Page 9 of The Truth About Dukes
“He would stay by my side out of guilt, because the falling sickness can run in families—my father was apparently prone to it—but Nathaniel is free from it. His is the guilt of any family member faced with an afflicted sibling. He sees my suffering and cannot put his own interests first.”
Constance had to make several tries to get his lips right, and still…Lord, she wanted a glass of wine, or—how long until sunset?—brandy.
“Is it Nathaniel’s guilt you are managing or your own, Your Grace? You cannot help an infirmity that has afflicted you since boyhood.”
“True, but I can help the extent to which that infirmity casts a pall over my brother, at least for the present. He deserves a few happy years.”
Constance had been studying her subject long enough to attempt his chin and jaw in one smooth line. More resolution here, and maturity. Rothhaven was not a boy, not a pretty youth, and yet he was attractive.
“Why only a few happy years?”
A bleakness came over Rothhaven’s expression, quickly chased off with that ironic smile. “I was hidden away for more than a decade because my condition makes me unfit for the title. When some impecunious distant relation or meddling neighbor decides that my father was right to remove me from the line of succession, Nathaniel will find a way to blame himself. He will take up his mantle of misery, and likely never again set it aside.”
Constance wanted to tell Rothhaven to be quiet, to stop distracting her, but the purpose of conversation was to distract the subject. To aid him to remain still and relaxed while being closely studied.
She erased her first attempt at his chin. “You are clearly sane and hale. Who could declare you unfit?”
“I am sane at present, but what about five minutes from now, when you address direct questions to me and I simply stare past you—what then? When I cannot sit a horse for fear of a shaking fit overcoming me in the saddle—I have nightmares about that. When I refuse to take strong spirits for fear that too will increase the frequency of my seizures?”
He had barely sipped his wine at lunch, and Constance had been tempted to drink it for him.
“But you come right,” she said. “You soon regain your composure and your mind is unaffected. There are no perfect peers, Rothhaven. I’ve danced with enough of them to know. They limp, they suffer megrims, they go blind. His Grace of Devonshire is all but deaf. The king’s gout is so bad he can barely walk. Your primary burden appears to be one of guilt, which makes no sense to me at all.”
Rothhaven turned his head slightly, so more of his features fell in shadow. “No sense at all, Lady Constance? Truly?”
The craving for a brandy tried to take over her concentration, but just as His Grace battled an ailment of long-standing, so too had Constance learned to deal with the temptation of the decanter.
“You moved,” she said. “Please resume your previous posture.”
He paused a telling beat before complying. Perhaps he knew how intimately acquainted she was with the sticky weight of guilt. More likely he was making shrewd guesses and letting innuendo do the work of certainty.
His Grace might be prone to seizures, but his mind remained quite sound. Perhaps it was his heart that refused to come right, another affliction with which Constance was too well acquainted.
“Will Lord Nathanieldo, Your Grace?” Quinn asked his wife, as Althea walked with her swain at the foot of the garden.
“They humor us, Quinn,” Jane replied, taking a seat on a wooden bench. “Those two will marry, whether we approve of the match or not.”
Quinn came down beside her, wondering what Jane saw when she gazed at Lord Nathaniel and his intended.
“They seem compatible. He’s loyal to family, and Rothmere land marches with ours. I want to object to this betrothal, but my only grounds would be that Althea grew up when I wasn’t looking, and I wasn’t done cosseting her myself.”
Jane laced her fingers with Quinn’s, which had become a habit somewhere between the first and second babies.
“Is Nathaniel loyal to family, or is he deceptive?” Jane mused. “Nathaniel knew for five years that his older brother was alive. He allowed all and sundry to continue to think Robert dead, as the previous titleholder intended, when Robert had instead come to live at the Hall. I wonder if Nathaniel didn’t enjoy playing the duke.”
“Babies make you introspective.” Quinn rested his arm along the back of the bench, for when Jane was expecting, his need to touch her, to hold her close and protect her from all perils, was constant.
“Babies make me bilious and tired and weepy. This baby is turning me into the Duchess of Unscheduled Naps,” she said, smoothing her hand over the slight rounding of her belly. “I wish we knew Lord Nathaniel and his brother better.”
“We likely will, in time. I can tell you this: Nathaniel’s version of playing the duke, rarely leaving Rothhaven property, never socializing, neglecting his seat in the Lords, looks a lot like brotherly devotion to me. I suspect brotherly devotion is also why Rothhaven himself supports this match. I don’t think anything less than a strong fraternal bond would drag that man from his estate even to take a meal with his nearest neighbors.”
Jane laid her head on Quinn’s shoulder. “Is that why you asked Constance to show His Grace the portrait gallery? Because Rothhaven has a retiring nature?”
“Not retiring, Jane, reclusive. Nathaniel claims the falling sickness is most of the explanation for Robert confining himself to the Hall for years on end. No man wants an audience when he has a shaking fit.”
“And the rest of the explanation?”
“I can only speculate.”
