Nicholas: Lord of Secrets (26 page)

Oh, but it had come.

“Please,” Leah added softly. “You aren’t leaving for hours yet, and it’s time to get out of this bed.”

He cradled her against him for one brief, fierce hug, then hoisted himself off of her and off the bed. As Leah followed, Nick stretched out a hand and brought her to her feet to stand naked in his embrace. They remained thus for just an instant, and then Nick was handing her a dressing gown and shrugging into his own.

A knock on the door, followed by Nick’s permission to enter, began the next step of their parting. A maid wheeled in a tea cart and quietly departed after building up the fire.

“For June, it’s remarkably chilly this morning.” Or maybe the chill was just in her heart.

“We are not going to discuss the weather, Wife. Come have some sustenance, and let us continue planning the day.”

“Let you continue your lecture, more like.” Leah offered him a wan smile. “Can’t you just enjoy the meal, Nicholas, and send me the rest of your admonitions and instructions in some epistle?” She took a seat on the sofa by the hearth and surveyed the selections on the tea cart. Tea, she was up to; food was too much of an effort.

“Eat something.” Nick lowered himself beside her. “Share a buttered scone with me, at least.” It seemed important to him that she eat, so Leah accepted the food from his hand after he’d slathered her portion with butter. Nick took his to the window and parted the curtain to eye the weather.

“Quite cool,” he said, “but sunny and breezy. The roads will dry easily.”

“And you will go,” Leah added, forcing herself to take a small bite.

“I will go.” Nick said, still staring out the window. “But not far, and I will come back if you sense any mischief afoot whatsoever. I’ll also let Darius know you are in residence here, and Trenton as well.”

He turned to face her again, and there was an intensity to his blue-eyed gaze Leah could not decipher, as if he were trying to discern her internal workings by visual inspection of her outer attributes. “I’ll also call on Lady Della. The funeral distracted me from asking her about something that’s been plaguing me.”

“Burying one’s father is distracting,” Leah agreed, taking another bite of scone, though it tasted like so much buttered sawdust.

“I want to know who the seconds were at the duel where Frommer lost his life. It’s a detail, but I can’t shake the sense it’s an important detail.”

“You still think it matters?” Leah asked, putting down the rest of her scone.

“I think you are absolutely safe here,” Nick said. “I also think there are questions to which you still deserve an answer. You assume your father killed Frommer in a fair fight, but I’m not so sure. And if it’s not the case, then somebody can bring your father to justice.”

Leah didn’t argue that the matter should drop, largely because Nick seemed intent on pursuing it regardless of its seeming irrelevance. He would not be deterred, and it gave her a sense that his caring about her was genuine and not just a function of guilt.

So she capitulated—something she’d long since grown adept at.

“You’re not going to eat,” Nick said, eyeing her half-eaten scone.

“Not much appetite, I’m afraid.”

“Of course not,” Nick said in commiseration, but to Leah’s relief he kept his one thousand and seventeenth apology behind his teeth. “May I help you dress?”

She nodded and rose, and again they fell into the intimate, casual ritual of spouses attending each other’s mundane needs. To Leah, though, it seemed Nick’s touch on her hair and skin lingered, and he stood rather nearer than he needed to. And instead of letting her assist him, he brushed out and repinned her hair first, taking extraordinary care with the task, until Leah wanted to weep with frustration at the tenderness he showed her.

When they were both dressed and presentable, Leah could not manage to sashay through their bedroom door.

“I don’t want to leave this room,” she said, the dread she’d held at bay congealing in her chest.

“There’s nothing out there I’d allow to hurt you,” Nick said, obliquely admitting
he
was the cause of her pain. “And I cannot depart until after luncheon. Let’s find your farmers and your steward, Lady Bellefonte, and stroll in your garden.”

That feeling of dread inside Leah’s body sank down to her vitals and spread, like an illness taking over, until Nick’s proffered arm was not merely a courtesy but a real support.

The morning went, as Nick intended, with them trotting briskly from one farmstead to the next and spending more than an hour with the steward, reviewing the progress of the newly planted crops, the livestock, and the upcoming harvest of hay.

