Page 24 of A Duke Too Far (The Way to a Lord's Heart 4)

“No, you do notbeg off. You send a note worded as this one is, expressing the Lady Althea Wentworth’s regrets that Mrs. McCormack will be unable to attend, and apologizing for the late notice. Offer no explanation at all. Have your regrets delivered about four hours prior to the occasion.”

“Because,” Althea said slowly, “that is barely enough time to find a replacement guest if the numbers are to match, but a savvy hostess will be able to produce another lady guest on even that little notice. What a diabolical mind you have. I will have challenged Lady Phoebe before I step down from my coach.”

Rothhaven removed the glasses and set them on the blotter. “Just so. Now about that cheese, my lady?”

Althea went to the sideboard and retrieved a parcel wrapped in brown paper. “Before you dash off over the balcony or leap through a window, was that you I saw wandering down by the river at dawn? It looked like you, but perhaps you didn’t hear me when I called a greeting. Fog distorts sound, I know, though I’m almost certain it wasn’t the vicar.”

Rothhaven shrugged into his coat and fairly snatched the parcel from her hands. “You shouldn’t be out wandering alone at such an hour.”

“You, who wander alone everywhere at all hours, often at a gallop, lecture me to have an escort on my own property?”

“Precisely. If you aspire to have one-tenth of my cachet, you must develop your own crotchets. No fair stealing mine. My thanks for the cheese.”

He bowed, and Althea should have curtsied. Instead she seized him in a hug. “Thank you, Rothhaven. For an eccentric, reclusive, crotchety demon, you really are a lovely man. Enjoy the cheese.”

He muttered something that sounded like “Oh, for God’s sake” and did not hug her back. Perhaps that was because he held a sizable wheel of cheese in one hand, or perhaps an aversion to hugs was another one of his crotchets.

“I used to love the evenings,” Everett Treegum said, settling into a rocking chair. “The sun rose on new opportunities and, with my energies refreshed from a night of sound slumber, I went about my tasks grateful for my blessings. By the end of the day, I was tired and satisfied, pleased with my efforts, usually, or confident that tomorrow would be better.”

Elgin blew the foam off his ale, the flecks spattering the worn planks of the servants’ hall floor. “Now we want nothing so much as to stay warm and comfy under our quilts until we have to piss so badly we venture forth. At least winter’s behind us.”

In Yorkshire that was never reliably the case. “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Elf.”

Treegum and Elgin had been trading that confession for the last few years. Mrs. Beaseley would likely echo the sentiment, had she not already sought her bed. Thatcher, the butler, had fallen asleep in his rocking chair, as had become his habit of an evening.

“We will man our posts as long as need be,” Elf said. “We promised Her Grace.”

“Her Grace hasn’t bothered to look in on the Hall in five years.”

“She’s getting older too.” Elf shifted the pillow at his back, having completed his half of the usual exchange. Sometimes Elf took on the part of the grumbler and left Treegum the role of philosopher.

The rocking chairs that sat in a semi-circle around the wide hearth had shown up two years ago, doubtless a gift from His Grace.

“Our duke is trying to do his best,” Treegum observed. “Miss Sarah informs me he writes to Her Grace every month without fail.” Such a pretty hand she had, and she wasn’t too proud to drop an occasional note to an old friend either.

“His Grace and Her Grace try hard, and we manage.”

“But I never expected to bemanagingfor years on end.”

Elf took a long swallow of ale. “I didn’t expect tolivethis long.”

“Exactly my point. I almost wish Lady Althea’s hogs would come calling regularly. That livened things up a bit.” Those wayward sows had livened up the duke himself—even Treegum thought of him as the duke now—and His Grace was becoming a positively grim fellow.

“Lady Althea has trouble written all over her, Treegum. She’s not a woman to do as she’s told.”

“Then maybe some trouble is what we need. We tend to our tasks, we keep our mouths shut, Master Robbie reads away the winter and gardens through the summers, but without an heir, what’s to become of the Hall?”

The fire was dying and the night air brisk, so Treegum added half a bucket of coal to the flames. In some households, the coal was tightly rationed, but not at Rothhaven Hall. The dukedom was in excellent financial health, even aside from the investments Master Robbie found so diverting. Without expensive Seasons in London, lavish dinner parties, or the usual vanities expected of a ducal home—flaming torches to light the drive, extensive landscaped grounds, floral displays to enhance the main façade—expenses were modest.

Then too, the staff was small and getting smaller.

“Something has to change, Elf, and soon. We can all dodder into our graves, but those lads deserve more than a house haunted by lies and arrogance.” Treegum and Elf had both served under the previous duke and, as youths, under his un-lamented father. Hard, proud men who had wanted hard, proud sons.

Idiots.

“I can still recall the last duke,” Elf said, “shouting at the boy when the poor mite was shaking himself half to death. Calling him names and ordering him to get up.”

“He’s not had a shaking fit for some time.” That they knew of. Master Robbie kept to his rooms for much of the day reading newspapers, or he puttered alone in his walled garden.

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