Beyond Seduction (42 page)

you need to know is that your mother was my best friend. For that alone, I should have been part of

your life."

"Why weren't you then? If you knew that, why did you stay away?"

There it was. The heart of his failings. He had no justification. All he could offer was the truth.

"I was ashamed," he said, "for letting your mother down. I was young and scared and selfish and the longer I stayed away the harder it was to come back and face you. You didn't like me when you were little, you know. Just a big, scary stranger, I guess. It was easier to feel guilty than to do what I knew

was right."

The boy mulled this over, quiet, serious, weighing everything all together. His thoughtfulness was a trait Nic could not trace. Bess had not had it. Nic certainly didn't, nor Nic's mother. Seeing it forced home

the awareness that Cris was his own person, with his own unique feelings and experience. He was not

a mistake, not a tragedy, not a burden, just a human being trying to find his way.

"What about now?" he said, once his deliberations were complete.

The fading daylight caught the golden peach fuzz on his cheek. For all his self-possession, Cris was still

a lad. Nic must be careful not to imply promises he could not keep. Gathering his courage, he gripped

his thighs through the bath sheet. "How would you like to go to Northwick? With me."

"Northwick?" Cris repeated, visibly struggling not to jump to conclusions. "With you?"

"Yes," said Nic. "It strikes me that I need to return to the place where I went wrong. See if my mother really does want me to assume my filial duties. I can't swear the attempt will work, but if I don't bollocks it up too badly, you and I can move forward from there. Unless you'd rather go back to school?"

Cris hesitated. For a moment Nic thought he would refuse, that too much damage had been done. Then his brother shook himself. "No, I'd rather be with you. I'd like to see if we can be family. If that's what you want."

"It is," Nic said. "At least I'd like to try."

Cris gnawed his lip again. "What about Mary? If you're set on fixing things, don't you want to fix that first?"

Nic considered this, not because he wanted to hurt his brother's feelings but because he knew only a careful answer would be believed. He wasn't sure what purpose running after Merry would serve, not

as he was: all intention and no result. Now that he'd discovered whose daughter she was, he knew she needed neither his money nor his protection. Cris had implied she loved him, but love hadn't been

enough to hold her, no more than pleasure. Until he had more to offer, he could not expect her to

change her mind.

Aware that Cris was waiting, he squeezed his arm. "The situation with Merry is more complicated than

it seems. In any case, yours is the prior debt. If I can't pay that, then what you said before is true: she's far too good for the likes of me."

"'Complicated,' eh?" said Cris with a skeptical, purse-lipped smile.

Nic pressed his hand to his heart at a sudden memory. "My God, you're the image of your mother with that expression. She used to smile at me just like that when she thought I was talking nonsense."

Cris looked at the floor and then back up. His eyes pierced Nic like shooting stars. "You did love her,"

he said as if expecting a contradiction. "I don't care what you say, I know you loved her at least a bit."

Nic smoothed his brother's hair back from his brow. "Maybe I did. And maybe I still do."

*  *  *

The duke of Monmouth waited on the plat-form at Victoria Station, as tall and stern as a standing

stone amid the flow of travelers. He wore a long black coat with a velvet collar, above which showed

a silver-and-white cravat. His hat was high and straight, his walking stick clenched in the same broad

hand that held his gloves. His expression was that of a general prepared for a battle he does not relish

but can't avoid.

Merry hadn't known how much she loved him until she realized she couldn't run to his arms.

Naturally, her brothers were dismayed to see him, though he did not take them to task for trying to

hide the truth. "You were doing as your mother asked," he said in response to Evelyn's stiff apology. "You aren't the ones who broke a trust."

"Yes, sir," said Evelyn, and they tactfully withdrew.

With her brothers gone, Merry had no choice but to meet her father's gaze. She could see beyond his sternness now: to confusion that his daughter would defy him, to hope that she could explain and, finally, to a love no amount of disappointment could destroy. He was as Nic had portrayed him long ago, the different sides of his nature like layers of vibrant paint: strong and weak, wise and foolish, prideful and forgiving.

She hadn't known it at the time, but Nic had given her a gift when he showed her how to see her father's heart, a gift she would need to get through the days ahead.

Fortified by a peculiar sort of pride, she put back her shoulders and stood straight. "Do you want me to explain myself here, Father?"

"Can you?" he demanded.

"Not as you would wish," she admitted. She smoothed the front of her coat, the coat Nic bought her,

then forced herself to stillness. "May I ask how you found out where I was?"

"Hyde said you weren't with Isabel. Your mother filled in the rest. She recognized you from that painting. Bought it to protect you—much good as it did. Hyde told half the city before I could calm him down."

Merry bit her lip. The earl of Hyde was Isabel Beckett's husband. He must have discovered the truth about the letters. Merry hoped he had not punished her friend too badly as a result.

