Nicholas: Lord of Secrets

Four

Darius nodded at Nick’s retreating back, Lady Blanche Cowell nigh wrapped around Reston’s arm as they walked away. “So where did you meet that?”

“I met him in the park with Emily,” Leah said, and then because the dratted woman’s perusal of Nick had been so possessive even as she’d clung to Darius’s elbow, “Where did you meet her?”

“She’s frequently at the same functions you are,” Darius said, delivering what Leah suspected was a lie—Darius was nigh gulping his wine. “She travels in a slightly less genteel circle.”

“Lord Reston apparently frequents the same set.” And that hurt, even while it also reminded Leah that Nick’s aid was a product of chivalry, nothing more.

“You needn’t sound so offended, Sister mine. I will run screaming into the night if Blanche gives up the juicy prey on her arm and returns her attentions to me.”

There was something off in Darius’s observation, for all he’d handled the introductions with careful punctilio. “You don’t like Reston?”

“I like him well enough, though I can’t say I know him.”

Ah. Darius did not like Blanche Cowell, then. When Leah and Nick had come upon Darius literally in Blanche’s clutches, Leah’s brother’s expression had been one of banked despair. The notion that Leah had abandoned her brother when he might have needed her was insupportable. “Is Lady Cowell trifling with you?”

Darius scowled at her. “I am not going to dignify that, unless you want to tell me if Reston is trifling with you. Shall I lead you out or find you a place to hide?”

“Leave me in peace.” She wasn’t up to concealing her emotions from her brother, but knew if they went home before supper, her father would be railing at her, reminding her he didn’t spend a fortune on ball gowns so she could hide away at home night after night.

“Keep an eye out for Hell-raiser,” Darius warned. “If you see him, find me or Lord Val, or even your new friend Reston.”

Leah waved him off with a flick of her fan and sank onto a bench nearly obscured by potted plants. She loved her brothers, and she owed them more than she could ever repay, but Darius of late had been more than a little trying.

If she did see Hellerington, she was under strict orders from Wilton to be pleasant to the man, just as she was supposed to be pleasant to Reston.

And look what had come of that.

She blushed anew at her forwardness and at Reston’s careful retreat. He was trying to help her, for pity’s sake, and she had to behave like the strumpet her father believed her to be.

A ruthlessly honest part of her had to admit, though, that strumpethood had never been so appealing. Reston’s scent was divine, and dancing with him… When Nick Haddonfield held her, she felt protected, cherished, understood, and… treasured. When he kissed her, she felt all that, and so much more that was wicked, wonderful, and hopeless.

She didn’t know how much time went by while she sorted feelings, arguments, and more feelings, but in the end, she could only conclude she’d suffered a lapse of judgment when she’d kissed Nick—kissed him again. He was a flirt, that much was obvious, and she’d misread his generous willingness to dance with her on the back terrace. It was just more of his kindness, no doubt. She’d have to apologize, relocate her dignity, and watch her step in the future.

“Pining for me?” Reston’s mellow bass-baritone startled her out of her reverie, only to be followed by the surprising bulk of him settling in beside her on the bench. “I feel like a bunny rabbit, peering out from between the fern hedges. You have a knack for finding hiding places. Still no sign of Hellerington?”

“My lord.” Leah’s tone was cool, which seemed only to amuse him.

“Reston?” Nick arched an eyebrow. “At your service, and so forth? Are you going to make me start all over with the elementary civilities like an errant schoolboy who’s offended teacher at the dame school?”

“I am not up to your humor, my lord.”

Nick surveyed her with a thoughtful frown. “You are not out of charity with me because of the time I spent with you on the terrace, though you should be, but you are out of charity with me because I rescued your poor, beleaguered brother from Lady Blanche’s clutches. Am I right?”

Rescued Darius? Perhaps he had, but still… “She was familiar to you. Familiar with you.”

“Leah, I am a single young man of good fortune and rank, and that makes me part hound. The Lady Blanches of this world consort with dogs according to very well-understood and sensible rules, and the Lady Leahs of the world do not. I am not proud of such associations, but I am capable of treating decent women decently. Blanche is a dog of a sort herself, and you should not envy her.”

