Page 73 of A Duke Too Far (The Way to a Lord's Heart 4)

The Hall seemed a hundred miles distant as Nathaniel wandered home under the rising sun. He tarried in the orchard, recalling a blossom-scented kiss. He tarried in the garden, where he’d first taken tea with Althea.

He did not want to go inside the Hall, did not want to deal with Thatcher’s endless offers of toast, and—God forgive him—he did not want to deal with his beloved brother.

He sank onto the bench where he and Althea had shared a pot of tea, the morning sun gilding a riot of spring flowers. Reclaiming the garden had begun as the duchess’s project, her rebellion against a cheerless and lonely marriage. She’d recruited her small sons to assist her, kidnapping them from their studies and daring the old duke to deny his family a few hours of fresh air and frolic.

Robbie had learned the rudiments of painting out here, at a time when Nathaniel had been considered too young to attempt artistic graces. How he’d envied his older brother those hours of instruction.

“There you are.” Robbie, fully clothed, freshly shaved, and looking entirely well, stood on the terrace with a steaming mug in his hand. “Enjoying the sunrise?”

Not in the least.“I saw Lady Althea onto her own land before the rest of the world could remark her comings and goings. How are you?”

Robbie descended the steps and joined Nathaniel on the bench, though all Nathaniel wanted in that moment was solitude—and Althea Wentworth.

“I am…restless, I suppose. How soon can we extend this garden to the orchard?”

“That project, with available resources, will take the summer at least. Old men do not wrestle stone so easily. I could hire more laborers from the village, but that would mean strangers working close to the Hall. In the alternative, the quarry could deliver the stone here instead of to the home farm, but again, that brings strangers into proximity with the Hall.”

Robbie took a sip of his tea. “You are angry.”

“Frustrated. You encountered a stranger by the river, Robbie, and thank God you did. You are the better for having met Lady Althea, admit it.”

“I would have recovered with or without her—”

“We hadno supplies,” Nathaniel shot back. “We had no willow bark tea, no ginger, and precious little feverfew because our housekeeper has grown lax with age. The staff cannot be trusted to remain awake in a sickroom overnight. Thatcher has become a problem, but he cannot be pensioned, and I am only one person.”

Something has to change.Nathaniel stopped short of that difficult truth because Robbie was gazing intently across the garden. He took another sip of his tea, which put to rout the notion that he was having a staring spell.

“I would set up a household on the Continent,” he said, “but how does one hire trustworthy staff in a foreign country?”

That was as close as Robbie would come to admitting a dependence on Nathaniel, and yet, that dependence shaped both of their lives.

“I want to question Soames, and I’d like you to be present,” Nathaniel said.

“Because of the notes.”

“Somebody knows how we’re going on here, and they will not keep the information to themselves. I expect a blackmail demand any day.” Another reason that Althea had to return to her own life, where her greatest challenge was dodging Phoebe Philpot’s sniping.

“We’re rich,” Robbie said, setting his mug on the walkway. “We can spare a few pounds to keep somebody’s mouth shut.”

The words sounded arrogant and selfish, but Nathaniel could hear the worry beneath them. “We aren’t rich enough to endure a lifetime of such demands, particularly when we don’t know from whom they could be coming. Can you make a list of any staff you recall from your time in Soames’s care?”

Robbie appeared to consider a bed of irises not yet in bloom. “I remember them all. In the entirety of my time away, I had no more than a dozen staff assigned to me, but what’s to say the housekeeper or groundskeeper at the madhouse didn’t get to gossiping with my attendants? Mrs. Soames had the actual running of the place and she had family in the area.”

“What of the other patients?” Nathaniel asked. “Did any of them know your situation?”

“I doubt it.Ididn’t know the particulars of my own situation, after all.” Robbie crossed his legs, the posture elegant and relaxed. “If they did become aware of matters here at the Hall, they would never betray me, nor I them.

“They aren’t imprisoned anymore, you know,” he went on more softly. “I correspond with several of them each year at Yuletide, though they know me only as Mr. Robbie Roth, which was how Soames referred to me when last names were unavoidable. I am most familiar with Alexander Morton, and he keeps me informed regarding the rest. He was the other epileptic, and Soames studied the degree to which our seizures coincided.”

“Did they?”

“Only rarely, and never exactly. I fail to see how anybody at the asylum other than Soames or his wife could know I was pronounced dead. Somebody apparently signed a death certificate, true, but nothing in my routine changed.Nobodybecame aware I had been declared dead.”

“You’re suggesting the malefactor is at or near the Hall. Somebody knew exactly why His Grace was sending money to Soames and knew the money did not stop with yourtragic demise. They knew His Grace was too tight-fisted to make ongoing charitable donations, and they don’t care how revealing the truth affects either us or the staff.”

Strong drink early in the day was never well advised, but Nathaniel was tempted. Sorely tempted.

“How well do you trust Sorenson?” Robbie asked.

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