The Truth About Dukes (Rogues to Riches #5) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,102
the coach off to the carriage house.
“Did you meet the girl?” he asked.
Constance stopped her sister from dragging her into the house. “We met my daughter, your lordship. Ivy is in every regard a lovely young lady, though her circumstances are less than ideal. Thank you for asking.”
The ladies continued on their way, heads close together.
“You deserved that,” Robert remarked. “Constance is delightfully fierce when her protective instincts are aroused.”
Somewhere down the drive, birds took up their matutinal songs. The sun hadn’t yet cleared the horizon, but daybreak was imminent.
“Does Constance know what Lord Stephen’s solicitor had to say?” Nathaniel asked.
“Of course, and her opinion on the matter would make a sailor blush. Let’s walk a bit, shall we? After being cooped up all night, I find some fresh air welcome.”
Nathaniel sent him a brooding look. “You want to wander down the drive, under the open sky, no fog, no mist, to obscure the horizon?”
A line of Shakespeare came to Robert: This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
“Yes, Nathaniel, I do. I want to enjoy a pretty sunrise in the company of my soon-to-be-married brother. I want to clear my head with the fresh Yorkshire air. I want to give Constance a rest from fretting about me, and I want to put off, for a few moments, the ordeal of conferring with Walden and his duchess. Any more questions?”
“That woman is turning you into a duke.”
Robert ambled along the crushed shells of the drive, enjoying the sound of his own footsteps, enjoying the birdsong, enjoying the golden light shining over the land rolling away to the east. So precious, this freedom, and he might soon have to part with it.
“That woman is becoming a duchess, but she will always also be a mother who regrets bidding her firstborn child farewell. Ivy is in the care of a bachelor uncle, a man of God who is determined to move his household to Australia. He has booked passage for himself and the girl on a ship due to leave next month.”
“And this weighs on your mind more heavily than what Philpot and Weatherby are cooking up?”
Robert wandered over to a stone wall bordering a sheep pasture. Lynley Vale’s flocks had yet to be shorn, though that work would start soon. He found a smooth patch and used the wall as a bench, the better to watch the sun come up.
“You have the right of it: The situation with Ivy weighs on my mind more heavily than the lawyers intriguing against us. A child who feels abandoned by her family exceeds what my conscience can bear. I have all but begged Constance to set herself apart from me, to emigrate to bloody Australia without me if that will reunite her with her daughter, but she refuses to go. My duchess will not abandon me, and I cannot make myself abandon her.”
“Have you considered simply allowing Philpot to become your guardian?” Nathaniel shoved back to sit on the wall and posed that question casually—too casually.
“I did. You would prevent Philpot from his worst excesses, as long as you were extant. Walden would take a hand in matters, and my life would remain tolerable, at least in the opinion of most people. I would likely be confined to the Hall and its grounds, and some doddering old physician would suggest I be regularly bled, which would do exactly nothing to reduce the incidence of my seizures.”
“You know that?”
“Soames bled me every day for a fortnight at one point. The seizures grew markedly worse the longer he persisted with his experiment. Alexander threatened to notify an uncle of what was afoot—an uncle who was a member of the Royal College of Physicians—and the experiment ended.”
“And you would risk going back to that sort of life?”
“I am at risk for being sent back to that sort of life.”
“No, you are not. You appear before the commission of lunacy, tell the examiners good King George sits on the throne. Identify yourself as Alaric Gerhardt Robert Rothmere, eleventh duke of Rothhaven. Tell them your date of birth, and that you dwell at Rothhaven Hall, and what day of the week it is. They dismiss the petition and there’s an end to it.”
Nathaniel, a brave, determined, tough-minded man, was afraid.
Robert was afraid too. Terrified, in fact. “And if I have a seizure in the midst of the festivities?”
“They suspend the proceedings until you’re recovered, the same as