As Robert wandered the paths with his guest and stopped to sniff the occasional bloom, he explained to Constance what he had learned about his affliction: Calm and order did seem to help, insofar as they guaranteed regular and ample rest, regular and modest meals, a very limited intake of spirits, and only modest exertion at any one time.

“Gardening is perfect, then,” Lady Constance said. “It’s physical, but doesn’t result in all-out sweating and panting like fencing or hill running. You might enjoy riding horseback for the same reasons. One can daunder along, enjoy a canter, or exhaust oneself in a hard gallop.”

“I do not ride.”

She stopped with him beside a bed of rosebushes still more thorns than leaves. “But you could.”

“And if a seizure occurs while I’m in the saddle, then I take another fall, suffer another injury to my head. I had never had a seizure until I came off a damned horse as a boy.”

She patted his lapel. “So fierce. Stephen can teach your horse to halt the instant you begin to tremble, and he can show you how to fashion a brace, such that you cannot fall from the saddle. He needed that brace to learn to ride, and now he’s happiest in the saddle. It’s very discreet. A belt around your thigh.” She drew her hand across the top of her leg. “Here, where your riding jacket obscures it.”

He seized her by the wrist because he could not conduct a proper argument when she was petting him, much less mentioning thighs.

“My lady, it’s not that simple.”

“It’s not that complicated either.”

“I cannot ride in a walled garden. You saw me on the drive. A common, everyday sound, one heard a dozen times a day in any village, and my dignity deserted me.”

They had not put their gloves back on after their meal, and thus when Lady Constance laced her fingers with Robert’s, he and she were hand in hand.

“From what I can see, Your Grace, your dignity is still very much intact. Your instinct for survival is too. They simply need to learn to converse on different terms.”

With anybody else, even with Nathaniel, Robert could have continued the argument. You have no idea what you’re asking of me. You speak from well-intended ignorance. Constance, however, had survived the slums, survived a violent father, survived months away from the sheltered life her family had eventually been able to give her.

What else had she survived?

“I’m not ready to ride,” Robert said. “I might never be.”

“Fortunately, one need not ride to be a duke or to be happy. Tell me where you acquired these gorgeous tulips, the ones with the interesting variegation? I find the usual tulip rather boring, but these catch my eye.”