Nicholas: Lord of Secrets (28 page)

Nick sat. Della smirked—and poured him tea.

“So wiggle your handsome way out of this one, Nicholas.” Della pushed his tea at him. “You leave a wonderful woman to rusticate less than a month after the wedding, your father is barely cold in the ground, and you seek to resume your wenching already?”

“My wen—” Nick’s eyebrows rose then crashed down as he stared at the ridiculously delicate teacup in his hand. “I can say with all certainty Leah has ruined me for wenching, Nana. Of that you may be sure.”

“The bordellos should hang their windows with black crepe,” Della retorted. “So what are you about, Nicholas, to abandon your wife to gossip and scorn this way? Don’t you think she had enough of that with young Frommer? Or with her own father?”

“The gossip will eventually die down, for God’s sake, but what if we have children, Nana? What in God’s name will we do if we have children?”

He sat forward abruptly, his face in his hands, knowing Della and Magda exchanged a look of concern over his bent head.

“If you have children,” Della said carefully, “you will love them.”

“God in heaven, Nana.” Nick rose abruptly to his full height. “What if my heir turns out like Leonie? She can barely read, she must print her letters, she trusts everyone who smiles at her, she wants me to read fairy tales to her when I visit, and she will be playing with dolls until I’m an old man. Bad enough my children will be taunted for their height and size. Bad enough they’ll be assumed to be stupid oafs good only for hitching to the plow, bad enough they’ll never feel they fit in…”

He spun on his heel and went to the window, shoulders heaving with emotion before gathering his composure and continuing more softly.

“I cannot consign Leah to mothering a brood of oversized idiots,” Nick informed them. “Worse by far, I
will
not
consign my children to the ridicule and whispering and cruelties that would have been Leonie’s lot had I not intervened. Bastards may enjoy a certain anonymity, but not the heirs of a belted earl. Though you may cease your tantrums and lectures, for I have at least resolved to explain to Leah why ours must be a chaste marriage. She deserves the truth, and I deserve her undying enmity for not having shared it with her sooner.”

He regarded two old women who’d loved him since he’d first drawn breath, both looking at him with such… such
compassion
. Who would regard his children like this when he was dead and buried? Leah, perhaps. His entire future hung on that possibility.

“I’m going to explain to Leah what we’d risk were we to have children, and if she leaves me once and for all, I will accept her decision.”

Silence. Dumbstruck, dismayed silence, and Nick realized he’d shouted at his grandmother and his old nurse.

“My apologies, ladies.” He bowed at the waist. “You can appreciate my concern.”

Magda’s lips were pursed in thought, but Della rose and pushed Nick back toward the table.

“Sit, you,” she said, her tone commanding. “You are under a misapprehension I would relieve you of. Magda?”

Magda nodded and slid down beside Della.

“You believe Leonie’s limitations are a function of her parentage,” Della began briskly. “They are not.”

“But Papa had a brother…”

“Who fell from his damned horse as a lad,” Della interrupted. “There are many traits that run in the Haddonfield and Harper lines, Nick, but madness and mental impairment are not among them.”

“But then, how did Leonie come to be as she is?” Nick asked, a world of miserable bewilderment in his voice. “She has been like she is since I’ve known her.”

“Fevers,” Magda supplied. “You didn’t meet the girl until she was well past two years of age, and until that winter, she’d been just another darling, happy child. She walked by one year, began speaking about the same time, and put her sentences together the same as any other child.”

“So what happened?”

“Leonie fell ill with the same influenza that took her mother,” Della said. “But Leonie eventually recovered. Magda first noticed the child wasn’t coming along as she had before, though physically, Leonie has always been vigorous enough.”

His mind could not absorb all that Della said, but he could comprehend that last. “She’s been healthy as a horse, except for that flu.”

“I thought we were going to lose her,” Magda said. “She shook with the fevers and shook with them, night after night, and grew so tiny it’s a wonder she lived.”

Another silence fell, as Nick began to consider the information the old women had just imparted. He ran his finger around the rim of his teacup. “You are saying Leonie was not born simple.”

“No more than any other child,” Della said. “No more than you were, Nicholas.”

“So I’ve put aside my wife for nothing?” Nick asked the room in general.

“You put her aside to try to protect her,” Della said, “and to protect your unborn children from what you thought would be a life of ridicule and judgment.”

“God help me. Ladies, you will excuse me. I have another call to make.”

Nick stumbled out of the kitchen, not even hearing what they might have said to him in parting.

