Nicholas: Lord of Secrets

Seven

Inbreeding being undesirable beyond a certain point in any species, Nick had agreed to exchange bulls with his neighbor, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly. While Fairly’s bull was a mature gentleman content to propagate the species wherever the duty arose, Nick’s bull was a strapping young fellow of four, and while not mean, Lothario was obstinately attached to the herd Nick had first put him to as a two-year-old.

Lothario was also, fortunately, attached to the man who had hand-fed him as a calf, and thus it became necessary for Nick to personally escort Lothario two country miles to Lord Fairly’s estate.

Ethan cheerfully declined his brother’s invitation to share the errand.

“Something amiss?” Ethan asked as Nick slammed into the front hall looking once again harried.

“Oh, please.” Nick bounded up the steps. “Aggravate all you dare, Ethan, for there’s nothing I’d like better than to pound on somebody for a bit.”

“Didn’t enjoy your constitutional with Lochinvar?” Ethan drawled, grinning.

“It’s Lothario,” Nick shot back. “And no, for your information, waltzing with a lovesick bull who’s trumpeting his woes to the neighborhood is not how I’d like to spend a spring morning.”

Ethan could not resist emphasizing the divine justice of that. “The lovesick debutantes being so much better company?”

“At least they smell better, and when they step on my feet, they do not imperil my delicate bones.”

“But you and Lothario seemed so comfortable with each other,” Ethan went on blithely, because whether Nick admitted it to himself or not, he needed somebody other than any old fellow to imbibe with of an evening. He needed—after all these years, still—a brother. “You and the bovine struck me as kindred spirits, hail fellows, well met.”

“Bugger off, Ethan.” Nick glowered as they reached his room. “I got a damned note from Mrs. Waverly at Blossom Court.”

“And she would be?” Ethan closed the door behind them. A huge copper tub sat steaming by the hearth, and Nick began to wrench at his neckcloth.

“Leonie’s companion,” Nick bit out, scowling.

“You’re knotting the thing tighter,” Ethan said, batting Nick’s hands away from the cravat. Nick never did think clearly when he was worried. “Chin up and stop glaring daggers at me. What did the note say?”

“Leonie recognized the horses Val and Leah rode earlier today, and she is quite out of sorts to know I am entertaining a lady here and I have not bothered to call upon her to explain.” Ethan stepped back and went to Nick’s wardrobe, where he began assembling a fresh set of clothes while Nick stripped down to his skin.

“So you hadn’t told Leonie you were here?”

“I’m trying to get her accustomed to seeing less of me,” Nick said, heaving a martyred sigh as he lowered himself into the water.

“Is this attempt at self-restraint because you’re contemplating marriage?” Ethan pressed, bringing Nick a bar of hard-milled soap and setting it on the stool beside the tub. The soap smelled of sandalwood, and Ethan made a mental note to take a bar of it with him when they left.

Nick sniffed the soap and began to lather himself. “Marriage has nothing to do with it. Almost nothing. I’ve seen less of Leonie because our father is dying, and I will soon be called upon to manage the bloody earldom, and take my bloody seat in the Lords, and live at the bloody family seat… And I am bloody whining.” He fell silent and leaned back in the tub, closing his eyes on another sigh.

Ethan draped clothes over the foot of the enormous bed then drew a hassock up to the tub. Nick was not just worried, he was overwhelmed and alone with it—also confused regarding a matter of the heart, and that last inconveniently and irrevocably resurrected all of Ethan’s fraternal instincts.

“You already manage the earldom,” Ethan reminded him, settling comfortably, “and you won’t have to take your bloody seat until you’ve put in a period of mourning, and you can live anywhere you please, Nicholas.”

“For now,” Nick agreed, not opening his eyes. “Eventually, I won’t be able to spend as much time here as I’d like—hell, I can’t do that now—and with Leonie, changes that do not suit her are best introduced in the smallest, least noticeable increments.”

“Probably a sound strategy with any lady.”

“Speaking of ladies.” Nick squinted at his brother. “What are you doing for companionship these days?”

“I hardly have time to worry about it,” Ethan replied, realizing he was—somewhat to his surprise—telling the truth. Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “You’re an uncle, you know.”

