Page 48 of A Duke Too Far (The Way to a Lord's Heart 4)

“Is sleeping.” Althea rose, because a flowery little haven had abruptly become too confining. “Your orchard has started to bloom. Let’s enjoy that fleeting beauty while it lasts.”

Rothhaven was silent as they passed through the gate, and Althea marveled that he was sane, much less civil. An older brothererased, a father without an ounce of paternal tenderness, a mother kept in ignorance…And all of it landing on the shoulders of a blameless young man with no allies to aid him.

“What did your steward say when you asked him about the funds your father had sent year after year to some obscure asylum on the moors?”

“I haven’t asked him. Treegum doubtless concluded my father was making a charitable donation.”

Proving that Rothhaven had at least considered the question. A winterbourne crossed the path to the orchard. Althea gathered her skirts to step over and found herself grasped by the elbows.

“On three,” Rothhaven said. “One, two…” He lifted her over the water as if she were one of the little sheep dotting the Cheviot Hills—mostly fluff and bleating.

And then, neither of them moved, until Rothhaven slipped his arms around her waist. “I have not put this story into words, ever. You make me reconsider my assumptions, and that is uncomfortable.”

His embrace, by contrast, was very comfortable. He held her as a man holds a woman from whom he has no secrets.

“Your father likely made no charitable donations beyond his tithes,” Althea said, “and yet, the steward, who had to know the heir had been banished, never questioned that expense. The adults all around you refused to question why Robbie never wrote to his parents, which every schoolboy is expected to do at least monthly. They never questioned why he spent all of his holidays anywhere but at the only home he knew, with the brother he’d been inseparable from as a lad. The local vicar never challenged this situation. If the adults around you weren’t raising those questions, you learned quickly that those questions weren’t to be asked.”

She let him go, furious with a duke long dead for scheming against his own family. And for the sake of what greater good? Pride? Appearances?

“Why don’t you simply have yourself appointed Robbie’s guardian?” Althea asked. “If he’s truly unsound of mind, you can protect him and his assets by obtaining legal authority.”

The orchard lay up a slight hill and the trail Althea traveled was smooth. She wanted either an exhausting climb or a few stones to kick, but the path obliged with neither. The orchard walls were not quite as high as those of the garden, the objective being to keep out hungry deer rather than the whole world.

“I cannot be appointed guardian of Robbie’s wealth if I am his heir,” Rothhaven said. “I would have a motive to hurt him or mis-manage his assets, to thwart what authority he can exercise. A guardian should be financially disinterested, and I am not. Then too, English law takes a dim view of those aping anybody with a title. Fraud upon the Crown is a short step from treason.

“The irony is,” Rothhaven said more quietly, “when I agreed to continue being the duke, I thought I was protecting my brother, but now I have left him more vulnerable than ever.”

“Have you considered a quiet word with King George?”

“His Majesty hated my father. I have been introduced to the sovereign exactly once, and he all but cut me in front of every other young man at the levee.”

“George all but hated his own father, and the sentiment was apparently mutual.” Althea had no more remedies to suggest. As far as she knew, Rothhaven’s situation was without precedent. Long-lost heirs usually had seven years to wander home and unseat somebody in line for the inheritance, but in the present case, the heir had no intention of unseating anybody.

Rothhaven had gone to great lengths to hide the truth, and that he’d done so at enormous inconvenience to himself would hardly matter in the court of public opinion or before the law. From a certain perspective, Robbie was still a prisoner, and his own protestations to the contrary might be regarded as the desperate fiction of an unsound mind. Then too, the falling sickness was evidence of tainted blood in the minds of some, and that was scandalous in and of itself.

“This is complicated,” Althea said as Rothhaven opened the gate to the orchard.

Althea stepped into a world awash in cherry blossoms. They captured the sunlight, scattering it across pale, fallen petals and blooms yet clinging to the branches. The trees would leaf out over the next few weeks, but for now, they offered only their flowers to the perfect blue sky.

His Grace shut the door, enclosing Althea with him. “I forget how lovely Rothhaven can be,” he said. “I want Robbie to be able to see this. We’re planning on extending the garden walls to join the orchard walls, though that project will likely take all summer to complete.”

The scent here was delicate, barely floral at all. Mostly grass and the green Yorkshire countryside. The pears and plums would blossom next, with the apples providing a final display.

“I wish your ambition was not limited to building yet more walls,” Althea said, walking off a little way.

A shower of petals wafted to the ground and Althea realized that Rothhaven had brought her here to say farewell. The orchard had begun her personal dealings with him, and the orchard would see them end.

“My ambitions do not matter,” he said. “My duty is to see my brother kept safe and happy, and I take joy in knowing that I have succeeded to a modest extent.”

He sounded like Quinn, and not in a good way. “Where does this end, Rothhaven? Do you and Robbie grow old here in your outwardly bleak house, your servants sworn to secrecy, your title eventually going to some tailor in Dorset?”

“That is the best I can hope for, and it’s not a bad end, compared to the hell Robbie endured for more than ten years.”

It wasn’t a good end either. “And your mother allows this?”

He ambled away from the wall, petals drifting onto his shoulders and chest. “She supports Robbie’s choices, as do I. We regard him as the rightful duke, even if he’s reluctant to take on the outward trappings of that office. Her task is to draw attention away from the family seat, to be the public presence of the Rothmeres where Robbie and I cannot travel. My task is to keep all and sundry from peering over our walls.”

Robbie struck Althea as a dog in the manger, accepting all the familial deference due the titleholder while refusing to shoulder any of the responsibility.

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