Page 80 of A Duke Too Far (The Way to a Lord's Heart 4)

Althea scooted a few inches closer. “The only person besides me and Stephen, you mean. How did he learn of it?”

“Robbie got in a bad way a few years ago. I was in York with Treegum. Thatcher and the housekeeper over-reacted and had Sorenson administer last rites.”

“Thatcher with the toast rack?”

“He was a more formidable fellow five years ago.”We all were more formidable fellows, except for Robbie.

“How has the threat to expose your situation been conveyed, Nathaniel?”

Sorenson hadn’t asked that. Hadn’t asked many questions at all, now that Nathaniel thought about their conversation.

“Notes delivered with the post.”

“Did you see anything unique about the penmanship?”

Another useful inquiry. “An educated hand. The script is neat and regular, not a schoolboy’s labored scrawl or a shopkeeper’s functional letters. I don’t recognize the handwriting, but I might have seen it previously.”

“As if a familiar hand was purposely disguised?”

“Perhaps.”Perhaps yes.

“What of the paper it was written on?”

Nathaniel recollected the feel of the note in his hand. “Not foolscap, now that you mention it. Half sheets of good quality, folded and sealed with red wax.”

“As if somebody tore off a watermark or crest on personal stationery?”

Neither he nor Robbie had made that connection. “Yes, exactly like that.”

Althea sat forward, staring hard at the packed earth of the path before them. “And was the paper clean, or did it look as if it had traveled a great distance?”

“Pristine. It could have been a hand-delivered invitation brought no farther than from the village itself.”

She turned her head to peer at him. “So the threat is likely local.”

“Bloody hell.”

Althea’s smile was impish.

“Excuse my language, my lady.”

“I’ve heard much worse, and if Lady Phoebe is attempting blackmail, that is worth very foul oaths indeed.”

“Why do you suspect Lady Phoebe is attempting mischief at the Hall?” And why hadn’t Nathaniel and Robbie, or Sorenson, been able to make the deductions Althea reached so swiftly? “I had thought Dr. Obediah Soames, the author of so much of Robbie’s misfortune, might be seeking to extort funds from his former patient, but Soames has become a shuffling, mumbling half-wit, of all the ironies. I doubt he is long for this world.”

How Nathaniel wished Robbie had been able to see his former tormenter reduced to a dependent status, unable to so much as stir milk into his own tea or recall the day of the week. Soames had barely been able to make his mark on a piece of paper when the pen had been placed in his hand.

“I suspect Lady Phoebe,” Althea said, “because her sister was once quite close to your father, and her ladyship might well carry a grudge. If she means to launch Miss Price in London, a large sum would facilitate that aim nicely.”

Not a motive Nathaniel would have deduced, but it had the ring of credibility. “My father arranged a significant contribution to the settlements for Miss Price’s mother as part of the marriage negotiations. Very significant.”

Althea rose and Nathaniel let her go. “That makes it worse. Miss Price’s mother gave him everything, bore him a child, consigned herself to a lifelong commitment to a man she did not love. Twenty years ago, your father had his pleasure and wrote a bank draft.”

“He was not a man afflicted by sentimental attachments.”

She crossed her arms. “I am a woman afflicted by sentimental attachments. Lady Phoebe has no business cutting up your peace. You and Robbie seek simply to dwell amid calm and privacy. Who is she to meddle with that?”

More than kissing Althea in parting, more even than making love with her, this conversation put to flight any notion that Nathaniel could ever regard her as a passing fancy. He was not like his father, at least in that regard, and Althea was like no other woman on earth.

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