Nick’s gaze whipped to Ethan, who sat on his hassock, examining his hands.

“You have a child?”

“A couple of little boys,” Ethan said, still studying the same hands he’d had for more than thirty years. “They live at Tydings, raising hell, climbing out their bedroom window, harassing the daylights out of their tutors.”

“And when,” Nick asked very quietly, “were you going to introduce me to my nephews?”

Ethan rose from the hassock and paced off to gather up the clothing Nick had cast to the compass points. “I hadn’t really planned on it.”

“I suppose you haven’t told Bellefonte he is a grandfather twice over?” Nick only sounded angry. Ethan could hear the bewilderment beneath the indignation all too easily.

“I did not tell him,” Ethan said, wishing Nick hadn’t been so quick to spot this very oversight. “I planned on telling Della.”

Nick ducked his head under the water, came up, and began lathering his hair.

“Did Della get an invitation to your wedding, Brother? Doubtless, I must have misplaced mine, for I do not recall attending.”

“Nick…” Ethan eyed his brother, wondering why they were having this conversation now, when Nick was at his bath. Perhaps it was because that should have put Nick at a tactical disadvantage.

“Explain this to me, Ethan.” Nick went on scrubbing his hair, his voice deceptively casual. “Even given our estrangement, you could not drop me a note? Not when you got married, not when you had your firstborn or your second?”

“How do you know I married?”

“You would not sire a bastard, much less two,” Nick said, dunking again and coming up, sloshing water all around the tub.

“I did not sire bastards, but neither am I married as we speak.”

“You lost a wife,” Nick concluded, staring straight ahead and frowning mightily. “You did not think to inform me of this either?”

Ethan crossed the room and picked up one of the two pitchers of warm water sitting beside the tub. “Close your eyes,” he ordered then poured both pitchers over Nick’s hair.

Nick rose out of the tub and took the towel Ethan passed to him. “Talk to me, or so help me God, Ethan, I will start pounding on you, and pounding hard.” For some reason, that Nick offered this threat while very casually naked, his every bulging muscle in plain sight, made the menace more believable.

“I had a mistress,” Ethan said, running a hand through his hair, “a perfectly mundane business arrangement with a woman suited to that purpose. She got pregnant, and because my dealings with her were exclusive, I married her to prevent my child from being illegitimate. Once married, a second child came along directly. When Joshua was two, and Jeremiah three, their mother succumbed to typhus.”

Nick scrubbed his face dry but stood for a long moment, naked and dripping all over the hearthstones while he clutched at the towel and stared at his brother’s face.

“How long ago did she die?”

“Several years. Several years this summer.”

“Did you love her?” Nick’s tone was puzzled.

“By the time she bore the second child,” Ethan said wearily, “I hated her, and she hated me.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said, looking like he meant it quite sincerely. “I am not sorry you told me, though, and it goes without saying I would like to meet—no, I would like to know—my nephews, and I can promise you the rest of the family will feel the same way.”

Ethan nodded, wishing to hell he’d kept his mouth shut, for there was a damned uncomfortable spasm in his throat; an ache, really.

“Della doesn’t know?”

“I haven’t told her.” Ethan lowered himself back to his hassock, the scent of sandalwood wafting around the room. “I didn’t want to put her in a position of having to keep a secret from you, though she somehow got wind of my marriage.”

Nick stalked over to the bed and surveyed the outfit Ethan had assembled for him. It was tidy, conservative, and altogether appropriate for a social call on a lady. Ethan watched as Nick transformed himself from a gloriously naked male animal into a properly clad gentleman. He finished the ensemble with a sapphire pin for his cravat, then fished a comb off his vanity tray.

“My damned hair is too long,” he groused, combing the hair straight back from his face.

“You look dashing and fresh from your bath.”

“Leonie likes me clean and sweet smelling,” Nick muttered, regarding himself in his full-length mirror, then splashing on some scent. “I’m forgetting something.”

“Your jacket.” Ethan picked it up from the bed and tossed it to him.

Nick shrugged into it. “I still don’t feel quite dressed.”

“So stop in the garden and pick a bunch of posies. They are the perfect accessory for a gentleman with awkward explanations to concoct.”