She liked that he was honest with her, more honest even than her brothers could be. “I am to feel sorry for her?”

“You really should. She is lonely, mean, pathetic, and headed for a miserable existence. Warn your brother off her if you get the chance. Now, the supper waltz is coming up, and you owe it to me to let me prove I can behave. Will you do me the honor?”

“I’d rather not.” She wanted to; she wanted to so very badly, which meant she ought not.

“If I’m to credibly court you, lovey”—Nick bumped her shoulder gently with his own, which was rather like being nudged by a well-mannered horse—“you’re going to have to be seen with me, and supper will start the tongues wagging nicely. Now don’t be difficult. There are always sacrifices to be made in the course of being rescued.”

“You won’t jolly me out of this,” Leah said, though she was feeling unaccountably more sanguine.

Nick smiled over at her, a smile full of flirtation the likes of which Leah hadn’t seen since, well, ever. A smile like that made a woman wonder if she might show off just a hint more of her bosom, or perhaps tap the handle of her fan against her lips. Slowly. Repeatedly.

“You remind me of my grandmother again.” Nick rose and extended a hand down to her, the same hand that had cradled her jaw so tenderly. “This is a great compliment, I assure you. I am not asking you to forgive me my private associations, Leah, just tolerate a few minutes in my company for a good cause.”

“Oh, very well.” Leah rose without his assistance just to make her point, but let him stand up with her and lead her in to supper. The dance was different, of course. Nick held her at the proper distance, though he twirled her down the room with the same sense of utter competence she’d found so appealing on the darkened terrace. On one or two turns, he did pull her in a little too closely. Leah had the impression he was doing it to maintain appearances, that it was expected that Lord Reston—part hound—couldn’t help but flirt with whatever lady was to hand.

How utterly not flattering.

“And now we line up at the trough with our fellow shoats,” Nick leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Can we return to your hedge-bench to eat in relative peace?”

“You are flirting,” Leah whispered back. “It’s tiresome.”

“It’s expected.” His nose bumped her temple—which had to be an accident, didn’t it? “Of both of us, if I might remind you.”

He was right, damn him and his canine attributes. Leah arranged a smile on her face, and let Nick fill up her plate, and one for himself as well.

He leaned in again to speak close to her ear. “Now we make our escape, or Lady Blanche will find me unprotected and start pestering me.”

“Poor Nick.” Leah’s voice dripped with irony. “Too bad for her she doesn’t have a papa like mine.”

Nick bent close, maybe too close. “She did. That’s how she ended up with her current spouse. He’s not a bad sort, but he’s hardly a young girl’s dream. Still, he had the title, you know?”

“Papas are the very devil,” Leah allowed on a sigh, but she’d used Reston’s name—just like that, and it had come easily and it fit him and she wanted to say it again to herself, over and over.

“Papas, brothers, nephews, all the very devil,” Nick said as he got them arranged on their bench with plates on their laps. “I’m a neighbor of your brother, by the way. Would you like a strawberry?”

“I adore fruit,” Leah said, glancing at his plate. “You didn’t tell me there were strawberries.”

“I got enough for both of us. Here.” He held up a strawberry, not to pass to her plate, but rather before her mouth, for her to take from his hand. She watched his eyes, and the teasing she’d seen there earlier shifted, first cooling then heating to a silent dare.

Holding his gaze, Leah leaned forward, touched her tongue to the succulent red berry, then took it between her teeth.

“My thanks.” She chewed slowly then swallowed. “Delicious.”

Nick, looking gratifyingly disconcerted for once, simply passed her his plate and surrendered the rest of his strawberries.

Thinking of you.

Blue salvia, Leah learned from a book her mother had given her as a child, meant “thinking of you.”

How interesting, and how odd that Ni—Leah caught herself—Lord Reston had included it in his bouquet and conveniently forgotten its significance. In the long-dormant part of her soul from which feminine intuition sprang, Leah suspected he’d known good and well what the flower meant, and he’d included it on purpose.

