The man beside her now was a relaxed, even chatty fellow compared to the man who’d managed that coach ride into York.

“But you did travel into York. You will again.”

He paused before the garden door, arms linked around her shoulders. “When my father put me into the traveling coach all those years ago, it was a sunny, lovely day. I thought I was going off to school, as the ducal heirs had gone off to school for generations. Mama was crying, poor thing, and Nathaniel was trying to be brave, but I was confident that my life as a young man of the world was about to begin.

“I would have adventures,” he went on, “I would make friends, I would excel in my studies. I would finally make Papa proud of me, and the disapproval I’d felt from him since birth would evaporate into paternal rejoicing at how wonderful I was.”

Oh, God. That poor boy. That poor innocent boy. “You were betrayed. When your father put you into that coach and sent you on your way, knowing full well what your destination would be, you were betrayed.”

Rothhaven held the door for her. “There’s more. I finally figured this out as I so rudely dozed on your shoulder yesterday. Soames at one point in my early years would run me into the village by coach to study Greek with the local parson. We’d leave early in the morning, when the sun was low. The light flickering through the trees could start me shaking. Soames was delighted to observe this, though it took me eons to connect a cause and an effect.”

“Light through the trees caused a seizure?” What manner of brain ailment reacted to light?

“When a coach moves down a wooded road and the sun is at a low angle, the intermittent obstruction of the tree trunks causes the light to flicker. I realized that I never had a seizure on the journey home. If he switched my appointments to the afternoon, I had no seizures either going or coming. If he drew the shades, no trouble befell me.

“Time after time, if I was made to sit gazing out at the trees for one of those early morning journeys, I would succumb to my malady. Soames never made the connections, but I soon did, and I refused early morning or late afternoon outings if I could.”

Constance hurried through the door, wanting to be away from the garden walls and from the eyes of anybody observing from the house.

“I hate Soames. Hate him with an unrelenting fury. He had better be dead, or I will be tempted to make him dead. To torture a boy like that and call it science…No wonder you dread travel, no wonder you abhor coaches and sunshine. Why are we out here?”