The Truth About Dukes (Rogues to Riches #5) - Grace Burrowes Page 0,44
unhappy.” She glanced up as if to make sure Robert hadn’t moved. “I was wretched, in fact. I’d been raised until a certain age as Jack Wentworth’s get, good for nothing but the gutter, headed for a brothel or worse. Then Jack died, Quinn’s prospects improved, and without warning or explanation, our situation changed.”
“But did your situation improve?”
“Not to my way of thinking. Instead of freedom to roam where I pleased, I was confined the livelong day. My feet were stuffed into pinch-y little slippers that I was forever losing. My hair was trussed up in braids and ribbons and infernally uncomfortable pins. My time was spent incarcerated in a schoolroom, where I was supposed to cram ten years of learning into two. Quinn was never home.”
And of all the tribulations she listed, that last was probably the most bewildering.
“He was off pursuing his dreams,” Robert said, “while you were imprisoned with governesses and elocution teachers.”
“Quinn was worried about Stephen, and with good reason. Then we started spending much of the year in London—the financial capital of the world, to hear Quinn tell it. The more Quinn’s purse thrived, the more miserable I became.”
She bent to her sketching, and Robert let his imagination roam over the plight of a street urchin being made over into a young lady. All of her freedoms taken away, her friendships ripped asunder, and should she have the temerity to question her good fortune, she’d be told, as Robert had been so often told, “It’s for your own good.”
Were there five more presumptuous, pontifical, preposterous words in the language?
“You had no friends,” he said. “Your servants kept you at arm’s length, and your brother lost sight of you when he was home.” Robert knew what was coming, in the same way that an odd, detached sort of anxiety or peculiarity of vision sometimes told him a seizure was on the way.
“I had no friends, but as we bided in York the summer I was fifteen, I engaged the affections of a handsome fellow whose parents owned the house across the alley from ours. The parents were traveling in the Low Countries, and Quinn was away for weeks at a time. The young man and I would meet in the mews. We talked about everything, and we traded notes that became increasingly ridiculous. He left me flowers, I gave him an embroidered handkerchief, and the inevitable soon occurred.”
Robert’s heart broke for that quiet, serious, lonely girl. “Your brother found out?”
“Nobody found out. I was careful, and people see what they want to see. I never had tantrums as Stephen did, never suffered the temper that plagued Althea. My governess told Quinn I was finally settling down and making peace with my lot.” Constance used the side of her pencil, scraping it against the page in a rapid back-and-forth motion. “I was planning to elope.”
Scotland was much closer to York than it was to London. “But you were fifteen. The age of consent even in Scotland is sixteen.” The young people of England, by contrast, were not of age to marry until they turned one-and-twenty.
“I know now that eloping to Scotland would have been pointless. Matters never reached that stage. Before I could run off with my handsome cavalier…”
The pencil ceased moving. The cat leapt to the grass, and Robert risked a glance at Constance. “Before you could elope…?”
She looked down at her sketch. “I didn’t think reciting ancient history would be difficult. It’s very difficult. This is not a story I’ve told to many.”
“You need not tell it to me now.” Though he hoped she would.
“I promised Quinn, the blighter.” She clutched her sketch pad against her chest and bowed her head. The moment became painful, even before she spoke. Robert slid closer to her, wanting to stop whatever unhappy words troubled her, knowing he must not.
“Whatever you have to say, Constance, I want only for you to be happy.” What an enormous relief, to mean that, to be utterly committed to somebody else’s well-being and safety. A healthy man had those aspirations, a man competent in his mind and whole in his heart, if not his body.
Constance looked out over the garden, eyes bright with unshed tears. “There was a child, Rothhaven. Somewhere, I know not where, I have a daughter, and I cannot find her. I have searched and searched, for years I have looked for my darling girl, and I cannot f-find my daughter.”