And forgotten its meaning with the same sense of purpose.

Reston had chosen his bouquet with care and an unerring sense for what was lacking in her life.

“Pretty,” Wilton remarked, eyeing the bouquet as he sauntered into the family parlor. “I have to commend the man for showing some strategy.”

“I beg your pardon?” Leah resisted the urge to get to her feet. Wilton might interpret it as a sign of respect, though more likely a sign of weakness.

“Reston is courting your sister,” Wilton said, touching the little white snowdrops. Why didn’t they wilt on contact? “He’s scouting the terrain, forming an ally, gathering information before he tips his hand.”

“No doubt.”

Wilton eyed her pensively. He was a good-looking man, tall, trim, with even features and a full head of white hair. His smile, when he produced one, gave Leah chills nonetheless.

“Perhaps he thinks to take you off my hands,” Wilton said. “I cannot credit his taste, but his coin will spend as easily as the next man’s. You’ll have him, if he offers.”

“He won’t offer for me.” Leah bent to her book, turning a page as if in idle perusal.

“You will do nothing to deter him from that possibility,” Wilton informed her icily. “Your sister can reach higher, but you will take what’s offered and be grateful.”

“Aren’t we being premature, my lord?” Leah strove for an indifferent tone. “One bouquet does not a courtship make.”

“One bouquet, a supper waltz, several meetings in the park,” Wilton shot back. “Don’t think you’re ever far from my sight, girl. Your brothers can’t hide your comings and goings, and neither will you, if you value their happiness.”

“I value their happiness,” Leah said, and thinking to offer a placatory display of submissiveness, she added, “and if Reston offers, I will accept him.”

“Of course you will. If he’s stupid enough to make that mistake, I will not preserve him from his folly.”

Having left the requisite ill feeling and discontent behind him, Wilton stalked out, calling for a footman. His footsteps had barely died away before Leah looked up to see the bouquet with its blue salvia directly in her line of sight. By the time Wilton had slammed out the front door, she felt the first tear sliding down her silly, foolish, wretched cheek.

Colonel Lord Harcourt Haddonfield, fourteenth Earl of Bellefonte, had not enjoyed a decent bowel movement in weeks, by which evidence he concluded that death was indeed stalking him. He had some time, maybe even weeks, before the filthy blighter actually took him down, but when a man couldn’t preside competently over the lowliest throne in the land, what dignity was there left in living?

Neither one of his deceased wives would have understood that sentiment or appreciated its vulgar utterance even in private, which thought provoked a faint smile. Good ladies they had been, but ladies through and through.

His heir shared his appreciation for the fairer sex, which was a bloody damned relief. George, the third boy, was a nancy piece. Beckman was deuced independent, and Adolphus, who aspired to professordom, would be unlikely to marry young.

“My lord,” Soames intoned, “a Mr. Ethan Grey to see you. He did not leave a card.”

Soames had been with the earl for only ten years and could be forgiven his ignorance. He could not be forgiven for sneaking up on his employer.

The earl turned a glacial blue eye on the hapless man. “Soames, if you have to pound the damned door to sawdust, you do not intrude on your betters unannounced, and you do not intimate I am going deaf, when I can hear every damned footman and boot boy sneaking about and pinching the maids.”

“Profuse apologies, my lord.” Soames bowed low, his expression betraying not a flicker of amusement or irritation. “Shall I show the gentleman in?”

“The gentleman is my firstborn,” the earl said more quietly. “Of course you show him in, but give me a minute first, and hustle the damned tea tray along, if you please.”

“Of course, my lord.” Soames bowed again and glided out.

The earl waited, wondering what one said to a wronged child grown into a wronged man. He’d kept track of Ethan, of course. He’d also paid his bills through university, managed his late mother’s little property, managed the modest sum he’d set aside for the boy, and was managing it still, as the cheeky bastard—well, no, probably not the wisest word choice—the cheeky devil wouldn’t touch a penny of it.

“My lord.” Soames had on his company face and used his company voice. “Mr. Ethan Grey, late of London.”

