Page 12 of The Truth About Dukes
“Well?” Lady Constance asked, setting aside her sketch pad and pencil. “Will you sit for me again or have I given offense?”
The man on the page was a bit haughty, also proud—the sketch found the difference between justified pride in an ancient lineage and aristocratic arrogance. He shaded toward the first, but not entirely. He was no boy, this fellow, and he exuded a man’s physical self-possession and intelligence. He might not be precisely handsome—what mattered handsome?—though he would give a good account of himself in any debate.
The last, most intriguing aspect of the portrait was a hint of humor lurking deep in the eyes. An acceptance of life’s absurdities gained through firsthand experience. A man with that quality could be a tolerant friend, if somewhat irascible.
“You have turned me into a duke.”
“An accident of birth did that. I sketched the person who sits before me.”
Constance was an accomplished artist, but then, anything she undertook—from a disguise, to a sketch, to the study of pianoforte—would be done well.
She also knew how to respect a silence, how to remain still and quiet so an inspiration could steal forward from the shadows in a man’s head.
“You said I need a plan, my lady, for when an assault is made on my legal competence. You have given me a glimmer of an idea.” Robert needed solitude and time to work out the details, but he could feel them swimming in the depths of his imagination. Patient focus could lure them to the surface, and he was nothing if not patient.
“That’s good, then,” she said, a smile dawning in her eyes, only to disappear when Jane, Duchess of Walden, appeared in the doorway.
“I should have known this would happen,” Her Grace said, marching right into the room and peering at Robert’s sketch. “Constance is talented, and we thwart her artistic impulses at our peril. Your Grace, my husband is asking for a word with you in the family parlor. I believe the marriage settlements are to be discussed.”
She wiggled her eyebrows as if sharing a bit of gossip. Robert had no idea if the duchess was poking fun at her husband, at the topic of marriage settlements, or at the notion of a man who’d not left his property in years negotiating finances with a wealthy banker.
“I’ll show you to the parlor,” Lady Constance said, “and I will leave the sketch on the sideboard in the foyer. I did promise you could have it, after all.”
The duchess claimed she needed to confer with the nursery maids, meaning Robert had Lady Constance’s company to himself as they descended the main staircase.
“I have never negotiated marriage settlements before,” he said. “I likely will never negotiate them again.”
“You won’t marry? Won’tsee to the successionas all titled men must?”
“I have the falling sickness. Or had you forgotten?”
“And does this illness render you incapable of siring children?” She put that hopelessly blunt question to him at the foot of the steps.
“It does not, but the illness can run in families. I have some evidence suggesting my father was afflicted.”
“And yet nobody recalls him as anything but a highly effective, self-possessed duke. How odd.”
Robert again had a sense of innuendo escaping him. “Are youteasingme?”
“Yes, I am. I expect I will commit the same transgression regularly. Best learn to tease back, Your Grace. Now, about these settlement negotiations: The issue isn’t money. Althea’s portion is generous and earning good interest. Quinn respects a fierce negotiator. He will expect you to be accommodating and generous because the aristocracy believe in appearing gracious to each other, but instead you must be a staunch advocate for your brother’s welfare.”
She drew him along the corridor, pausing outside a room from which masculine voices rumbled. “Don’t give too much too easily,” she went on. “Demand that every detail be in writing—every detail. Quinn will leave something out of the first draft to test you. It’s a favorite tactic with him. Good luck.”
“Thank you,” Robert said, for he could not recall another occasion when anybody save Nathaniel had so clearly taken his part.
Her gaze became a tad wary. “For the sketch?”
“For the sketch, for the advice. For…”For not ending up dead at the age of fifteen.“For teasing me.” He yielded to impulse then, probably for the first time in months, and bent to kiss her cheek. Very forward of him, despite the fact that their families were soon to be connected.
Very bold.
Constance kissed him back, also on the cheek. “Remember to be fierce.”
Then she sashayed up the corridor, leaving Robert feeling a little dazed, a little bemused, and perhaps even—possibly?—a little fierce.
“This is monstrous,” Lady Phoebe Philpot said. “Monstrous, Mr. Philpot, and as a solicitor, society looks to you to uphold the decorum and dignity of the realm. You mustdo something.”
What Neville Philpot longed todowas take up his newspaper and leave for the stable, where a man could find a sunny bench, a pint of summer ale, and some dignity of his own. Painful experience told him Phoebe would only work herself into more agitation if he left her to fret, and when her ladyship was agitated no sunny bench in all of England was safe from her dramatics.
