Nicholas: Lord of Secrets (30 page)

“It’s a pleasant night.” Nick handed the reins to the groom, who led the horses off without a word. Leah accompanied her husband to the foot of the lane before Nick’s voice pierced the gathering gloom.

“For God’s sake, Leah, say something.”

What
to say?

“That Mrs. Crumpet is rather a dull thing,” Leah managed. “Makes you wonder upon whom Leonie modeled her.”

“Her previous companion,” Nick replied. “It took me almost a year to comprehend the dratted woman threatened to hide Leonie’s stuffed animals if Leonie complained to me of anything.”

“How old is your daughter?”

“She just turned sixteen,” Nick said on a soft exhalation. “Physically she’s sixteen, but mentally…”

“I’m not sure mentally matters a great deal. We can all be reduced to mewling infancy under the wrong circumstances. Tell me about her, Nicholas. You are clearly a devoted papa, and she adores you.”

“She adores anyone,” Nick said, wearily to Leah’s ears, maybe guardedly as well. “It scares the hell out of me, if you want the truth. Someday, some bloody young swain will come along, delivering the eggs, and walk off with her heart if not her virtue.”

He went on, pouring out a litany of every father’s hopes and fears for his daughter, his fondest memories and most harrowing moments. Leah listened, leading Nick around to the back gardens at Clover Down as the words continued to flow from him, haltingly at first, but then more steadily, until his voice was a rumbling torrent of paternal devotion.

When it had been full dark for more than an hour and the crickets were chirping at the moon, Leah sat beside Nick among the newly blooming roses, holding his hand and hoping she was reading the situation correctly.

“So how did she come to be as she is?”

“Fevers, though I didn’t realize it until my old nurse informed me of it this week. I thought Leonie was born that way.”

“It must have been quite a shock,” Leah said, “to be what, fifteen years old, and a father?”

“It was a shock. I didn’t find out about Leonie until I was seventeen. I’d been dallying for several years at that point and had come to comprehend the precautions that must be taken. As a very young fellow, though, I was heedless.”

“You got somebody with child. I can’t understand why the young lady didn’t simply apply to you for support.”

“She was a relation of Magda’s,” Nick said. “Daughter to a tenant, and she went to Magda first, thinking to rid herself of the child. Even the heir to an earldom is a poor bet for one’s future when he’s fifteen years of age.”

“Your father pensioned her off?” Leah suggested, drawing Nick’s hand through hers.

“Magda sent the girl to live with cousins here in Kent,” Nick said. “Then announced her own retirement about a year later. No one thought anything of it, given that Magda is older than dirt.”

“And you would have been sixteen when your nurse left Belle Maison.”

“Sixteen, and as is the case at that age, a very different heir than I would have been at fourteen or fifteen. I charged off to university, full of my considerable self, ready to have at adult life.”

“What happened?”

“When I was seventeen, Leonie’s mother died,” Nick said, his arm stealing around Leah’s waist. “Of influenza or high fevers, I’m not sure exactly what, but Magda thought at that point I was old enough to intervene. Her own little pension wasn’t going to be sufficient to raise an earl’s by-blow, and I had grown up enough in her opinion to do the right thing. Magda is, after all, elderly, and she didn’t want Leonie getting attached to her just as her own health failed—or worse.”

In other words, Magda had not wanted Leonie embarking on the series of losses that had marked Nick’s early upbringing.

“You became Papa to a two-year-old at seventeen.”

“Nearer three,” Nick recalled, “and she was gorgeous, all blond curls, smiles, and big blue eyes. I understood when I first held her what it was that drove my father to be so fierce sometimes, so irrationally protective. Leonie is the most tenderhearted, dear person…”

“Like her papa.” Leah laid her head on Nick’s shoulder and heard a great, heartfelt sigh go out of him. “Nicholas, did you really think I would censor you or your daughter because she hasn’t the same kind of intelligence as the empty-headed twits you danced with all spring?”

“I was cautious,” Nick said slowly, resting his cheek against Leah’s temple, “but I’m trying to tell myself it wasn’t without some reason.”

Leah waited, sensing they were reaching the most difficult part for Nicholas.