“Thank you, Soames.” The earl waved him off and took in Ethan’s appearance with poorly veiled gratification. He’d most recently caught a glimpse of Ethan three, maybe five years ago, and in the intervening years the last vestiges of the youth had been thoroughly matured out of the man. At thirty-some years old, Ethan was quite tall, like all the Haddonfield men, with golden-blond hair, arctic-blue eyes, and a damned good-looking bas—fellow to boot. He had a little of Nick’s aristocratic features, too, but more hauteur than Nick aspired to and a leaner frame.

“Ethan. I would rise, but lately I cannot even attempt that without assistance. I suppose your arrival confirms my impending death—you, and a lamentable lack of intestinal regularity.”

“My lord.” Ethan gave him the barest nod, his expression so disdainfully composed the earl wanted to laugh. Ah, youth… Except behind the boy’s monumental cool lurked a significant hurt, for which his father knew himself to be responsible.

The earl waved him over to the massive estate desk. “You can glare at me ever so much more effectively at close range, sir.” He waited until his son had prowled away from his post by the door. “One of the advantages of age is I no longer have to hear or see so much of this benighted world, but upon inspection, I must say you are looking well.”

“And you are not,” Ethan said, taking a seat across the desk from his father. Rude of him to appropriate a seat unbidden, but the earl was certain his own wretched appearance had sent his son to his figurative knees.

“I look like hell. The divine wisdom therein is that all will be relieved when I shuffle off this mortal coil, because if I get any uglier, my own daughters will be unable to stand the sight of me.”

Ethan smoothed a wrinkle on a perfectly tailored pair of riding breeches. “You don’t seem particularly perturbed at your approaching demise.”

“I’m not.” The earl’s lips curved in a faint smile. “I’ve lived my three score and ten, and eked out more besides. The earldom is in good condition, thanks largely to your brother, and my children are provided for. One grows tired, Ethan, and the indignities of great age are every bit as burdensome as you suppose they are. The alternative, however, ceases to loom as quite such a fearful option. Why are you here?”

“Because you swived my mother.”

Truly, a son to be proud of. “You always were the quickest of my children.” The earl’s smile widened, but he held his verbal fire until the tea tray had been set on the desk. “You’ll have to pour, lad. My hands shake too badly, and I can barely hold up the teapot. Mine should be only half full, and cool it down with some cream, for I’m likely to spill it.”

Ethan flicked a glance at his old papa spouting off so cheerfully about his egregious infirmities, and then his eyes shifted to his father’s hands, which the earl could not have rendered steady had he wanted to.

“You’ve learned a little restraint,” the earl decided as his son poured for them both. “Can’t say as I ever got the knack, myself. The ladies despaired of me.”

“Was it lack of restraint that caused you to send me off in such disgrace?” The desk was so large Ethan had to get up, walk around it, and hand the earl his half-full, heavily creamed cup of tea. The earl knew a moment of something—shame, relief, glee… gratitude?—when Ethan wrapped his father’s cold fingers around the warm cup.

The earl carefully—and shakily—brought the teacup to his mouth.

“Used to like it hot,” the earl mused on a sigh, “but a lapful of hot tea modifies one’s priorities. Now…” He turned his gaze on his firstborn and saw a handsome man in his prime, completely composed, shrewd and patient enough to wait him out. But approaching death had only heightened the functioning of the earl’s bladder, so waiting all afternoon wasn’t an option.

“The disgrace was mine,” the earl said, looking his son straight in the eye. “I know full well you did not attempt to burn your brother with that iron.”

Ethan took a delicate sip of his tea. “Were you merely being petty and tyrannical then, when you turned the little thugs and perverts of Stoneham loose on me?”

“Perverts.” The earl tasted the word, found it foul. “Interesting choice. I’d discovered you asleep in Nicholas’s bed just the night before, and not for the first time.”

“Of course I was in his bed,” Ethan scoffed, “or he was in mine. How else were we to stay up half the night whispering without waking the younger boys?”

