Page 45 of The Truth About Dukes
“My attraction to you began years ago. There’s nothing precipitous about it. I set you aside once before, and now that the moment is upon me…”
She peered up at him. “Explain yourself.” Then she bundled closer, as if settling in for a long, comfy snuggle.
And that—the trust, the affection, the desire—decided that last of Robert’s uncertainty. “Now I know I can never let you go.” Then he kissed her, with no self-restraintwhatsoever.
“How are you not angry all the time?” Constance asked Rothhaven when she’d recovered from his kisses. “How are you not mad?”
“Oh, but I am.” He kept his arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the garden door. “You’ve seen it for yourself. I am uneasy under an open blue sky, I dread the company of strangers, and I can barely abide to ride in a coach, though I’ve done some thinking about that.”
The man beside her now was a relaxed, even chatty fellow compared to the man who’d managed that coach ride into York.
“But you did travel into York. You will again.”
He paused before the garden door, arms linked around her shoulders. “When my father put me into the traveling coach all those years ago, it was a sunny, lovely day. I thought I was going off to school, as the ducal heirs had gone off to school for generations. Mama was crying, poor thing, and Nathaniel was trying to be brave, but I was confident that my life as a young man of the world was about to begin.
“I would have adventures,” he went on, “I would make friends, I would excel in my studies. I would finally make Papa proud of me, and the disapproval I’d felt from him since birth would evaporate into paternal rejoicing at how wonderful I was.”
Oh, God. That poor boy. That poor innocent boy. “You were betrayed. When your father put you into that coach and sent you on your way, knowing full well what your destination would be, you were betrayed.”
Rothhaven held the door for her. “There’s more. I finally figured this out as I so rudely dozed on your shoulder yesterday. Soames at one point in my early years would run me into the village by coach to study Greek with the local parson. We’d leave early in the morning, when the sun was low. The light flickering through the trees could start me shaking. Soames was delighted to observe this, though it took me eons to connect a cause and an effect.”
“Light through the trees caused a seizure?” What manner of brain ailment reacted to light?
“When a coach moves down a wooded road and the sun is at a low angle, the intermittent obstruction of the tree trunks causes the light to flicker. I realized that I never had a seizure on the journey home. If he switched my appointments to the afternoon, I had no seizures either going or coming. If he drew the shades, no trouble befell me.
“Time after time, if I was made to sit gazing out at the trees for one of those early morning journeys, I would succumb to my malady. Soames never made the connections, but I soon did, and I refused early morning or late afternoon outings if I could.”
Constance hurried through the door, wanting to be away from the garden walls and from the eyes of anybody observing from the house.
“I hate Soames. Hate him with an unrelenting fury. He had better be dead, or I will be tempted to make him dead. To torture a boy like that and call it science…No wonder you dread travel, no wonder you abhor coaches and sunshine. Why are we out here?”
She would return to the house with him, she would shut herself up in that house with him, if that was what his condition required.
“I wanted to enjoy the plum blossoms with you before they fade.”
Oh, this man. This dear, wonderful, man. “Will you kiss me again? I’ve a notion to more than kiss you. I came over here to tell you that Quinn has heard from the College of Arms. King George has kindly signed some letter or modification or parliamentary whatever and the honors of your station have been restored to you. George is quite the Tory these days, and he expressed sympathy for the offspring of sodifficult and deviousa man as your papa.”
She had taken Rothhaven’s hand in the midst of that babbling. His calm was contagious, a balm to a troubled soul.
“Do I owe Walden more than my thanks for this bit of political sorcery?”
What did he—? Oh.“Quinn did not raise the topic of money. You fellows can sort that out if necessary. I suspect money did not change hands, it being only just that you assume the title that never should have been denied you. Quinn has no patience for bribes.”
They reached the orchard, though rather than pass through the gate, Rothhaven stood at the top of the hill, gazing upon his family seat.
Constance slipped an arm around his waist. “You are considering how to explain what you said earlier, about having set me aside once before. That was at the hospital, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. You were too young; I was too ill for more than friendship.”
She rested her head against his shoulder. “You were my friend, though. You sought nothing from me, and after what I’d been through with that bounder…I did not believe a male to whom I was attracted could be a friend.”
He continued to gaze at the house nestled on the undulating green fields below, and the silence took on a peculiar vacant quality. Rothhaven’s gaze was vacant as well, as if his focus had gone not merely inward, but elsewhere entirely.
“Rothhaven?”
He appeared not to have heard her. Before alarm could take root, Constance realized this was a staring spell. He’d had them when she’d known him before, and they always passed. A subtle shift in his posture a few moments later suggested the interlude was over.
“As I was saying,” she began, “I did not believe a male to whom I was attracted could be a friend.”