Luncheon arrived, and Nick suggested they take their meal in the garden. They dined sheltered from the breeze by the high walls near the house, if pushing food around and nibbling the occasional bite could be called dining.

Nick called for his horse when the lunch cart was wheeled back into the house, and remained sitting beside Leah on her stone bench, his hand linked with hers.

“I don’t want you to go,” Leah said finally. She wasn’t crying—yet—but her chest ached terribly, and she had the feeling she was burying her marriage and any hope for her long-term happiness with it.

“But I leave because I care about you,” Nick said, “at least in part, and I can only urge you to be as happy as you can, Leah. That is what I want for you, though it might not seem like it.”

Leah looked at him curiously. “And for yourself? What do you want for yourself, Nicholas?”

“Honor would be nice,” Nick said, staring at their joined hands, “but not likely possible. Peace, perhaps. Mostly, I want the happiness of those I love.”

His tacit admission hung in the air between them a moment longer, then he rose to take her in his arms when Leah said nothing in reply.

“I am intent on my course, though I regret deeply its consequences to you,” Nick said by way of one thousand and eighteenth apology.

“Perhaps time will create greater understanding for us,” Leah offered, and in her words, she intended that he hear both acceptance and hope.

“Walk me to my horse?”

“Of course.” Leah slipped her hand into his and tugged him in the direction of the stables when he seemed content to remain rooted in the fragrant, flowery garden where the summer blooms were making a good effort. As they walked past a bed of forget-me-nots, Nick fished for a handkerchief and silently passed it to her.

Dratted man. Dear, dear, dratted man.

His mare was waiting, saddled and patient at the mounting block, a groom at her head. Nick turned again to Leah and drew her against him.

“If you need anything,” he said against her hair, “if you sense any danger or anything amiss…”

“I promise,” Leah said around the painful ache in her throat.
I
need
you, I need you, I need you.
“And you—you must let me know how you go on from time to time.”

“Always,” Nick murmured then stepped away. He seized her in his arms again though, thoroughly kissing her despite the waiting groom and the myriad eyes no doubt peering out from the manor and stables. “Always,” Nick repeated as he let her go. He swung up, and without turning to face Leah again, touched his crop to his forehead and sent his horse cantering down the drive.

While Leah subsided unceremoniously onto the mounting block, her eyes trained on his retreating figure, his sandalwood-scented handkerchief pressed to her nose. When he reached the foot of the drive, Nick turned the horse not left, toward London, but right, toward the estate where the blond young lady no doubt awaited his visit. In the mare’s retreating hoofbeats, Leah heard the sound of her marriage and her heart shattering into a thousand miserable pieces.

***

Nick had left Clover Down intent only on ending the misery of parting for Leah. On the short journey to Darius’s estate, he assured himself he’d done the only thing he could under the circumstances, and Leah would be much, much happier without her sorry excuse for a husband lurking about, lusting for her, and resenting—for the first time in his life—the burden of desiring a lovely woman.

When he reached the Lindsey holding, he was in a foul, unconvinced mood, ready to frighten small animals and intimidate the hell out of anybody who crossed him. Darius himself met him at the door, the creaky butler nowhere in evidence.

Nick nodded curtly, scowling down at Leah’s brother. “Lindsey.”

“Reston.” Darius stepped back. “Or it’s Bellefonte now. My profound condolences. Can I offer you a drink?”

“You may.” Nick stepped over the threshold and saw there was no footman at attention in the front foyer. “Was that Lady Cowell’s carriage I passed on your driveway?”

“Yes.” Darius ran a hand through his hair. “I was not nor will I ever be again home to her here, but if you’re going to lecture me about the company I keep, why aren’t you keeping company with my sister?”

Well, damn. Lindsey had obviously eyed the saddlebags on Nick’s mare as she’d been led away, and realized this was not strictly a social call.

“That drink?” Nick arched an eyebrow, unwilling to confess his sins in the foyer. And come to that, Lindsey looked like he could use a drink too. “Though I don’t promise you won’t get a lecture as well,” Nick went on as Darius led the way through the house. “What can you possibly see in that woman?”

“My bloody miserable fate,” Darius said. “Brandy or whiskey?”

“Whiskey.” Nick decided on the libation that suited his harsh, volatile mood. “I’ve left your sister.”