“Pick some yourself, then,” Nick suggested, spearing Ethan with a look. “I can appreciate now is not the time to interrogate you regarding your sons, Ethan, but when you’re ready for the telling, I want to know why you’d keep them from us for years. Bellefonte did not do right by you when you were a boy, but those children are our family, and I would not have them think otherwise. I want to know who they are, what makes them laugh, what gives them nightmares, and what they do that reminds you of us when we were their ages.”

Ethan nodded, not knowing how to reply. If anybody had told him today was the day he’d tell his brother about his family, he would not have found the accusation amusing. But then, Nick was a tolerant man whose own sins were legion, at least by the lights of some people, so perhaps Nick was the right person to tell.

“Ethan?” Nick’s tone gentled when he paused by the door.

“Nicholas?”

“Whatever your reasons for guarding your… privacy,” Nick said, “I trust they were important to you at the time, and you were thinking of your sons’ best interests. As their father, that is your prerogative, and your duty. I do think, though, Bellefonte would want to know, if he doesn’t already.”

Ethan nodded, but the ache was back in his throat, so he let Nick leave without another word, then crossed the room to sit down on Nick’s great bed.

The proverbial cat was out of the bag, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Nick had offered condolences, in fact. An upset female clamoring for his attention, another female trying to deny herself his attentions, and Nick himself probably both hurt and bewildered, and yet Nick’s first impulse had been simply to acknowledge his brother’s losses.

Ethan sat on the bed for a long time, waiting for the ache in his throat to ease and recalling the sympathy in Nick’s blue eyes.

“What can he be doing?” Leah asked Lady Della, who had joined her in the informal parlor.

“Nicholas Haddonfield is a law unto himself,” Della said, pursing her lips as she joined Leah at the parlor window. “It appears he’s selecting flowers for a bouquet, but why he’d include something with thorns is beyond me.”

“What’s the hyacinth for?” Leah asked, dreading the answer.

“Sorrow,” Della replied, her tone puzzled. “He’s also conveying remorse, which is what the raspberry is about; affection, declarations of love, consolation, and I didn’t see that last little green sprig—the one from the shrubbery tree.”

“Arbutus,” Leah said, thinking back to her blue salvia—I think of you. At least he hadn’t put that in this bouquet. “What does arbutus mean?”

Della continued to visually follow Nick’s progress around the gardens. “I love only thee.”

Damn him. Damn him for being so attentive to a woman he’d loved long before Leah and her stupid difficulties had landed at his feet.

“He has a mistress,” Leah said, the words making her heart ache. “He admitted as much, and he loves her, and yet he thinks to oblige his father by making a white marriage with me.”

“He thinks to protect you by marrying you,” Della said, watching her grandson. “If Nicholas thinks he can sustain a white marriage, he’s deluding himself.”

“Why do you say that?” Leah tried to keep her curiosity out of her tone, but Lady Della was speaking with firm conviction, and her thoughts seem to echo comments Mr. Grey had made to Leah when they’d been out riding.

Comments about marriage being fraught with opportunities for an enterprising wife, regardless of the terms her husband thought he’d struck at the outset.

“Nicholas is as lusty as a billy goat, my dear,” Della said with a smile, “and he comes by that honestly. More to the point, he is not in the habit of denying himself what he desires most, and he desires you.”

Leah marveled at Lady Della’s indelicate speech, even as she resented the notion Nick could be reduced to the motivations and simplicity of a barnyard animal.

Resented that too. “He desires her more.” Much, much more. Enough to promise the woman fidelity for all the rest of his days.

“For now, perhaps, but you’ve known him, what, weeks? And she’s been part of his life probably for years. Still, you would have the advantage, as his wife, since you will be in his life for the rest of his days—and nights.”

“That is not the point,” Leah said, temper fraying as outside in the garden Nick took a moment to arrange his bouquet just so, then trimmed up the end of each stem with a knife. “I do not want to compete with some doxy for my husband’s affections. I do not want Nick to marry me out of pity, or because it’s convenient for his purposes, or it’s the only way I can be free of Wilton.”

Della turned, planted one fist on her hip, and shook an elegant finger. “Listen to yourself, my dear. I can understand resenting a mistress, but as for the other, you are not using your head. Pride will be no comfort when Wilton’s schemes have landed you in Hellerington’s bed, or somewhere worse. Do you know there are men who enjoy—intimately—beating women, hurting them, making them bruise and cry and bleed?”