***

Nick hadn’t lied; he did have another appointment. But it wasn’t for another hour, and he needed that hour to put his world back on its axis. He found himself in the park by the duck pond, his little scrappy friend nowhere to be seen.

The day was pleasant, the breeze soft, the sunshine warm on Nick’s face. Just another pretty afternoon in the park, though Nick felt as if his whole life was shifting.

He’d been so wrong for so long, and so sure of himself in his wrongheadedness. He didn’t know whether to cry with relief or cry with sorrow for the damage his misjudgments were still causing even as he sat in the afternoon breeze and listened to the laughter of children.

Normal children, like little John. Children who could learn cursive writing and Latin, do sums and see malice and contempt when it came at them.

A loud quacking disturbed his musings, and Nick looked up to see an indignant young drake flapping and hissing at him. His friend, well on the way to growing up, though a yellowish cast to his plumage betrayed his identity. Nick fished a tea biscuit left over from breakfast out of his pocket and tossed it at the young duck. The tea biscuit disappeared, and the duck waddled down to the water and paddled off to join his fellows.

They
grow
up
—John and Leonie and children everywhere. They grow up, and their families shouldn’t miss the short window of childhood. God above, Leah was going to be reeling to find herself possessed of a half brother who’d been kept from her.

And then, when she’d recovered from that blow, or maybe before she sustained it, Nick was going to have to tell her about Leonie.

***

Leah had never had such a social week. Ethan and Beck came on Thursday. On Friday, David Worthington, Viscount Fairly, appeared and took her to visit with his wife and children. On Saturday, more of Nicholas’s friends, Lord and Lady Greymoor, showed up, with his lordship ponying a pretty mare behind his great black gelding, a wedding present to Leah. They stayed for luncheon before removing to Fairly’s, and while Lady Greymoor admired Leah’s gardens, she also admonished her hostess to bring that lackwitted Nicholas to heel.

Sunday saw a lull in the traffic, with Darius offering to escort Leah to services at the local church. It was a pretty day, and an innocuous way to meet her neighbors, so she went.

“I’m off to Town tomorrow,” Darius said as he handed Leah down from his coach when he saw her home. “I should be back by nightfall.”

“You’ll give my regards to Trent and the children?” Leah asked, searching her brother’s face.

“Of course, if I have time to stop by. I’ve a few appointments to see to first, and I thought checking in on Emily might be the higher priority.”

Leah regarded him sternly. “You are not to make her into your next damsel in distress. Wilton dotes on her, and her letters suggest she is enjoying the patronage of Lady Della. She’ll be all right, as I am all right.”

“Give Nick some time,” Darius said. “I like him, and I’m not easily impressed. What seems so insurmountable one day can often be managed the next.”

Leah glanced at him, wondering where such an encouraging sentiment came from, particularly as she needed to hear it—badly.

“Travel safely.” She kissed his cheek again, touched and a little surprised when he hugged her tightly, kissed her back, and then hugged her again before hopping up onto the box with his coachman.

“I’ll see you later in the week, Leah,” he called down. “Save some time for me.”

“Of course.” She waved him on his way, wondering what that was all about. She’d no sooner given the order for tea to be served in the garden when she saw the now-familiar groom trotting up the drive. Leah waved him over so they might dispense with formalities, and took the letter directly from his hand.

As she caught a whiff of Nick’s scent on the envelope, she felt a pang of longing for her husband—for his smile, his embrace, the sound of his voice, the feel of him shifting the mattress beside her at night.

She cut those thoughts off ruthlessly and made her way to the back gardens, Nick’s latest letter in hand.

Beloved Wife,

If you will receive me, I will call upon you Monday afternoon. We have matters to discuss. I continue to miss you, and though it flatters me not, I am cheered to learn you miss me as well.

Your Nicholas,

Bellefonte

Leah eyes scanned those three sentences several times before it sank in that Nick was coming back to Clover Down,
the
very
next
day
. She set the letter aside and reached for the teapot, thinking to pour herself a cup to steady her nerves.

Except her hands shook too badly to manage even that, so she simply went inside, jotted off a reply, and settled down to await her fate.

***

“Well?” Nick’s eyes bored into the hapless groom who’d pulled the duty of delivering Nick’s Sunday epistle to Leah.

“She seemed quite well, your lordship,” the man said, handing over the reply. “But I met her brother, Mr. Lindsey, at the foot of the drive, and he bade me pass along another message.”

“Go on.” Nick did not tear open Leah’s reply, not while the groom was still in the same room.

