Nicholas: Lord of Secrets (12 page)

Ethan bumped Nick’s shoulder gently. “Correct me if I’m wrong. Isn’t that exactly what you’ve asked her to do, except—let’s not forget the details—you’ll be heating the sheets with your lightskirts—one hears you have a taste for plural encounters, though to the delight of all concerned—while she’s stitching the night away?”

“I hate you, Ethan.” Nick slouched down, sprawling against his brother in his misery. “I really do.”

“Drink your brandy,” Ethan said softly. “I’ve missed you, too.”

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?”