“My lady!” Leah was horrified to hear such ideas coming from the mouth of a refined elderly woman. Worse yet was the simple content of Della’s words.

“There are still those who traffic in female slavery, as well,” Della went on. “Then too, men carrying diseases are a menace of a different class, and you are upset because Nick will never put you at risk of same.”

One did not clap one’s hands over one’s ears in disrespect of one’s elders. “You are trying to frighten me. I am not wrong to want my husband’s respect.”

“No, you are not,” Della conceded as Nick sauntered out of the garden, “but Nick does respect you. If he didn’t, he’d be leading you a dance, flirting up a storm as only Nick can flirt, and enticing you into his bed, as only Nick can entice.”

“What do you mean?” Leah’s curiosity was reluctant now. She wanted to despise Nick—and call him back, finery, flowers, and all, to tell him so—though Della was suggesting she should not have that comfort.

“Nick isn’t using his head either, my dear, or he’d realize you and he will be expected to dwell under the same roof for at least the period of the earl’s mourning, and that will be a very long year, indeed. And he’ll have to be at Belle Maison, too far from Town to make coming and going frequently easy. When he takes his seat, he’ll be scrutinized from every angle, and this profligacy he’s so casual about now will be frowned upon by those whose vote he might seek for this or that reason.”

Leah’s brows knitted as Nick disappeared from view. “You are saying he won’t be able to avoid me as easily as he thinks.”

“He won’t be able to avoid you,” Della said, “and he won’t be able to indulge in many of his usual diversions.”

“That doesn’t mean he’ll become a husband I can live with.”

Della’s blue eyes softened, as did her voice. “Love is frightening to most men. They come to it kicking and bellowing, all indignation and wrath to hide their confusion and the fear that they’ll misstep. Women, by contrast, know little else but to seek it, and you and Nick are no different.”

Leah held Della’s gaze, trying to think, not simply react out of hurt feelings—and finding it wretchedly difficult.

“My father has never wanted me,” she said. “My brothers are burdened by my situation, though they do care for me. I do not want to be simply an obligation for a husband who cannot care for me.” The truth of that sentiment, the longing to be wanted and cherished by a particular, worthy man, hit with a stark pain.

“Then be useful to him. Run his households, grace his arm in public, be his friend, give him time, and accept what he can give you in return.”

“You are asking me to be patient,” Leah said, “and reasonable, and adult.”

“I know this is difficult. It’s difficult for me most days, and I’ve been practicing a great deal longer than you, my girl. Imagine how hard it would be for us were we men.”

A small, hesitant smile bloomed on Leah’s face at this sentiment, and in the place in her heart that had been missing her mother for long, long years, warmth kindled. Lady Della wrapped her in a hug, and in those moments, the horror of being Nick’s countess didn’t loom quite as painfully or as immutably.

Nick was just a man, as Della had pointed out. Leah would consider in the coming days if she could resign herself to marriage with him, with all the attendant frustrations—and hopes?—that might entail.

“Too late, Nicholas Haddonfield, you’ve been spotted by the enemy’s pickets.” Leah addressed him crisply, though her tone was laced with humor, and she didn’t make any move to leave her post at the kitchen’s worktable.

Nick took another two steps into the dim, cozy confines of the kitchen, both relieved that Leah was speaking to him and wary that he’d just been caught in a female ambush.

“I’m easily spotted, another burden of my excessive height, but nobody’s firing on me yet. What brings you here at this hour?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Leah said, rising and fetching the kettle from the hob.

“Tea won’t help with that.” Nick reached up to a high shelf that ran around much of the kitchen. “This might.”

“Brandy?”

“Brandy,” Nick confirmed, getting down two glasses and pouring a healthy slosh into each one. “I’m also in search of victuals. To your health.”

“And yours.” Leah saluted with her glass and sipped her drink.

“Are you hungry?” Nick wrestled a wheel of cheese from the larder and then commenced plundering in search of a loaf of bread.

“I am. Just a little.”

“I’ll eat with you here then, while Valentine assaults our ears with his infernal finger exercises.”