“I mentioned I did not know Leonie’s ailment was caused by fevers until recently,” Nick said. “I assumed she was born simple, that it was tainted blood causing her mind to remain that of a child. I had an uncle who was the same way, and we never talked about him, but he was still sailing boats and climbing trees as his hair turned gray.”

“You probably got on well with him.”

“The one time I met him, yes, but he was kept hidden away on some little estate in Shropshire, and I understand why.”

“He was an embarrassment?”

“I honestly don’t think so. I think it was the only way Grandpapa could protect his son from ridicule. Leonie could play with children her own age when she was very young, but even then, she was taunted for her height. Children being what they are, the taunts soon included her mental abilities, and she withdrew to her dolls and toys, and storybooks.”

“So she can read a little. Reading has always been one of my secret comforts.”

Nick’s hand began the gentle caress along the length of her spine Leah loved.

Leonie taught him that gentleness, too. Leah had observed it in his every interaction with his daughter.

“I am so lucky Leonie’s a female, a creature who can dwell in peace at home. If my heir had been similarly afflicted, a young man who’d be forced to socialize and be seen—I cannot bear to see Leonie cry. How could I have kept the next Viscount Reston safe and happy?”

***

The question had haunted Nick for years, for as long as he’d known he had a daughter. How would he keep an heir to an earldom safe? Who would love his children, should they all turn out to have Leonie’s limitations?

Except, he knew the answers to those questions now, or knew enough of them. With the Countess of Bellefonte snuggled into his arms, Nick knew she would have managed those difficulties with him and made it look easy.

Nick went silent, trying to find a name for the feeling that was expanding from his chest to his vitals and outward. It was more than relief at Leah’s reaction, more than gratitude to be able to envision a future that included his wife and his daughter. He turned to straddle the bench and drew Leah against his chest.

Hope
, he thought with a flash of insight. Hope that set tears seeping from his closed eyes, and
joy
sang through him in the very coursing of his life’s blood.

“I was afraid,” he finally got out. “I was afraid for my children, for my brothers and sisters, afraid for you. I was afraid…” He’d been terrified, and he was still daunted, but his fears were no longer going to dictate the limits of his happiness or those of the people he loved.

“Any father would be concerned,” Leah said against his chest. “But you’ve kept Leonie safe, and she’s happy, too. She has her papa’s love, and that has been enough.”

“Enough.” Nick nodded against Leah’s hair. “Enough for my youthful by-blow, but I could not see how to protect my heir had he similarly been afflicted, or my legitimate daughters, who would be expected to make come outs and good matches, and bear children of their own. Society is so…”

“Mean,” Leah interjected. “Judgmental, petty, spiteful, and in the end, stupid. You know this, because you are so wonderfully grand in your proportions, including the proportions of your heart.”

“I’m too damned big,” Nick corrected her tersely. “Which has resulted in my being a freak, albeit one popular with the ladies.”

“Ladies can be discerning. This explains why you were willing to nip off to the shires for a few years and forgo your place in Society.”

“And travel frequently,” Nick said, “and bury myself in commerce before my father’s demise, and trot from one family holding to another. My idea of hell is to endure Polite Society for any length of time, and then too, moving around so much allows me to drop in on Leonie frequently.”

“Well, that will have to stop,” Leah said sternly.

A cold trickle of dread seeped down Nick’s spine. Surely Leah wasn’t going to deny him time with his daughter? “What do you mean?”

Leah pushed off his chest to regard him in the moonlight. “You love that child with your whole soul, Nicholas Haddonfield, and it breaks your heart to have to part from her, never knowing when you can steal another little visit, never seeing her day to day as all parents can see their children. You missed her first two years, and it simply won’t do for you to miss any more. She’s clever enough to try to extract promises from you regarding your next visit, and she wants to be with you more as well.”

Nick buried his face against her neck, his throat constricting. “She’s difficult, she has a temper, she’s loud, and she can be clumsy when she’s happy—also when she isn’t.”

“I have a temper when my courses are near,” Leah said. “I hate needlepoint, and I will hoard chocolates if left to my own devices. She is your daughter, and of all people, Nicholas, of all
women
, I cannot stand by and watch another young lady fret that her papa doesn’t love her, doesn’t want to be with her, isn’t proud of her. I will argue with you on this and not give up.”