“He said he was making calls in Town tomorrow but would be expecting you and your lady on Tuesday for luncheon.”

“Thank you.” Nick nodded in curt dismissal. “But Druckman?”

“Your lordship?”

“Tell the lads I’ll be sending another note out to Kent tomorrow, this one to Blossom Court,” Nick said, his fingers itching to open the letter.

Druckman nodded resignedly. “Aye, your lordship.”

When he’d taken his leave, Nick crossed to the brandy decanter, eyeing Leah’s reply like a squirming sack. It could hold the key to his future, but was it snakes or kittens? Condemnation or happiness? Nick tossed back a brandy, marshaled his courage, and opened the letter.

Husband,

It will be my pleasure to receive you tomorrow afternoon.

Leah Haddonfield

Nick stared at the letter, trying to will insight from a mere handful of words. She would receive him—that was good—but that was all. No hint of concern for him, no admission that she missed him, no humor. Nick frowned and looked closer, thinking her handwriting was maybe not so tidy as usual.

Ah, well, tomorrow would come, and it would go, perhaps taking Nick’s last chance at happiness with it. Where were his friends when there was a brandy decanter and a long night to get through?

“I never anticipated how tiring separation from one’s husband would be,” Leah said as Buttercup was led off to the stables, “nor how many people call you friend, Nicholas.”

Leah sank down onto the front steps leading up to the Clover Down front door, and Nick realized his wife was delaying the moment when they were private. Well, to hell with that. He moved up a couple of steps and sat behind her so one of his legs was on either side of her. When Leah only watched him with veiled caution, he wrapped his arms around her and propped his chin on the top of her head.

“I love you,” Nick said, his voice a low, fervent rumble. “I need to get that out, before any of my well-meaning, infernal friends come trotting up that drive, your brother drops by, one of my brothers drops by, or some servant comes around to eavesdrop.”

“I beg your pardon?” Leah’s cheek was resting against his chest, her ear over his heart, where she’d once told him she liked to have it.

Nick pulled her away from him enough that their gazes could meet. “I said I love you, Leah Haddonfield. I hope it matters.”

He folded her back against him, unwilling to see her reaction in her eyes. What if he’d left it too late? What if he’d been too ridiculous, separating from a perfectly luscious wife because she
was
perfectly luscious? What if she laughed at him?

“I love you too,” Leah murmured against his chest.

Relief leavened his anxiety. At least she wasn’t laughing. All she’d said was… His hand in her hair went still, and he stopped nuzzling her temple.

“I’m not sure I heard you aright, Wife.”

Leah peeled back, met his gaze squarely, and pronounced sentence on him slowly.

“I love you, Nicholas Haddonfield,” she said, “but that is only a start. Why are you here today with me when you left a week ago, hell-bent on separation?”

“You love me?” Nick took visual inventory of the front court of his favorite little estate, then took a deep breath through his nose. Leah’s scent filled his awareness, assuring him he hadn’t fallen asleep on his horse, only to dream this moment.

“I love you.” Leah smiled, but there was sadness in that smile, and Nick’s initial bubble of joy began to drift away.

“I’ve hurt you,” Nick said, “and I am sorry. I’d like to show you how sorry.” He rose, drew her to her feet, and laced his fingers through hers, tugging her into the house and toward the staircase.

Leah tugged back, bringing him to a halt. “Nicholas?”

“Come upstairs with me, please?” His eyes pleaded, but he didn’t resort to overt groveling. Not yet.

“I cannot.” She dropped his hand, and it might as well have been Nick’s heart she cast aside. “I cannot bear for you to leave me again, Nicholas. If you take me up those stairs, you must promise you will not leave me, not for some wrongheaded notion, not for some other woman. I know you are a man with needs, but I am your wife, and I will try… No.” She stopped herself. “I will not beg. I will
not
.”

“I will not leave you.” Nick drew her into his arms. “Not ever, though you might send me away. I don’t just love you, Wife, I am
in
love
with you, and I can promise you I’ve never said those words to a woman before, not a human woman anyway.”

Leah frowned up at him, in puzzlement.

“I might have said them to my horse,” Nick amended hastily, “but you mustn’t worry I’ll leave you or be tempted to mischief or ever want another in my bed. I know we have much to discuss, more than you know, in fact, but please for the love of God, Leah, let me love you now.”

She searched his face then nodded once. Nick swept her up in his arms and all but ran for the bedroom.