Nick shaved off slices of cheese then sliced bread as well. A hungry man needed meat—and Nick needed to puzzle out Leah’s mood—so he put the bread and the cheese wheel away, and carved off slices from a hanging ham to add to a growing platter of food. It was too early for strawberries, but Nick put two Spanish oranges on the plate and grabbed two linen serviettes.

After an instant’s hesitation, he decided the enemy picket was in a friendly mood, so he scooted onto the bench beside her.

“I am pleased you did not flounce out of the room upon sighting me,” Nick said as he passed the platter to Leah—an appetizer of honesty. “Eat, for I’ll gobble up all you do not take.”

More honesty, because he was famished.

“What about Lord Val?” she asked, arranging cheese and meat between two slices of bread. “This needs butter, my lord.”

“You are my lording me,” Nick said, getting back up. “Though we do need butter.” He rummaged in the larder and emerged with a dish of butter, sniffing at it delicately. “I’ve warned my steward every year since I bought this place not to let the cows into the upper pasture until the chives are done, but he ignores me, and we get the occasional batch of onion butter.”

“This passes muster?” Leah asked, accepting the butter and a knife from him.

“It does.” Nick resumed his seat on the bench beside her. “Will I pass muster?”

“Are you referring to your proposal?” He watched while Leah put a generous amount of butter on her bread.

“I am.” Nick took the knife and butter from her. “You are not afraid to use enough butter so you can taste it.”

“I like butter.” Leah considered her sandwich while Nick built his own. “And as much as I want to be upset with you for the terms you offer, I find I like you too. Then too, marriage is still considered by most titled families to be a dynastic undertaking. Other things—love, passion, personal preference—are not of great moment.”

They were of great moment to Nick, and yet her words nourished his hopes in a way having nothing to do with food. He studied his sandwich. “You’ll have me then?”

“I’m not sure. I need a little more time to think.”

Damn the luck. “That’s my girl.” Nick patted her hand approvingly. “If I’m going to offer you half measures, then you should at least make me sweat for it.”

“Are you serious, teasing, or complaining?”

“I’m serious.” Nick bit into his sandwich and chewed in thoughtful silence for a moment. If he were to start in complaining, he’d be at it until autumn. “If I could offer you more, Leah, I would. Or I think I would.”

“Thank you, I think,” Leah replied, her tone ironic. “You’re prepared for the fact that I have no dowry?”

“I am.” Nick felt an odd lifting in his chest. She’d meant it when she said she liked him, and whatever temper he’d put her in yesterday, she was navigating her way through it.

“If I’m not to provide you the services of a wife in truth, much less progeny, then I at least want to earn my upkeep.”

“You don’t need to earn your upkeep, Leah.” Nick scowled over at her as she munched her sandwich. “For God’s sake, you’re a lady.”

“How many estates do you control?”

This was not a question from a woman who intended to reject a proposal, so Nick launched into the litany, including the offshore properties.

Leah grimaced. “That must keep you busy.”

“Endlessly, and I hate it, but Beck is entitled to ramble around until he wants to settle down, because he has already traveled for us extensively, and George and Dolph are still at university.”

“If I were your wife,” Leah said slowly, “could you use some help with it all?”

Now he was going to complain, plain and simple. “What kind of help is there? An avalanche of correspondence lands on my desk in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese and it all must be dealt with posthaste if civilization is not to topple on account of my neglect.”

“How is your French?”

“Spoken?” Nick shot her a leer. “Adequate for my purposes, but written? Deplorable. Spanish and Portuguese, similar.”

“My French is excellent,” Leah said. “You should either hire a factor on the Peninsula who can communicate in English, or hire a secretary to come in one day a week who can manage the Iberian languages, if not those and the French.”

Nick paused in the assembly of a second sandwich and stared at her. Della had probably told him the same thing, though he could not recall exactly when. “Suppose I should at that.”

“It would be easy enough to hire such a person.” She regarded Nick’s second sandwich. “If you’re going to take your seat in the Lords, you’ll need a parliamentary wife.”

Which was something else he hadn’t wanted to think about. “My stepmother excelled at such. Bellefonte would have been useless without her.”

