Page 8 of The Truth About Dukes
“The doctor observed me for my own safety,” Rothhaven said, “the better to treat my illness.”
“Except he didn’t treat your illness, did he? He simply poked at you as if you were a lizard in a jar.”
“A ducal lizard, so he poked carefully. Where are we off to now?”
“My sitting room. It’s on the east side of the house, so we’ll have less sunshine at this time of day, and nobody can spy in the windows. Why are you allowing Nathaniel to hare off to Crofton Dike, or whatever the place is called?”
Rothhaven would not be hurried, though Constance now felt a sense of urgency about their destination. Quinn, Jane, Althea, and Nathaniel were strolling in the garden, which was a polite way to say Jane was offering Nathaniel private instructions on the proper behavior of a husband toward his beloved wife. Once that lecture concluded, Rothhaven would be expected to accompany his brother back to the Hall.
“Nathaniel’s estate is Crofton Ford, a pretty little cottage of twelve bedrooms that came to him through a maternal aunt.”
“And are you banishing him to this cottage? Not very gracious of you, Rothhaven.” She led him into her sitting room and drew the curtains closed. “The couch will do.”
Rothhaven stopped two feet inside the door. “I beg your pardon?”
“The couch.” Constance waved a hand at the emerald velvet upholstered settee. “The green will pick up the color of your eyes, though all I have to work with at present is a pencil. If you take that end”—she nodded toward the corner—“you’ll be half in shadow, which will give me an interesting challenge for a three-quarter profile.”
Rothhaven remained right where he was. “Does one or does one not typically ask a subject’s permission before sketching that subject?”
“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. If I’m sitting in the park, a sketch pad open on my lap, and a pair of dowagers are feeding ducks ten feet from my bench, I don’t bother the ladies with a request to continue sketching. I will give you any drawing I complete, and you may do with it what you please.”
The point of the exercise for Constance was to better understand the second duke to whom she would have a family connection. One ducal title had cost her severely. A second was a daunting prospect.
“Very well,” Rothhaven said, “I consent to sit for your sketch. Do I understand that you would rather your sister set up housekeeping closer than twenty miles away?”
He took the indicated corner of the sofa and positioned himself so he was caught in both light and shadow. The effect was intriguing, for the illuminated portion of his face conveyed a detached aristocratic mask. Dignified, a little impatient, like Wellington eager to return to his troops.
The shadowed portion of Rothhaven’s countenance was more complex. He looked out on the world with not merely a sense of disappointment, but rather, with the certain knowledge of betrayal. Sadness, anger, possibly resignation…
Constance’s pencil began to move, and she bestirred herself to recollect Rothhaven’s question. Conversing with a subject was a skill most portraitists developed of necessity, and he’d asked about…
“I never thought to be parted from Althea at all,” Constance said. “We are allies, comrades in arms—or in ball gowns. Nobody in the whole of London knows exactly what leaps and stumbles I’ve made to arrive where I am, save Althea.” Even Althea did not know the whole of the tale, but she hadn’t needed the details. She’d had the rough sketch, and that had been enough.
“So how is it,” Rothhaven asked, “that your sister tarried in Yorkshire long enough to capture Nathaniel’s heart while you went to London for the usual social whirl?”
His eyebrows were intriguing. The slight swoop gave him an air of expecting answers even when no specific question was on the floor.
“Althea indicated that she no longer needed or wanted my companionship. We spent the Yuletide holidays together at my home, Thorndike Manor, where Althea passed most of the time reading in her room. She was visiting me less and less, and extending fewer invitations for me to visit her. I knew something was afoot when she declined to go shopping with me in York as the New Year began. Then it became apparent that she needed me to go to London.”
“Neededyou to go to London? Does anybody ever need to go to London?”
Such disdain, from a man who’d likely never left Yorkshire, and yet, his question was insightful too.
“Althea needed me to make the journey south without creating a fuss, to arrive at Quinn and Jane’s home in the usual course, pretending that Althea’s choice was of no moment. As it is, they didn’t leave her alone for long, did they?”
His eyes…a mere pencil sketch would never do justice to a gaze that complicated. Rothhaven was both calm and turbulent. Distant and intensely present. To study him made Constance thirsty for a glass of wine—or something stronger.
“Your sister will not depart for Crofton Ford out of any distaste for your company, my lady. I all but told Nathaniel to leave the Hall.”
His nose was easy. A proud beak, worthy of his title. The line was straight—no boyhood breaks or brawling—and gave his features an implacable quality. Rothhaven would be polite, even considerate, but he would not back down from a fight.
What had he…? “Why send away the brother who loves you so? Why not allow him to make those choices?”
“Because Nathaniel loves me so.”
His mouth was another challenge. Not quite grim, particularly not with the slight ironic quirk he gave it now.
“You sent your brother away, because he would never abandon you, given a choice.”