Thank
you;
thank
you, Jesus; thank you, God; thank you, Leah.
This wasn’t what he’d intended when he’d cantered his mare up the drive. He’d intended to sit Leah down in his study with a tumbler of spirits, and clear the air between them of all the mistakes and deceptions. He should stop and do just that, because she might not be amenable to this reconciliation once she knew what he’d withheld.

That thought, however, made him only more desperate to seize his first and possibly last opportunity to be truly intimate with her.

He stood her on her feet rather than toss her on the bed, ruck up her skirts, open his falls, and have at it. This had to be right for her, in every detail, for he might never have another chance to be his wife’s lover in fact.

So he turned her by the shoulders and forced his fingers to carefully undo the hooks running down the back of her dress. He untied the bows of her chemise then drew her to sit at the vanity, where he took the pins from her hair and finger-combed the mahogany silk of it over her shoulders.

“We usually undress at night,” Leah said, catching Nick’s eye in the mirror. “By candlelight.”

“You are glorious in any light.” Nick bent to kiss the juncture of her shoulder and her neck, to inhale her, to feast on her. “And you smell of spring and sunshine.” He nuzzled and nibbled lazily before raising up to regard her in the mirror. “And you taste of warmth and willingness and every man’s fondest desire.”

“I want only to taste of your fondest desire,” Leah replied, almost sternly. She rose and inspected her fully dressed husband, a wealth of meaning conveying itself in her single arched eyebrow.

Nick was stark naked in seconds.

“Come here.” He held out his arm the very next instant and beckoned with one hand toward his wife. “Come here,
please
.”

That word, Nick was finding, had a magical effect on his countess. She liked to hear him ask politely for what wasn’t polite at all. When she was standing next to him in her chemise and stockings, Nick perused her with such intensity she blushed.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said at length. “I don’t deserve what we’re about to share, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I’ll presume on it anyway.”

As puzzlement at his words clouded Leah’s eyes, Nick distracted her by pushing her chemise off her shoulders and down over her hips. He knelt to step her out of it and to untie her garters and roll down her stockings, leaving her utterly naked in the soft afternoon sunshine streaming over the bed.

When Leah would have turned to climb onto the bed, Nick gathered her into his arms, her skin warm and smooth against his. He was already aroused, his erection arrowing up between their bodies and pressing against Leah’s abdomen. He pushed himself against her firmly, insisting she feel his desire even as his lips covered hers softly.

“God, how I want you,” he murmured against her neck. “To think…”

“I missed you,” Leah whispered, turning her face to his chest. “I wanted to ride into London and clobber you soundly on your handsome, stubborn, addled blond head.”

“I know,” Nick said, pushing her back so she sat on the high bed. “I deserved to be coshed. I
am
addled.”

“And you should be spanked.” Leah hiked back on her elbows and then must have noted a gleam in Nick’s eyes. “Oh, no, Husband. It’s daylight, for the love of God…”

“All the better to see you.” Nick snatched a pillow from the bed, tossed it at his feet, and knelt between Leah’s legs. “And pleasure you, and make you scream and beg and promise never to leave me.” When she would have squirmed back in protest, he wrapped an arm around each of her thighs and tugged her bottom to the edge of the mattress.

“And taste you,” he added, swiping the flat of his tongue right up the crease of her sex.

He tormented, teased, and suckled until Leah was whimpering and undulating with frustration. When he deigned to slip two fingers into her damp sheath, she convulsed around them, long and hard, much to Nick’s satisfaction.

“Tell me again that you missed me.” Nick smiled down at her as he stood beside the bed and took a sip of water. She was on her back, forearm shielding her eyes, her legs splayed in the most lovely testament to satiety Nick had ever seen.

Leah opened her eyes. “I still miss you. Inside me, here.” She slid her hand over her pelvic cradle. “I miss you. I grieve for the lack of you inside me.”

Grief. He’d caused his beloved wife not just heartache and disappointment, but grief. Nick set the water glass down and slipped his arms under Leah’s shoulders and knees, to arrange her on the mattress so her head was on the pillows.

“I miss you, too,” he said, coming down beside her and pushing her hair back from her forehead. “In here.” He took her hand and laid it over his heart. “And here,” his belly. “And here.” He wrapped her fingers around his cock and rolled to his back so Leah was the one on her side, regarding him as she stroked her fingers over his erection.

“You are uncomfortable?” she asked, sleeving him in a long, easy stroke.

“I ache,” Nick said, opening his eyes to meet hers. “I ache for you, for the sensation of being inside you and over you and… Merciful… Eternal… Leah.”

