Nicola and the Viscount (11 page)

“Why do I…?” The God gave a laugh. Nicola wasn't certain, but it sounded to her a bit uneasy. “Why does any fellow love a girl?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Nicola said. “And I don't particularly care. I'm asking why
you
love
me
.”

“I say, Nicola,” the God said, finally laying down his bagatelle cue. “Are you quite all right? You seem a bit…. ”

“What is it about me, my lord”—Nicola would not relent—“that you love?”

The God, looking exceedingly uncomfortable now, ran a hand through his thick blond hair and peered at her curiously in the last rays of the setting sun, which were streaming into the room from the stained-glass window just behind him. The light, coming in through the colored panes, stained the carpet beneath their feet a myriad of colors, blood red, Nicola could not help noticing, being foremost among them.

“Well,” the God said. “I suppose I love you because normally—when you aren't acting like you are now—you're a…well, you're a jolly sort of girl.”

“I'm jolly,” Nicola echoed. “You love me because I am jolly.”

“Well, yes,” the God said, seeming to warm to the subject now that he'd gotten the initial words out. “You laugh a lot. I mean, most days.”

“Because I am so jolly,” Nicola said.

“Right. And you aren't afraid to try new things. Like the
Catch Me Who Can
, for instance. Not many girls would have ridden on that thing, but you didn't blink an eye. I liked that.” He smiled at her, a charming smile. The same smile that, the day before, would have sent Nicola's heart-strings fluttering.

Today, it hardly caused them to stir.

“You love me,” Nicola said, “and want to marry me, and live with me forever, until one or the other of us dies, because I am jolly, and I was not afraid to ride the
Catch Me Who Can
.”

The God considered this statement with some gravity. Then, after a moment's reflection, he added tentatively, “And because you're pretty?” as if it were a quiz, and he wasn't certain of the right answer.

Nicola, however, ignored this, as it was entirely unworthy of notice.

“Would it surprise you to know,” Nicola asked, “that I consider love a sacred thing that transcends defining, capable of bringing out both the best and the worst of human nature? Historically, men have performed great, life-risking feats in the name of love. They have also committed crimes of unspeakable horror, for the very same reason. I highly doubt, Lord Sebastian, that, given what I've just heard, what you feel for me falls under this definition.”

The God's perfectly formed mouth fell open. He seemed quite astonished, as if one of his mother's footmen, instead of setting a bowl of soup before him, had placed there instead a hissing garden snake.

“Would you be willing to die for me, my lord?” Nicola asked. “Would you forfeit your life for mine? No, I rather think not. Men don't tend to sacrifice themselves for women they find
jolly
. When I love—and you will note that I say
when
, as I do not believe, as of this moment, that what I felt for you, my lord, was love…not real, undying love, such as a woman feels for a man, what, just for instance, Desdemona felt for Othello, or Cleopatra for Marc Antony—it will be forever, and it will not be because of the way someone looks, or whether or not he happens to make me laugh, but because we share a common view of life and all of its vagaries, forming a unique and indefinable bond between us. When we are separated even for a moment, our very beings cry out in torment, until we are once again reunited. And I would willingly die a thousand deaths to keep him from suffering even one.

“That,” Nicola concluded, “is what love is, Lord Sebastian, and that is not, unfortunately, what you and I share. Therefore, I find that, much to my regret, I cannot possibly marry you. I'm sure you understand.”

And, turning around, Nicola strode quickly and quietly from the room, not stopping when Lord Sebastian, behind her, cried, “Nicola! Nicola, wait!”

She kept going. She did not stop even when Lady Farelly, coming down the hallway just as Nicola exited the drawing room, cried, “Miss Sparks! Whatever are you doing out of bed?”

No, Nicola did not stop, not even as she headed toward the front door, which, much to the consternation of the butler, Nicola threw open and walked through. She did not stop until she had walked all the way to Eleanor's house, several streets away, and had come to the door, and rung the bell.

A housemaid in a white mobcap opened the door, looking a good deal surprised to see a caller at such an unconventional hour, well past tea, but not yet time for supper. Nicola asked her if Lady Sheridan was at home, to which the maid replied that she'd see.

But fortunately Lady Sheridan happened to be close by, and when she heard Nicola's voice, she went to the door, shooed the maid aside, and, looking down at her daughter's most particular friend with great surprise, cried, “Nicola! Whatever are you doing out by yourself, and at this hour? Did you come by carriage? Surely you didn't walk all this way alone. Are you quite all right, my dear? Is something wrong?”

To which Nicola replied by flinging her arms around Lady Sheridan's neck and bursting into tears.

There was nothing in the world—at least the world as it existed in 1810—quite as irreparably damaging to a woman's reputation as a failed marriage. The only thing that came even remotely close to the shame and degradation of such a disaster was a broken engagement. Madame Vieuxvincent had warned her girls most strenuously on the subject, urging them to think very, very hard before breaking off a betrothal, as such an action could result not only in public humiliation, but also actual court action. Some jilted lovers were not above suing the parties who dropped them for breach of promise.

What Madame ought to have instructed her pupils in, Nicola could not help thinking now, was not the dangers of breaking off an engagement, but the dangers of entering imprudently into one in the first place.

