Page 37 of The Truth About Dukes
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 knownowthat 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.”
Chapter Nine
Maybe a seizure was a little like what Constance endured on that hard, sunny bench. Rothhaven took her in his arms, and try as she might, she could not maintain her composure. The tears had come, silent and messy, then loud and messy, and then in quiet shudders.
Before Constance was through, her face ached, her nose stung, her eyes burned, and Rothhaven’s handkerchief was a damp ball of hopelessly wrinkled linen in her fist. Her dignity was a cause so lost she doubted she’d ever recover it.
“I never cry,” she said, voice raspy. “I abhor tears.” A legacy from a father who’d delighted in tormenting any daughter stupid enough to let him see her cry.
Constance sat beside Rothhaven on the bench, his arm around her shoulders, the solid, warm bulk of him against her side. Her straw hat had ended up on the grass along with her sketch pad, reticule, and pencil, and the cat was crouched beside her effects, chewing on her eraser.
“I hate that you have suffered,” Rothhaven replied. “I gather the bounder never meant to marry you.” His hand stroking Constance’s hair was beyond gentle, while his tone presaged protracted torture forthe bounder.
“I told him everything, about Jack Wentworth, growing up without shoes, Quinn digging graves.…He listened so sweetly, called me his wild rose. When I told him I had conceived, I thought he would share my joy and we would tell our families of our impending nuptials.”
Rothhaven remained silent, silence being one of his gifts. He was a quiet, patient, kind man, and Constance vowed to make him the best duchess she could possibly be.
“He laughed.” For the first time, Constance recalled that memory with rage rather than sadness. “He laughed and asked me why I’d spread my legs if I hadn’t expected to conceive a bastard. Girlslike mewere supposed have ways of preventingthat sort of thing, and he wasn’t about to be trapped by a streetwalker in muslin and velvet. In his version of events, I’d thrown myself at him, and he’d never breathed a word of marriage much less made me any promises. I’d also picked his pocket while plying my trade, stolen his dear grandpapa’s gold watch.”
Her lover had threatened her with hanging, something Constance would likely never tell Quinn.
Robert’s hand on her hair paused, then resumed its slow caresses. “I’m a fairly good shot. I practice in the gallery when the winter megrims threaten. Something about the loud noise revives my spirits. Even wounding this fellow would put me in a positively jolly humor.”
“You are so dear.” Constance snuggled closer, while the cat curled up on her reticule and closed its eyes. “He died at university before the baby was born. I suspect somebody’s irate husband or brother called him out. The family put it about that he’d fallen prey to a sudden illness.”
Robert kissed Constance’s temple, as if they’d been married for years. “Were you cured of your infatuation by then?”