"I don't know what you were thinking, Merry, running off like that with a man you barely knew! The scandal's going to cost you dear enough. Hyde was livid at you for involving Isabel. Rightly so. He's convinced everyone will believe she's as wild as you are."

"I'll speak to him, Papa. Maybe I can—"

"You will not!" A porter turned his head at the furious denial. Her father lowered his voice and glared. "You'll not speak to anyone I don't approve beforehand. Honestly, that man might have done anything

to you. You might have been killed and we'd never have known. Can't you imagine how desperate we would have been? We love you, Merry. We deserve more respect than this."

"I know," she said, tears spilling hotly down her face despite her resolve to hold them back. "I also know no amount of remorse can undo my actions. I only want you to understand one thing. Nicolas Craven never hurt me. He has his flaws, as do I, but he never forced me, never frightened me, never misled me about his intentions in any way." Her father's face twisted in protest but she would not let him interrupt. "He was a gentleman. Maybe not by your standards, but by mine."

"He is beneath you," spit her father. "Beneath any decent woman!"

"He is not," Merry said, her emotions calming with her words. "In his way, he's as good a man as you."

Her father didn't know what to say to this. Perhaps her quiet confidence had somehow unsteadied his. The crowd jostled them in the pause, porters pushing carts piled high with baggage, mothers herding children, men in dark suits striding swiftly with folded newspapers under their arms. The sheer Englishness of the scene assailed her. She was home again, though it would never be home quite like before.

Recovering, her father spoke. His words were gruff, reluctant, their brusqueness a mask for his concern. "I'm sorry to ask but I need to be clear on this. He did compromise you, didn't he?"

Merry met his eyes. Whatever the complexity of his emotions, her father's will was strong. If she wasn't careful, she'd put Nic even more in the way of harm. Only a fool— which, admittedly, she had been—would count on Nic's unsuspected title to stay her father's hand. In truth, she'd rather he didn't know who Nic was. A marquis was a person a duke could force into marriage, at least in her father's

view of the world. She knew Nic would resist, but she'd brought enough ugliness into his life. If at all possible, she'd shield him from her father's wrath.

"In strictest truth," she said, "it would be fairer to say I compromised him."

Her father opened his mouth, then seemed to think better of asking a question whose answer he might

not wish to know. Instead, he offered her his arm. His hold was stiff but steadying.

"Come," he said, "your mother will have more to say to you at home."

Merry's stomach lurched queasily toward her throat. As difficult as this confrontation had been, she

knew the next would be even worse.

*  *  *

The interview with her mother was not pleasant, but she survived it. Unlike her father's quiet outrage,

the duchess's hysteria struck no chord—not because Merry couldn't conceive of reasons for it, but because her mother's concerns seemed more alien than ever. Even before her time with Nic, Merry

had cared more about people than position. The measure of a man, or woman, came not from titles

or clothes or whether they knew which fork to use. It came from inside, from the soul. Merry knew

her own soul was far from spotless, but what shame she felt was for being selfish. The experiences

she'd shared with Nic, good and bad, she did not regret.

One regret, though, she could not shake: that she hadn't done more for Cris. As she lay in the bed of

her childhood beneath her parents' roof, as she fought to feel like more than a daughter, she found

herself dwelling on his dilemma. No doubt this turn of mind was illogical: their situations were more different than the same. Nonetheless, in the short time she'd known Cris, he'd touched her heart. In

any case, it was less painful to think of him than of her and Nic.

So she wondered how he was and if he and Nic had come to an understanding. She thought about

things she might have said to help: that just because Nic was afraid to care didn't mean that he did not, that even if Nic was indifferent, this didn't rob Cris of worth. Cris would have to work harder, was all,

to think as well of himself as he should.

In this, she and Cris were matched; Nic had not been able to love either of them enough.

*  *  *

Nic's mother was in the greenhouse stacking trays of seedlings. She wore a pair of soiled men's riding trousers and an equally soiled pair of boots. He'd forgotten how square her hands were, how strong

and practical. Her waist was thicker than he recalled and her hair was definitely grayer. Other than

that, she was precisely the same old warhorse.

To his surprise, he found the sight of her strangely dear.

She looked up when he made a quiet noise inside his throat. Her eyes were older, their blue more faded. The pain that flashed across them in that first unguarded instant took him aback. Up till then, he hadn't truly believed his absence hurt her. He knew how far short of her dreams for him he had fallen.

"Good Lord," she said, then hesitated as if she wasn't sure she was seeing true. "Nicolas, is it really you?"

"In the all-too-solid flesh." Though his voice was light, his hands were shaking. She'd always seen every meanness he'd slipped into. And she'd always demanded he try again. When he was young he'd resented her for it. Now he heartily wished he'd learned the lessons sooner.

She nodded, a curt dip of the chin that roused a thousand boyhood memories. "Finally decided to stop punishing me?"

He swallowed a surge of an old, old anger. This was not a rut he wanted to go down. "It was never my intent to punish you."