“She knows I love her,” Nick said roughly. “She has to know that.”

“Of course she does, but it’s the sort of thing that can be doubted even while one knows it.” Leah folded herself back against him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and tucked in close. “She’s your daughter. She should live with her papa.”

And now what Nick felt was beyond words, beyond even the concepts of hope, joy, and gratitude. It made him humble and invincible, determined and at peace. It gave him the strength to cry and the courage to accept the miracle he held in his arms.

Sitting on the stone bench in the moonlight, his backside going numb, his wife in his arms, Nicholas Haddonfield knew he was absolutely and unshakably, unequivocally and eternally
loved
.

***

“I believe you have something that belongs to my wife.” Nick allowed himself to glower at his father-in-law, though he relished those two little words:
my
wife
.

“Why would I retain any evidence of the blight she embodied under my own roof?” Wilton replied mildly.

Nick braced himself on his fists and leaned over Wilton’s ornate desk. “Because at some point,” he replied in equally unimpressed tones, “you considered it might gain you leverage, with someone, somewhere, to be able to prove her marriage to Frommer was legal, and to conceal such evidence in the meanwhile.”

“How do you reach such an absurd conclusion?” Wilton rose and turned his back on Nick, his posture suggesting he was absorbed in the study of the gardens behind the Wilton town house.

“Hellerington was forthcoming,” Nick said. And Nick had been inclined to believe the man, even when he claimed to have had nothing to do with an attempted abduction from the park. “Seems while taking the waters in Bath, your old friend got some charming little trollop pregnant. He no longer pants after Leah, which, under the circumstances, is most wise of him, albeit inconvenient for you.”

“Hellerington’s doings are no concern of mine.”

“Not now,” Nick said, “but you saved those marriage lines in case you needed to convince Hellerington you could not keep your promise to him, that you had no authority to promise your widowed daughter’s hand to anyone.”

“Widowed…” Wilton did turn then, and though he hid it well, Nick saw the fear behind the calculation in the older man’s eyes.

“Widowed,” Nick said. “Widowed, entitled to both her portion and her inheritance from her mother, which—alas—we will find mysteriously plundered by none other than my father-in-law.”

“You are making wild accusations against a peer of the realm,” Wilton spat, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Peer being the operative word,” Nick retorted, “when I now enjoy that status myself. Did you really think Hellerington would keep his mouth shut forever? You promised him a wife if he kept the details of the duel to himself, reneged on your promise, and now he neither needs nor wants the only wife you could have procured for him.”

“He doesn’t know the details of any duel,” Wilton shot back, his voice rising.

“One can hardly call it a duel when a young man trips before the count is done and his pistol discharges while he yet faces away from his opponent, and that opponent turns, sees the young man on the ground, and shoots him in the back. I agree with you, it doesn’t qualify as a duel, but it bears an exact resemblance to murder.”

“You don’t know that’s what happened,” Wilton hissed. “You can’t know that.”

“First hand? Perhaps not, but I have Lord Hellerington’s sworn affidavit, and that will do to get things started.”

“You would not dare,” Wilton retorted, desperation ruining his attempt at indignation.

“I might not, but Frommer’s brother heard the same tale from young Frommer on that unfortunate man’s deathbed. Because the marquis was himself not an eyewitness, he did not feel he could come forth with the tale, his inattentiveness at the scene reflecting further dishonor on the proceedings, and on himself. In short, Wilton, you got lucky. But deathbed confessions are admissible hearsay in a court of law.”

Nick let that sink in and felt a petty gratification as he watched the color leach from Wilton’s face. A silence spread through the room, full of satisfaction on Nick’s part, no doubt full of dread on Wilton’s.

“What will you do, Bellefonte?”

“Don’t know.” Nick’s tone was jaunty to the point of nastiness. “I know what you’re going to do, though.”

Wilton nodded shakily, waiting.

“You’re going to retire to Wilton Acres,” Nick said, “where you will attend your estate in such a manner as to ensure a reasonable profit. You will sell the town house you purchased for that viperous little mistress of yours, and you will lease out this property, should your sons not be interested in its use. With those proceeds and the profits off Wilton, you will repay your children what you’ve stolen from them, with reasonable interest. You will not circulate in Society at any level, Wilton. Not for at least five years.”