“I must have a tour of your walled garden,” Lady Constance said, rising. “I’d like to spend the rest of the season out there painting the joy you’ve created.”

“I will not abandon you in my flower garden, not unless you’d like to be abandoned. I am sorry.”

Nathaniel and Althea had all but sprinted down the corridor for the library, and thus Robert’s apology was made privately.

“I would like to be very abandoned in your garden,” Lady Constance replied. “With pastels, oils, watercolors, even charcoal. I could have an orgy out there with mere pencil and paper, as you’ve had an orgy with your flowers.”

She was being polite, giving him an opportunity to avoid further mention of his odd behavior. From her, he did not want that courtesy.

Robert escorted her ladyship into the corridor, glad to be away from the cozy parlor. “I was not allowed out of doors for several years at one point. I look like my late father, and Soames was concerned that some gardener or village child might see me and note the family resemblance.”

“He told you that?”

“Of course not. His only explanation was ever and always concern for my terrible condition. One of the attendants made a comment about my resemblance to my father, another resident made another. I reached the obvious conclusion based on available evidence, though Soames wasn’t above withholding basic pleasures for the bloody-minded hell of it.

“As the old duke aged,” Robert went on, “Soames and I negotiated various truces. This began not long after you left. I was eventually allowed out for short periods, but only into the walled garden—the small walled garden, not the kitchen garden—and only for short periods. At the sound of carriage wheels, I was to return to my room immediately. We all were, or we would lose the privileges of the house.”

He ushered Constance out onto the back terrace, trying to view the irises, tulips, and daffodils before him as an orgy. Perhaps a riot of color? But no, he’d planned the color scheme of the garden very carefully.

“‘Privileges of the house’ meaning,” Lady Constance said, “the right to leave your rooms?”

“And to dine in company, though meals were to be silent but for basic requests. ‘Pass the salt,’ ‘May I have the butter.’ Soames purported to believe calm kept the seizures at bay.”

Lady Constance stood at the top of the garden steps and took in a deep breath. “Did it? Keep the seizures at bay?”

“Nothing keeps them at bay.” Robert wanted somebody to know that. Nathaniel never asked, and Mama’s timid and vague questions never ventured close to that topic.

Lady Constance slipped her arm through his. “Walk with me. Does anything bring them on?”