Page 53 of The Truth About Dukes
“If means and determination can find her, Constance, she will be found. Do we alert your family the ongoing progress of this quest, or wait to inform them when we have results?”
Constance hadn’t thought that far, hadn’t considered repercussions. “I am bringing scandal down on my family if I try to take a place in my daughter’s life. I avoided involving Quinn in my search precisely because I did not want my scandal to touch him any more than it already had.”
Robert took a bite of his sandwich. “If your sister should offer us her cook’s services as a wedding present, we will accept. As far as scandal goes, I will inevitably fall to pieces at some social event. Half the neighbors or what passes for good society in these surrounds will see me again disoriented, disheveled, fumbling for words, and unable to control my movements. If I do not create that degree of spectacle, I will have a staring spell at a formal dinner or in the churchyard. More lemonade?”
“No, thank you. You are saying that a by-blow will pale in comparison to your disability?”
He went rummaging in the wicker hamper. “I have two half sisters, courtesy of my father’s philandering. You may have met the one, Miss Sybil Price. Her parentage is probably an open secret—she looks nothing like the man who married her late mother. Nathaniel tells me some viscount or other is about to offer for her, and her irregular origins are no hindrance to that match whatsoever. This pear torte even smells divine. We ought not to let the last piece go to waste.”
“Your smile is divine—also devilish.”
He withdrew the torte and let the lid to the hamper fall closed. “So there’s Miss Price, marrying a viscount, and her papa was an adulterous, dishonest duke. You could easily present Artemis as my offspring and not a soul would question that story.”
“But that would be a falsehood bruited about to spare me from shame.”
Robert kissed her, holding the pear torte aside. “The purpose of the falsehood would be to spare the child the worst repercussions regarding her origins, and to spare your family the admission that they’d failed to keep you safe. Your brother might appreciate the gesture, because his banks are built in part on his good name.”
“I have been all too aware of the impact my past could have on my brother’s business, which is most of the reason I’ve limited my search to very discreet inquires. This will grow complicated.” More complicated than Constance had realized.
“For others, perhaps, but not for us,” Robert said, holding up the slice of pear torte for Constance to take a bite. “We will offer the child whatever resources will ease her way in the world, on whatever terms you and she choose.”
“She may not want anything from me, may not know I exist, or may hate the thought of me. She’s still a minor. She will have family through the couple who took her in, and be very attached to them.”
“Then she will acquire more family when we find her.”
He was so confident, so unruffled in the face of complications, that some of Constance’s anxiety where Artemis was concerned abated. She would find a way to discuss the situation with Quinn—eventually—and they would do what was best for the girl.
Constance spent most of the afternoon in the orchard with Robert, eating and drinking, talking and kissing, and sometimes falling silent to lie by his side and contemplate the glory of Yorkshire in spring. When they left to wander down the hill hand in hand, Constance knew that whether she ever found her daughter, she’d found the man she was meant to love for all time, and the sooner she married him, the better.
“Nobody would blame you if you declined to attend services henceforth,” His Grace of Walden said, “though your gawking neighbors would doubtless miss the spectacle your convulsions provide.”
“Doubtless,” Robert replied. He occupied the forward-facing seat in his own coach, Constance beside him. He recalled leaving his coach to take his place in the family pew, recalled indifferent singing, and then Sorenson reading the banns for Miss Sybil Price and William, Viscount Somebody.
Then, more swiftly than it had in York some two weeks past, the damnable peculiar feeling had risen up as Robert had reached for Nathaniel, who was goggling in Lady Althea’s direction. The next thing Robert remembered was Walden and Nathaniel helping him to his feet and assisting him back into his coach.
His Grace of Walden sat on the opposite bench looking peevish and severe. He thumped the roof once, far harder than necessary to signal the coachy to quit the churchyard.
“Quinn,” Constance said, “you are not helping matters. My intended is not a spectacle.”
“He might well have been making a point with that public display of infirmity,” Walden said, regarding Robert with a brooding sort of curiosity.
Robert forced himself to sit up straight. “I do not appreciate being spoken of in the third person.” Getting out that sentence had taken effort, enunciating, stringing the words into the proper order, adding the note of hauteur…no small feat this soon after a shaking fit, and still he’d come off sounding a bit drunk.
Walden held out his flask, perhaps a gesture of apology.
Robert shook his head. “Ill advised. Give me a quarter hour. I’ll be fine.”
“You won’t ever be fine,” Walden muttered.
“And you,” Constance shot back, “will never acquire tact. Rothhaven has been honest about his malady. You’re simply upset because you were for once unable to control matters, and you deal poorly with feeling helpless. Rothhaven, by contrast, has the strength of character to endure the same challenge without pouting or fuming.”
Walden looked like he’d been kicked in the balls, poor sod.
“I’m feeling better already,” Robert said, “and in a sense, it’s best to get the churchyard debacle behind me. They’ve all seen me twitching and jerking, seen me dazed and undignified. They can have a good gossip, assure one another they will pray for my health, and get on with their impersonations of Christians.”
Walden drank from his flask, an elegant silver vessel with a coat of arms embossed on both sides. “Does that mean we can anticipate a dinner party seizure? A Venetian breakfast seizure? A few seizures at the next summer fête?”
“Stop it,” Constance snapped. “The falling sickness is asickness, Quinn. It strikes where and when it pleases to.”