She bent and tongued his glans, a soft, hot swipe of dampness followed by gentle suction applied just under the tip.

“Lovey.” It came out “looovveeey.” Nick closed his eyes and cupped the back of her head gently. “I’ll spend.”

She ignored him, much as he’d ignored her earlier. Her fingers found the soft weight of his testes then eased up to stroke his shaft while her mouth tended to the velvety head of his cock.

“Please, lovey,” Nick whispered, and she answered his prayer by lifting her face so her hair brushed across his abdomen. “This time, I want to be inside you.”

Leah sat back and regarded him as he lay back against the pillows. “What has changed, Nicholas?”

He was glad she realized that something was different, that
he
was different, and that he wanted today to be a beginning for them.

“Everything,” he said, pushing up off the pillows and gently urging her down on her back. “Let me love you, please. I’ll be careful, I promise. I’ll go slowly, and I won’t hurt you.”

“You couldn’t hurt me.”

“I have hurt you,” Nick corrected her, easing his body over hers. “I hurt the heart you gave into my keeping, and… ah, God, Leah.” He slowly brushed his thumbs across her palms and hitched closer. The great length of his cock lay heavily on Leah’s stomach, hot, and still wet from her loving. She arched up against it and made a sound very like a growl near his ear.

“Shame on you,” Nick whispered, arching away from her. “I intend to make a proper job of this, Wife, and you will not rush me.”

“Hah.” Leah wrapped her legs around his flanks and pressed her wet sex to his shaft.

“You do not play fair, my lady. And I adored you before you started breaking the rules.”

“I’m merely making a proper job of it,” Leah whispered in his ear just as her thumbs brushed over his nipples.

Holy everlasting… He loved his wife,
loved
this mischievous, tantalizing, playful, inventive side to her. Her mouth brushed over one of his nipples, while her hand slid down, down the length of his back to grip his fundament. Nick fought a moment’s panic as his arousal threatened his control.

Proper job or not, he wasn’t going to last much longer, not with his she-devil wife intent on her own goals. With unerring instinct, he pressed the tip of his cock against Leah’s sex and succeeded in distracting her from her various plots against his sanity.

“Nicholas?”

“Let me,” he whispered, sensing the question in her body and in her heart. “I love you, and I would give you this. Give us both this, if you’re willing.”

He slipped his forearms under her neck and cradled the back of her head in one hand. She curled up against his chest, so he felt more than saw her single nod. She laid her cheek against his chest in a gesture of surrender, and Nick felt his cock leap in response.

They weren’t even joined yet, he’d merely seated himself snugly against the opening to her body, and already, his arousal strained at the leash of his control. So he distracted himself, kissing her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks. He softly scraped her earlobe with his teeth and slipped one hand down to cup and knead a full breast then tug at a ruched nipple.

All the while, he pressed forward slowly with his cock, until Leah’s sex eased around him and teasing became the start of penetration. She exhaled, and Nick glided forward the first full inch.

“Steady,” Nick rasped when he felt her gather herself to roll her hips. “We’re just getting started.”

Started, indeed. Leah’s sheath convulsed around him in firm, glad contractions of pleasure, though she held completely still otherwise, as did he.

“Oh, my…
Nicholas
…” Her orgasm went on so long Nick thought he was going to expire from the frustration of holding still. He contented himself with tucking her face against his throat and synchronizing his breathing with hers, then counting the tight, murderously pleasurable spasms as they passed through her to him.

She held still through it all, but then pulled herself up to him in a snug embrace when the aftershocks had faded.

“You’re all right?” Nick asked, resting his cheek against her temple.

“That was wonderful. You are wonderful, but I want more,
now,
Nicholas, not in five minutes.”

Her voice had a purring quality that resonated through Nick bodily.

“You’ll have more,” he assured her, tentatively retreating from even the shallow ground he’d gained, then advancing again.

“
Please
, Nicholas.” She clutched at him with her legs around his flanks. “I need…”

“I know,” Nick replied softly, reassuring her with the beginning of a rhythm. “I know, lovey. I need, too.”

He plied her with more patience than he’d laid claim to in his entire life, easing forward, easing back, listening for the telltale hitch in breathing that might suggest he was moving too deeply, too quickly.

It never came. Instead, in the waiting stillness he heard the gradual acceleration of Leah’s breathing, the little sighs of pleasure and satisfaction, the soft groan of encouragement as she felt him truly stroking himself in and out of her body. When he was moving easily to her depths and back out again, Nick tightened his hold around Leah’s shoulders.