Ethan’s anger swam much, much closer to the surface, so close the earl perceived that the frigid cool in Ethan’s eyes was not impatience, annoyance, nor anything else half so tame.

A betrayed boy yet lurked in the man who’d come to call. A devastated, betrayed boy.

“I comprehend now, Ethan, that you and Nick remained innocent of the most lamentable adolescent behaviors. It took some time, Della’s incessant carping, and raising several more boys before I understood my mistake. By then, you were no longer speaking to any of us, save Della, and things turned out for the best.”

Ethan took another measured sip of his tea, then another, clearly trying to absorb the explanation the earl offered, but no doubt stumbling over the emotional enormity of the wrong done him, and not for the first time.

“In what manner,” Ethan spoke very softly, “do you consider things turned out for the best?”

“The two of you were entangled. You protected Nick. He protected you.”

“Is that not what brothers do?” Ethan asked with chilly civility.

“Not when one will take a seat in the Lords and the other is merely an earl’s by-blow. Sooner or later, you and Nicholas were going to have to face facts. I did neither of you any service by letting you get so close in the first place.”

The earl reassured himself of this version of the facts regularly. Things had worked out for the best—or they would soon.

“So having made that mistake,” Ethan said, but not quite dispassionately, “your only recourse was to compound it by separating us the way you did, bellowing accusations, and setting us against each other?”

The earl let his teacup clatter unsteadily onto its saucer. “I’ve said I was wrong, both in what I did and how I did it. I am not a perfect man, as you well know. But admit to me, please, that both you and Nicholas thrive, and despite my errors, you are both people to be reckoned with, capable of standing on your own two feet.”

Ethan rose to those two feet with an ease the earl tried not to envy. “You think old age alone has impaired your hearing and vision, sir. I can assure you, your faculties have long been wanting, else you would have realized Nick and I have always been capable of standing on our own two feet, regardless of our relationship as brothers or friends. Good day.”

He departed in a few brisk strides, closing the door with enviable decorum.

Round one to the pup, your bloody uncrapping lordship. The earl sat back with a sigh, sipping his cooling tea disconsolately. God willing, there would be a round two.

Valentine took a seat at Nick’s Broadwood and folded down the music rack, then petted the instrument as if it were an obedient mistress. “So tell me what you seek in a wife, Nicholas. The hunt doesn’t seem to be progressing, and the Season doesn’t last forever.”

Satan’s hairy testicles. “This line of questioning—upon which you seem fixated—does not bode well for our friendship, Valentine.”

There was no heat in Nick’s reply. He’d never go a round of fisticuffs with a friend whose hands were so very talented. Instead he went to the sideboard and poured them each a brandy. “Any woman who marries me has to understand it will be a marriage for the sake of appearances only, and leave me in peace for the rest of my days.”

Val’s opening flourishes at the keyboard came to an abrupt pause. “In God’s name, why?”

“Why what?” Nick set Val’s drink on the piano’s lamp stand.

“Shame on you.” Val moved the drink to a little music table. “Why wouldn’t you, of all the randy creatures on God’s earth, marry a woman to take to your bed?”

Nick lowered himself to the sofa and regarded the drink he really did not want. “Firstly, I don’t need to marry to find women by the pairs and trios in my bed. Secondly, I do not intend to have children with my wife, because my size makes me poor breeding stock. Thirdly, I will not take advantage of some sweet young thing by taking her to my bed, then tossing her over while I go look for livelier game elsewhere, thus precipitating endless painful and avoidable scenes involving many damp handkerchiefs, broken vases, and hurt feelings.”

“You are full of tripe,” Val said calmly. When he resumed playing, the clever bastard chose a lullaby. Sweet, lyrical, and perfectly suited to cadging confidences from unsuspecting friends. “First, you adore women and invariably make them happy, at least bed-wise. There are witnesses to this, Nick. Eyewitnesses. Second, you are superb breeding stock, being handsome, intelligent, prodigiously healthy, and, for want of a better word, lusty. Find a great strapping country girl and space your children, but do not tell somebody who is only a bit shorter than you that size makes you dangerous to your wife. Third, even you have lost your appetite lately for the easy conquests, if you can call them that. You are posturing to take a real wife, my friend.”

