The Truth About Dukes (Rogues to Riches #5) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,1
happily regale you with it at another time. For the present, might we agree to behave as if we are two cordial people acquiring a family connection through our siblings?”
“We are acquiring a family connection through our siblings, more’s the pity. Your brother and my sister are in the advanced stages of besottedness.” How had that happened, when Althea had given up on polite society and Nathaniel Rothmere famously shunned company of every description? That he even had an older brother sharing Rothhaven Hall with him was quite the revelation to local society. All and sundry had taken Nathaniel as the titleholder, believing Robert to have died prior to reaching his majority.
“Can we manage the cordial part?” Rothhaven asked. “I would like to try.” He sounded sincere. He had always sounded sincere.
“I don’t know what I can manage where you are concerned.”
“Your ladyship is honest, as ever. Your forthright nature is one of your most appealing qualities.”
“As if I give a hearty heigh-ho for your good opinion of me.” Constance rose, abruptly at the limit of her patience. “I wish you a pleasant evening.”
Before she’d taken a single step, Rothhaven had risen and manacled her wrist in a firm grip. He did not hurt her—he was the last person to inflict physical harm on another—but neither could she leave.
“You will please not abandon me to the darkness, my lady.”
“Why not? You are a duke, of sound mind, in good health, and the worst that can befall you on this terrace is that one of the Weatherby sisters will try to get herself compromised with you.”
He changed his hold so his fingers interlaced with Constance’s. “You must not leave me alone out here, because I am generally terrified of the out-of-doors.”
Constance’s first inclination was to laugh, scornfully, because Rothhaven’s comment sounded like a pathetic attempt at flirtation, but the quality of his grip on her hand stopped her.
“You are serious.”
“I am entirely in earnest. If you would assist me to return to the ballroom, I would be much obliged. I should never have assumed I was up to the challenge of wandering about an unwalled terrace under an open sky, even at night.”
Constance had been angry with this man for half of her life, but that tirade could keep for another time. He was entitled to his fears, and she liked the notion of having him obligated to her. She took his arm and re-joined the crowd in the ballroom, and before her thinking mind could stop her, she agreed to partner His Grace through the ordeal of the supper buffet as well.
Sensory perceptions assaulted Robert—the scent of the beeswax dripping down the chandeliers, perfume and pomade in a gaggingly thick cloud, incessant conversation that beat at his ears like angry hornets, the stomping and gliding of dancers’ feet against the chalked floor…
I will kill my baby brother.
The thought was unworthy of a duke, but Nathaniel’s behavior—abandoning Robert amid the ballroom crowd—was heinous. Robert had ventured forth from Rothhaven Hall for the first time in years only because Nathaniel’s courting aspirations had required a show of familial solidarity.
Robert had been about to excuse himself in the middle of a conversation with no less personage than Quinton, Duke of Walden, when he’d spotted a woman weaving through the crowd. She had slipped between the other guests like cool water trickling past mossy stones, and the quality of her movement—graceful, silent, efficient—had stirred Robert’s memory.
He knew those blue eyes, he knew the curve of that jaw. Constance Wentworth was older, of course. Her figure was quite womanly now, and she was attired as befit the daughter of a wealthy and titled house. The subtle wariness hadn’t left her, though, and probably never would.
She’d done Robert the great courtesy of greeting him civilly, and now she had—true to her nature—allowed him the additional kindness of her company at supper. If she thought it odd that he all but clutched at her hand and sat nearly in her lap, she kept that sentiment to herself.
He held out an empty plate to her as they waited in the buffet line.
“I believe, Your Grace, the standard approach is for you to hold the plates while I fill them.”
Because a lady should not have to carry even a plate. “Of course. My apologies.” Growing up isolated from all proper company had left gaps in Robert’s social vocabulary as vast as the Yorkshire moors. Even if he’d wanted to dance with Constance—which, of course, he did not because he