“You will never be useless,” Leah scoffed, reaching for an orange. “I think you would enjoy the intensity of the political process.”

He hadn’t considered he might enjoy any part of it. “Not the tedium. Not that at all.”

“How active was your father?” Leah asked, tearing a hunk of rind from the fruit. The explosion of scent and juice had her bringing the orange to her nose for a long whiff. She closed her eyes to sniff the zest, then opened them slowly and blinked at him.

What had she asked?

“My father was very active in politics,” Nick said, “until he fell ill a few years ago. Are you going to inhale that thing or finish peeling it?”

“Maybe both.” Leah smiled at him over the ripe fruit. “I can probably also be of use to you with regard to your siblings, Nicholas.”

He could hardly focus on her words, so aware had Nick become of Leah’s physical presence beside him. It was that damned orange, the way she looked when she closed her eyes like that, and the knowledge that under her night rail and nightgown, she was likely naked.

Her skin would bear the scent of the household’s guest soap, redolent of roses and lily of the valley.

“Here.” Leah passed Nick three sections of orange, stuck together. “Your disposition looks like it needs sweetening.”

“I am merely tired. I need an infusion of Valentine’s music to soothe me.”

“He plays so well,” Leah agreed, popping a section of orange into her mouth. “I’ve wondered what it feels like, to have such talent literally in your hands.”

“It’s more than his hands, it’s in his heart too,” Nick mused, watching as Leah licked orange juice from the heel of her hand, then reached for the second orange.

“I am already a sticky mess,” Leah said, “let me peel this one for you.” She took the second orange and made short work of it, while Nick watched and tried not to let the words “sticky mess” play havoc with his brain. When she was done, she split the entire orange in half and put each half on the empty plate, save one section.

The last one, she passed to Nick, but rather than put it in his hand, she brought it directly to his lips, as if she fed large, hungry men from her own hand every evening. Nick accepted the morsel, chewed, swallowed, and kept his eyes on her as she rose to wash her hands at the sink.

Marriage to this woman was going to flay his wits, incessantly.

“My thanks, Leah. How much longer will you need to consider the possibility of marrying me?”

Leah cocked her head and frowned at him. “Not long. Will you speak to my father?”

“Not until I have an answer from you. I’ve already spoken to Amherst, and he favors the match, guardedly.”

Leah’s brows shot up—she had the most graceful arch to her brows. “Guardedly?”

“Your older brother is a romantic. He wants you to have a knight in shining armor, one smitten with your charms and swooning at your feet.” Nick wanted her to have the very same things, which was a bad joke of divine proportions.

“Heavens. I’d settle for an occasional heartfelt sigh.”

“Amherst is going to settle for letting me keep you safe,” Nick said, noting for the first time how red her hair looked by subdued light. “I hope you do as well.”

“We’ll see. Can you give me a week? I’m sure you want an answer sooner rather than later, but I really do need some time.”

Her tone suggested she was considering whether to add another hat to a collection already grown too large, nothing more.

“Why?” Nick, having ingested half the orange sections, sat back, and crossed his arms over his chest. “My offer will not change.”

Leah dried her hands on a towel, briskly, as if concluding her interest in the topic of marrying him. “Mustn’t be petulant, my lord. I can, however, see your father’s situation makes you impatient, and understandably so. I expect if we do become engaged, you will want to marry by special license.”

“You’re willing to forgo St. George’s and the whole…?” Nick waved his hand in upward spirals.

“My past is scandalous,” Leah reminded him, “and my father unwilling or unable to foot much of the bill for a wedding and the attendant nonsense. You promised your father not a fiancée, but a wife. Then too, should something befall me while we’re engaged, you’d be obliged to start hunting all over again, and there’s no need for that.”

“Suppose not.” Watching Leah move around the kitchen in her nightclothes, Nick abruptly wanted to get the actual wedding over and done with. She was right: the expedient course was the only sensible one.

“Good night.” Leah bent and placed a lingering kiss on Nick’s cheek. “My thanks for your company, Nicholas. You’ll talk Lord Val into playing us some lullabies?”

Lily of the valley, roses, and female warmth wafted momentarily to Nick’s nose.

“I will,” Nick managed, utterly stunned by that innocent little kiss on the cheek. Good heavens, did she have to go and smell so delicious when they were all alone in the damned deserted kitchen?

