quite young, but I gather Lady Phoebe is my enemy because I might steal one of her niece’s prospects.”
Perhaps Althea was punishing Nathaniel with this topic, perhaps she was simply airing any subject to keep the conversation from wandering off into impossible declarations.
“Miss Price’s parents had been married only six months at the time of her birth,” Nathaniel said. “My mother’s companion remarked that matter more than once.”
“Such a situation is far from unusual.”
“True, but Mr. Price had been abroad until three weeks before the wedding, and the ceremony happened by special license.”
“Oh, dear. Have you any idea who her father might be?”
Althea already knew the worst of the Rothmere family secrets, and she needed to know as much as possible about the sources of Lady Phoebe’s spite.
“Miss Price is my half sister. Papa was indiscreet. Lady Phoebe is doubtless concerned that even ducal antecedents, when irregular, will limit Sybil’s chances should they become widely known.”
Althea came to an abrupt halt. “A duke had an irregular liaison with a proper young woman?”
“A duke’s brother has had a liaison with you, Althea, and you are of higher station than an earl’s wayward daughter.”
She patted his lapel. “If I am with child, don’t expect me to marry the baronet of your choosing, Nathaniel. Though as to that, I will swill pennyroyal tea three times a day until conception is ruled out.”
“Sensible of you.” Just as coitus interruptus had been sensible of him, but when had behaving with unrelenting good sense become a cardinal virtue?
The day he’d learned Robbie was alive and immured in that detestable madhouse, that’s when.
The mist thinned more as Nathaniel and Althea topped the rise, the wisps of white remaining mostly by the river and in the folds of the rolling fields.
“You should leave me here,” she said. “I know the way.”
“I’ll walk you to your own property, if it’s all the same to you.”
By now, Nathaniel should be inured to the toll common sense took on his spirit. He’d learned to ignore loneliness, the fearful glances of small children, the gossip and speculation of his neighbors, the sheer boredom of seldom leaving his own land, the tedium of dealing with aging retainers. The never-ending frustration of Robbie’s limitations.
He had the litany memorized: You are in good health. You want for nothing. You can do any one of a thousand things, and yet you pine for the seventeen things you must not do. Your only brother has been returned to you from the dead and he is making progress. Stop whining.
But the lecture refused to subdue his aching heart. Another litany was taking its place: I want to walk through the market with Althea, holding hands and inspiring a different kind of gossip. I want to ride with her over the moors. I want to lie down beside her at night and feel her snuggle up out of habit. I want to raise children with her.
“I will miss you, Nathaniel.”
“I will miss you as well.”
She kept on walking, until the stone wall separating the properties came into view. “This is hard. I am good at the hard things. I can smile at the people who insult me Season after Season. I can sit calmly while my older brother is accused of taking the life of a man he only tried to help. All I ever wanted as a girl was for somebody to pick me a few violets, and I contrived well enough without such a bouquet. I can go three days without eating and barely feel it. I can watch Stephen lurching and raging through life and be the sister he needs me to be. But this…”
“I’m sorry, Althea.” More than his own heartache, Nathaniel regretted causing her this pain.
“Don’t be,” she said. “Don’t ever, ever be sorry that for a few hours, you had what you wanted and needed. Heartaches fade, I’m told, but that memory—of being with somebody who valued me for my true self, not for how well I waltz, flirt, and wear jewels—will sustain me through much. I am not sorry. I thank you for it.”
They came to the stile, and Althea climbed the steps. Nathaniel caught her hand, unconvinced by her speech, though it offered some comfort. She was putting a brave face on matters, and at some point, she would recover her balance and renew her search for a match that was all she deserved.
“Ellenbrook is accounted a decent fellow, Althea.”