Darius went still in the act of removing a glass stopper from a decanter, but then carefully set the stopper down on the sideboard. “Did she send you away?”

“She did not, and she has not in any way displeased me, nor does she deserve the talk that will undoubtedly ensue in time.”

“I see.” Lindsey poured one drink, very rudely tossed it back before pouring another for himself, then pouring a third and passing it to his guest. “Shall I call you out, Bellefonte?”

“Don’t call me that.” Nick accepted the drink, downed it, and passed his glass back for a refill.

“What shall I call you?” Darius inquired in lethally soft tones. Nick surveyed him and saw a man who was several inches shorter than he, maybe a year younger, and decades better acquainted with bitterness.

“Leah would kill us both for dueling,” Nick said as he accepted the second drink from his host and tossed that one back as well.

“I will not suffer my sister to be hurt,” Darius said, “but losing one of us in a duel would no doubt hurt more than weathering some gossip. So…” Darius looked around the room. “Shall we sit and blast away at each other with civilized insults and veiled threats, or can you tell me why you’re being such an ass?”

If he hadn’t liked the man before, and respected him for his championing of Leah, Nick liked him thoroughly in that moment.

“We sit and enjoy your surprisingly fine spirits.”

Darius gestured to the couch for Nick, and took a well-cushioned chair for himself, letting silence stretch while Nick took a seat.

“You will look in on Leah?” Nick set his empty glass down on the table, wondering if Lindsey possessed enough decent spirits to get them both drunk.

“Of course,” Darius replied, his expression hooded. “But why are you doing this, if you can tell me? I suspected your affection for Leah was genuine.” There was a hint of sympathy in the man’s tone, and Nick dropped his gaze to his empty glass rather than face compassion head on.

“My affection for your sister is genuine,” Nick said, “but have you never made a decision, Lindsey, that rippled out across your life, having repercussions you could not possibly have foreseen? Have you never given a promise in good faith you lived to regret?”

“I don’t promise anybody much of anything,” Darius replied with a snort of humorless laughter. “I have regrets, though. I most assuredly do have substantial, relentless regrets.” He lifted his drink to sip, when the door to the library burst open, and a little boy came barreling straight for Darius. Darius quickly set the drink down and caught the child up in his arms.

“Dare!” the child cried. “She’s gone! I can come out now, and we can go for a ride!” Darius’s arms tightened around the child’s squirming body, and his gaze over the child’s shoulder became so fierce Nick felt relief they wouldn’t meet over pistols or swords.

Darius Lindsey’s gaze promised death to Nick, right then and there, should Nick offer any hurt or insult to the child.

“She is gone,” Darius said quietly to the child in his lap, “but we have another guest, John, so why don’t you make your bow?”

The bottom of Nick’s stomach dropped out as he gazed into young eyes so like Leah’s.

“John Cowperthwaite Lindsey,” the child piped cheerfully as he scrambled to his feet and bowed to Nick. “At your service, good sir.”

Nick rose and bowed to the child. “Bellefonte. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” Then he squatted when he saw wee John’s stunned reaction to his great height. “But you can call me Nick, with mine host’s permission, as Bellefonte is not so friendly, young John, and I should like to make a new friend today.”

“Are you a giant?”

“Of course not,” Nick scoffed, still hunkered at the child’s eye level. “I am merely a fellow who ate all his vegetables, went to bed without a fuss every night, and bathed when nurse said I must. Darius was not quite as well behaved as I, at least when he was a boy.”

John eyed Darius, who was sitting as still and attentive as a hungry papa wolf. “Is that why Dare isn’t so big as you?”

“Quite possibly, though as grown fellows go, he’s on the tall side,” Nick said. “We mustn’t hurt his feelings when it’s too late for him to grow any more. Sit you down, John, and we will impress Darius with our conversation.” Nick hoisted the child onto his lap. “Now, my good fellow, tell me about your pony.”

John chattered on with the bright, happy oblivion of a well-loved child before a new audience, and Nick let go of some anxiety. Every child deserved to be loved, and this one had at least that in his favor.

Nick interrupted John’s description of his latest tumble from his pony. “Don’t you suppose if you’re to go riding, you’d best don appropriate attire?”