The little song lilted along, while Nick considered firing a pillow at Valentine’s head.

“I am posturing to court the semblance of a real wife.” Nick stretched out on the long sofa, his drink resting on his chest. “The fiction must be credible, at least until one of my brothers can go about the business in earnest.”

“You are serious about this,” Val said, frowning at Nick over the lid of the piano.

Nick waved a hand. “I killed my mother, you know.”

Val didn’t dignify that with a rejoinder, and the music grew even softer. “If you were going to marry in earnest, what sort of wife would you seek?”

Nick didn’t answer. He kept his eyes closed, let his breathing slow and deepen, let the music wash through the melancholy Val’s choice of topic left in his chest. What sort of wife would Nick choose, if he had any sort of meaningful choice?

A woman who could love him, of course. A woman who didn’t care he’d be an earl, who didn’t care he was too damned big to fit even in a ballroom, who didn’t care that the one thing he must never do was attempt to secure the Bellefonte succession.

“Leah danced the supper waltz with Reston again,” Darius said as he appropriated a drink from his brother’s decanter.

“And that’s good?” Trenton Lindsey, Viscount Amherst, watched his younger brother pour, thinking Darius’s eyes held a hint of something desperate.

“It’s good. She seems to like him, and he’s not Hellerington. The talk about Reston seems harmless enough—he enjoys the ladies of a certain reputation, but nothing more condemnatory than that. Have you seen Reston?” Darius tossed the drink back and punctuated the question with a glower.

“I doubt it. I do not circulate, to speak of, unless I’m escorting Leah. You know that.”

“He’s big,” Darius said. “Enormously tall with the muscles of a stevedore.”

A hazy impression tried to coalesce from the swampier regions of Trent’s memory. “Blond? Like Wotan or Thor in evening dress?”

Darius eyed the sideboard, his expression shifting to include a touch of consternation. “Berserker of the Bedroom is one of his nicknames. Biggest damned peer of the realm I’ve ever seen.”

Trent ran a finger over the sideboard and found a smudge of dust accumulated on his fingertip—a metaphor for his memory, perhaps. “I have met him, at Tatt’s. Reston seemed genial enough.”

“Always. He pulled me aside tonight and warned me very pleasantly that one of my female associates tried to threaten him when he’d parted from her.”

Female associates. A prudent older brother didn’t touch that with a garden rake in one hand and a bullwhip in the other. “What kind of lady would threaten that much man?”

“She is no lady at all,” Darius said on a sigh. “Why do you think I found her of any interest? Reston backed her down somehow, though.”

Interesting word choice. Rather than dwell on the implications, Trent took the empty glass from his brother’s hand and set it on the sideboard. “One wonders, Darius. There are naughty women, and then there are mean, wicked women. One should distinguish.”

Darius picked the glass right back up. “And their characteristics are always easily discernible across a ballroom?”

“Perhaps not.” Trent smiled in response. “But across a bedroom, one’s instincts are usually reliable.”

“Across a bedroom, it’s usually one’s instincts getting one into mischief.” Darius made short work of a second drink and set the empty glass down.

“Valid point.” Trent’s smile faded. “Darius, I can’t help but renew my expression of concern for you. Whatever is amiss, I wish you’d tell me.”

“Nothing is amiss.” Darius clinked the stopper into the decanter then did it again. “Nothing more than usual, anyway. My thanks for the brandy. You’re managing well enough?”

“Anytime, and yes, I’m managing,” Trent murmured, watching the way his brother’s eyes strayed to the darkness beyond the window. They were lying to each other, and Trent felt despair taking up residence beside the permanent sadness in his gut. “Come by in the morning, and we’ll look at Leah’s schedule. You need some decent rest, and I can be her escort.”

“It will be afternoon before I can get here,” Darius said, hand on the door latch. “Midafternoon.”

“Until then.” Trent watched his brother silently slip out into the darkened corridor, even as he wondered what could possibly be worth remaining out and about for what little remained of a cold, dark night.