He watched her disappear up the back steps, let out a gusty breath, and forcibly shifted his thoughts from the view of her retreating derriere.

Nick saw his brother off to Belle Maison, and though Ethan’s errand was sad, the idea that Nick would join him at the family seat in a few days was comforting. Those logistics, however, meant that Darius Lindsey would have to be pressed into service to escort the ladies back to Town. Nick proposed that he and Leah call on her brother in person to request his aid.

“If you were my countess, you would acquire a passel of family,” Nick said as he boosted Leah into the saddle. “I have four sisters and three more brothers besides Ethan. They are placing bets on what kind of woman I will marry.”

“Bets?” Leah asked, frowning as Nick swung up onto his mare.

“Mostly the betting is divided between will she be short, or will she be tall,” Nick said, “but the sisters are more concerned about will she be mature or a simpering little twit from the schoolroom. Della, the youngest, is voting for the twit. She claims any woman of sense would not have me.”

Their talk moved forward on the same lines, with Nick describing each sibling in detail, along with stories of that brother or sister’s childhood, or recent antics. He spoke lovingly of all of them, as well as about his late stepmother, hoping the picture painted with words would increase the attractiveness of his proposal to Leah.

But gradually the talk slowed, until they were ambling along in silence.

“Penny for them?” Nick asked as they approached the gate to Darius Lindsey’s drive.

“Nicholas, I am not at all sure I have the fortitude to be your countess.”

“Fortitude?” Nick’s brow shot up. “I’m not going to pester you for your favors, Leah.”

“And that’s part of the problem,” she said gently. “I will want a kind of intimacy I can never have with you, and I know from experience what it’s like to yearn that way.”

Nick cocked his head in puzzlement, because this was female logic, and thus, a contradiction in terms. “You miss Frommer that much?”

“I miss Aaron, but mostly I feel crushing guilt for his death. I don’t refer to him, though, so much as I do to being raised by a man who cannot abide me. I wanted my papa to love me, Nick, to approve of me. As far back as I can recall, I was consumed with being as good as I could be, as smart, as demure, as clean, as quiet—whatever I could imagine him wanting me to be. I tried to excel at that. And he has never, not once, suggested he’s proud of me or pleased with me or anything but burdened by the fact that I draw breath.”

“I see,” Nick said, bringing his horse to a halt. To keep her safe, he was going to have to break her heart. This was not fair to him, and it was grossly unjust to her.

“I don’t know if you can see.” Leah’s gaze traveled over her brother’s dwelling, a modest edifice some would say was too humble for an earl’s spare. “I could not be what Wilton wanted, and he has grown to hate me.”

“You think I’ll hate you?”

“No, Nicholas,” Leah said as grooms approached to take their horses. “I’m afraid I will learn to hate you.”

Nick said nothing to that, as resentment was something he’d anticipated from her. Resentment not for withholding sexual intimacy, but rather because he was rescuing her from her father. Damsels with backbone, wit, heart, and dreams did not like needing rescue from their distress.

Hatred was a significant remove from resentment though, and the thought gave Nicholas pause. Leah assumed he would not be faithful, and Nick wasn’t going to argue her conclusion, but with her—with this whole business of acquiring a wife—he was at sea, and in too great a hurry to have the uncertainty end and the marriage get under way.

They collected Lindsey’s agreement to escort the ladies back to Town two days hence, and Nick was soon riding around the curve in Lindsey’s lane with Leah perched on the sedate mare at his side.

Nick paused as a noise came to them from the direction of Lindsey’s stables.

“What is that?” Leah asked, patting her mare. “The horses heard it too.”

“Just a child,” Nick decided. “A happy child, based on the glee in that shriek.”

“You know a happy child when you hear one?”

“I do. Or I know if you can’t tell if it’s a happy shriek, then it is, because an unhappy shriek is utterly apparent, painfully so.”

“Hmm.”

Nick slanted her a curious smile. “What does that mean?”

“For a man averse to siring children,” Leah remarked pleasantly, “you are certainly discerning about them.” She nudged her mare into a relaxed canter, sparing Nick the effort of a reply.

Which was a good thing, because he hadn’t one.