“Your brother tells me you are recently bereaved, my lady,” Fabianus said as they ascended to the terrace. “My condolences on your loss.”
She gazed out over the snowy garden, at the crows now squawking and flapping at fountain.
“My thanks for your kind words, my lord. You are without a coat. Let’s get you out of the cold, shall we?”
Fabianus revised his earlier assessment of her as she escorted him back to the Dorning Hall library. She was not in the indomitable phase of widowhood. Lady Daisy was simply, absolutely, unto her soul, indomitable. The intriguing question was, why had an earl’s pampered daughter had to develop that trait, much less raise it to a high art?
And then another question popped into Fabianus’s head: Who had taught this lady to play pirates and to ensnare escaped prisoners with a smile and a promise of lemon drops?
* * *
Order your copy of Truly Beloved, and read on for an excerpt from The Truth About Dukes!
The Truth About Dukes—Excerpt
Robert, Duke of Rothhaven, is renewing an old acquaintance with Lady Constance Wentworth. His brother is marrying her sister, though Robert first met Constance years ago under trying circumstances. He’s delighted that she’s called upon him, though his circumstances are still, in a way, quite trying…
* * *
“Walk with me to the orchard.” Lady Constance did not offer Robert an invitation, she issued him an order—and in his own garden, no less.
“I have not been to the orchard in years.” Robert inventoried his reaction to the prospect of leaving the walled garden, and found dread, anxiety, and resentment. Next to those predictable nuisances was a growing impatience with his own limitations. “I might well fail to complete journey.”
“This time you might not, but eventually, you will.” Lady Constance marched to the end of the garden where the door in the wall had once upon a time loomed in Robert’s mind like a portal to the edge of the world.
She kept right on going, and once again, he followed her. Months ago, on a foggy autumn morning, he’d begun experimenting with what lay beyond the garden door, navigating as far as the river. He left the garden only when the mist was so heavy as to obscure anything like a horizon. The thicker the fog, the better he liked it.
A world where he could see only a dozen feet ahead—and could not be seen himself beyond those dozen feet—had suited him splendidly. This sunny spring day, with damned birds chirping and an arrogant hare loping off toward the river, had no appeal at all.
“Come,” Lady Constance said, extending her hand. “We will speak of the project you invited me here to discuss.”
Robert winged his elbow at her—that was the conventional gesture offering escort, if memory served—but she instead took his hand in hers, her grip warm and firm.
“We have missed the cherry blossoms,” she said. “But the plums should be in their glory. Tell me of your project.”
Constance was humoring him, jollying him into taking the first few steps on the path to the walled orchard. Robert knew it, she knew it. He went with her anyway, because he had at least as much right to be on that path as the wretched hare did.
Make small talk. Distract yourself. “I would rather return to the garden. We can discuss the project there.”
“I would rather wear breeches. I often do, when I paint. Skirts get in the way.”
Picturing Constance Wentworth in breeches was, indeed, a distraction. “I have decided that if I’m to be the Duke of Rothhaven, I must behave as a duke. I must look like a duke, speak like a duke.”
“Quack like a duke?”
“Don’t be impertinent.” He failed utterly to suppress a smile. “I can no longer indulge my eccentricities, confident in the knowledge that my brother will carry on as head of the family in my stead. A duke sits for the occasional portrait.”
The path angled up slightly, which slowed Constance not one bit. “You’d like me to recommend a portraitist for you? Somebody who will mind his own business and not turn your nose purple?”
“No, thank you. I do not need a recommendation.”
“Then you’d like me to confirm the choice of portraitist you’ve already made. Offer reassurances that he—for only the male gender is suited to rendering portraits, of course—is passably competent.”
Constance picked up the pace as they climbed, and Robert had the sense she was annoyed. He did not turn loose of her hand, but rather, lengthened his stride to keep pace with her. She was by no means a tall woman.
“Passably competent will not do. This portrait must convey to the world that I am in every way appropriate to execute the duties of my station.” The traveling coach had been sent into York for a complete refurbishment for the same reason.
Appearances mattered.
“You are competent to execute the duties of your station,” her ladyship retorted. “Let us not belabor the obvious. That you have handsome features, a compelling gaze, and a fine masculine figure means any half-skilled apprentice could fashion a decent likeness of you.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Perhaps not an apprentice, but anybody half skilled. You’ll probably let him talk you into painting you wearing coronation robes, the usual castles and churning seas in the background. He’ll try to suggest you have blue eyes instead of green, but you must stand firm. Eye color is not a detail and your eyes are lovely.”
They had reached the orchard gate, which her ladyship yanked open and charged through.
Robert stood for a moment outside the walls.
“Well?” Constance said, holding the gate open. Her question, a single syllable, demanded something—an explanation or justification of some sort, for the human condition, for the evils of the day, for the imponderable mysteries of life itself.
Robert knew he ought to dash through the gate, slam it closed behind him, and refuse to budge until the comfort of darkness descended. Instead he marveled at the view of the Hall amid the fields below. The dread and resentment and whatnot were still lurking in his mind, but they slept like winded hounds, and let him look on his home—his home—from a distance for the first time since he’d been sent away.
“Rothhaven is not so dreadful when seen from this perspective.” The Hall looked peaceful, in fact, mellow old stone settled on a quilt of green. “Not so bleak.”
Constance re-joined him just outside the gate. “It’s a fine old place. Perhaps whoever does your portrait would be willing to paint a few landscapes. The portraitists are a snobby lot, generally, but we all pass through a landscape phase, once we leave the still lifes behind.”
He took her hand this time, a very bold overture on his part. She was not terrified of the out-of-doors, after all.
Though at the moment, neither was he. Uneasy, a bit anxious, possibly even agitated, but not terrified.
“I would like to leave my still-life phase behind,” he said. “What could I offer you that would induce you to paint my portrait?”
Constance studied him in that serious way of hers. “Do you mean that? You want me to paint your portrait?”
“I’m told as subjects go, I’m not hideous. I want no strangers under my roof strutting about and acting artistic. You are beyond half skilled, and I know you won’t turn my nose purple. I am offering you a commission to paint the portrait of the present Duke of Rothhaven.”