Page 40 of The Truth About Dukes
He picked up his teacup instead. “Constance has been trying to find the child?”
“Searching for your niece, Artemis Ivy Wentworth.”
The teacup shook slightly in Quinn’s hand, why he could not say. “She named her daughter Artemis?”
“For the goddess who protects young girls. Ivy, as in ‘I will cling to her as ivy clings to the oak.’ If you are awash in self-recrimination, Walden, I will leave you to your guilt, but I will also tell you that the reason I alerted you to Constance’s whereabouts all those years ago is because I was falling in love with her. She was too young for me then, of course, but more significantly,Iwas also too young and had nothing to offer her. I was a prisoner of my father’s arrogance and my own self-pity. Do close your mouth.”
Quinn’s teacup went clattering to its saucer. “Younotified me that she was at that dreadful place?Yousent that note?”
“By that point, I was permitted to read a redacted version of the York newspaper. Dr. Soames carefully excised most social news, but he forgot how absorbing the personal advertisements could be. I saw your advertisement. I connected your description to the young woman responsible for preventing my starvation. I had no idea if she was your sister, but she fit the description and was clearly more educated than any chambermaid ought to be.”
The cat climbed down from Rothhaven’s shoulders, stretched luxuriously, and crossed the sofa to sniff at Quinn’s knee.
“You found her for me,” Quinn said. “You could have kept her there, but you sent her home. Does she know about this?”
“Not yet. The revelations regarding Artemis were of greater moment. I will of course let Constance know the truth in due course. I recall his name now.”
Whose bloody bedamned—?“The cat?”
Rothhaven rose and swatted at his breeches. “Septimus, because he came from a large litter, according to Constance. I’ve prepared a draft of my proposal regarding her settlements. The arrangement takes particular care to leave all of Constance’s funds under your jurisdiction or Lord Stephen’s should anything untoward happen to you.”
“Because you are a person who suffers from epilepsy?”
“Because I am a reasonable man, and the less enlightened among us still regard my condition as evidence of demonic possession. I am in a mental fog after a bad seizure, and if my own father had me put away at the onset of my illness, somebody else might try to have me committed again, for my own good, of course.”
Rothhaven stroked the cat’s head, which occasioned purring.
“Not committed,” Quinn said. “I won’t allow that. You and Constance can live out your days in relative obscurity at Rothhaven Hall, and I will manage your property if necessary to keep the courts happy, but you won’t be exiled again.”
Rothhaven withdrew a packet of papers from his coat pocket and set them on Althea’s escritoire.
“Very kind of you, Walden, but if the courts become involved, the judge will appoint the guardian of his choice. With not one but two sisters married into the Rothmere family, your objectivity regarding my circumstances is questionable. The courts like to appear above petty influences like ducal consequence. Your attempts to meddle might actually make my situation worse.”
Quinn rose before the cat could appropriate his lap. “It won’t come to that.”
“It came to exactlythatfor nearly half my life. I’ll bid you good day.” Rothhaven bowed very correctly. “You need not see me out, and no, I didn’t omit a material term from the settlement agreement in some inane cat-and-mouse game between prospective family members.”
That rebuke—for it was a rebuke—merited a riposte, but Quinn was still coping with the interview’s other revelations.
“One question before you climb into your hearse and return to your mausoleum: Why tell me how to find my sister? You were confined under miserable conditions, she befriended you, and yet you sent her home. Why?”
Rothhaven’s lips quirked. “I had nothing to offer her at the time, so let’s call it a fit of conscience, shall we?” He withdrew, leaving Quinn to the dubious company of the cat.
“Am I allowed to be pleased that you attended services on Sunday?” Constance asked, twining her arm through Rothhaven’s outside the solicitors’ office.
She had waited to raise the topic of Sunday services until after some legal papers had been signed for a youngish Mr. Cranmouth, nephew to the present senior partner in the firm of Cranmouth and Cranmouth. The documents had something to do with selling a patch of ground, and Rothhaven had been determined to see them signed.
Althea and Nathaniel had strolled off, intent on sharing an ice at a shop around the corner. From thence, the plan was to meet at the livery in two hours, giving Constance time to introduce Rothhaven to Miss Abbott.
“You are too easily pleased,” he replied, scowling at Lord Nathaniel’s retreating form. “The Almighty saw fit to leave the church roof in place, so we must conclude my presence in the family pew was a matter of indifference to Him as well.”
What little conversation Rothhaven had offered today had been irritable, understandably so. The journey into York on a sunny morning had to have tried his nerves. He’d said little for the entire distance other than “Curtains down, please,” and “How much farther?”
Now he stood on the walkway before the offices of Cranmouth and Cranmouth, looking ready to hurl thunderbolts.
“Your neighbors bowed and curtsied out of respect, Rothhaven.”
The duke had waited until the moment before the first hymn had begun to have his coach deposit him at the foot of the church steps. He’d stalked up the church aisle and taken his place beside his brother, but not before every person in the church had risen. For the yeomanry and laborers, no pews were provided, but for the gentry and the merchants, Rothhaven’s arrival had created a stir.