For she might have avoided the current situation in which she found herself had she stopped to think, even for a moment, what marriage to the God might actually be like. In the girlish daze into which his proposal had thrown her, she'd been incapable of thinking of anything save the ermine she would wear once she became viscountess, and how nice it was going to be when finally she was allowed to touch Lord Sebastian's eyelashes, as a wife, by her station, had every right to.

She had never stopped to think how little the two of them, she and the God, had in common. She had never wondered,
What will we discuss over the table at suppertime?
Really, the God but rarely spoke at all at mealtimes, except to ask for the butter, or occasionally to tell a long and, to Nicola's ears, frightfully boring story about a horse he had or had not happened to bet upon. Certainly the God was, upon these occasions, terribly nice to look at. But his conversation was somewhat wanting. He could not even be trusted to know a single current event, as he opened a newspaper but rarely, and then only to look at the sporting pages. And heaven knew he had never read a single novel, much less a collection of poetry.

Why Nicola had not thought of any of these things before accepting his marriage proposal, she could not fathom. She only knew that there was no possible way she could marry the viscount after all.

And so she had set out for the safest place she could think of—the arms of Lady Sheridan, who had always been so kind to her and from which she hadn't the slightest inclination to stir. Instead, after Eleanor and her mother soothed and petted her enough to get the full story out, Nicola sent, with a footman, word to Martine that she was to pack immediately and join Nicola at the Sheridans'.

Further, and with Lady Sheridan's help, Nicola sent an apologetic note to Lady Farelly, thanking her for her hospitality, but explaining that a marriage between Nicola and the viscount was quite impossible. She accompanied this note with the ring Lord Sebastian had given her. In this way was Nicola's engagement to the God finally put at an end.

Or so she hoped. It would be, of course, extremely tedious if Lord Sebastian chose to fight her on the subject. She didn't suppose he'd take her to court—she hadn't, after all, any sort of income to speak of, and for him to sue a penniless orphan, even one whose father had been a baron, would be looked upon most unsympathetically by the press.

Still, Nicola expected a reprisal of some kind, and it came the very next morning, whilst she was still abed, having sat awake most of the night with streaming eyes and a throbbing head—apparently the Lord was punishing her for lying about having a megrim the day before by giving her a real one.

Eleanor was the one to bring the bad news…Eleanor, who had, in her role as loyal friend, of course absolutely agreed with Nicola's action of breaking off the engagement. A man whose only spoken words of love to his intended were to inform her that he found her jolly was no sort of man at all, to Eleanor's way of thinking. She, like Nicola, was quite bitterly disappointed in the God….

And all the more so the next morning, when, as Eleanor hurried to warn Nicola, he came to call, demanding to see his former fiancée and insisting that no one or nothing should keep him from her…although in point of fact Nathaniel and two of the footmen were currently doing so, having barred the viscount's access to the stairs leading to the guest room in which Nicola was staying.

“He looks a good deal upset,” Eleanor informed her friend. “Quite wild, as a matter of fact. I would venture his cravat hasn't seen an iron this morning.”

“I suppose he's probably frantic because his father's threatened to cut him off,” Nicola said bitterly into her pillow.

“Why should his father have done that?” Eleanor wondered.

But of course Nicola could not tell her that…not about Mr. Pease, and the Stockton and Darlington Company's plan to expand their railroad enterprise right through the center of Beckwell Abbey. The fact that the viscount had tried to marry her without loving her in the least was bad enough. But if people learned
why
he'd wanted to marry her—for Nicola was certain Nathaniel was right, and that Lord Farelly was somehow involved in a scheme with Mr. Pease to get his hands on her home—it would simply be too humiliating to bear.

Besides, it was all over now. Nicola was safe. So why bring it up?

“I don't know,” Nicola said, biting her lip. “I'm just being silly, I suppose.”

“Oh. Still, Nicola,” Eleanor said worriedly. “I wonder if you oughtn't see him. I don't think he quite understands that it's over between you.”

“I sent back the ring,” Nicola pointed out. “How much plainer can I make it?”

But it appeared that even so obvious a gesture as the return of an engagement ring was not enough to convince Lord Sebastian that all was well and truly finished between himself and Nicola. As the next few days passed, and Nicola began slowly to recover from her humiliation at his hands, the viscount did not let up in his pursuit of her, coming to call at least thrice daily—despite being turned away, each and every time, without ever once seeing Nicola. As if stationing himself in the Sheridans' downstairs parlor were not enough, he also sent bouquet after bouquet of roses, as if he hoped that Nicola might be overcome by the scent of so many flowers, and change her mind.

“You'll have to see him eventually,” Eleanor reminded her the first day Nicola felt up to dining with the rest of the family, and not in solitude in her room. “I mean, you can't hide from him for the rest of the season. You're bound to see one another at Almack's, at the very least.”

“I know,” Nicola said. Martine—who in typically French fashion did not see what the problem was with a loveless marriage, and who was quite put out with the fact that her mistress would not be a viscountess after all—was being particularly savage with Nicola's thick black curls, causing Nicola to cry, “Ow! Have a care, Martine,” at regular intervals during her toilette.

“You ought at least to go down and tell him you haven't changed your mind,” Eleanor said. “Then maybe he'll leave you alone for a bit. Unless, of course, you aren't really sure, and seeing him might set flame to your passion for him once more.”

“I assure you, Eleanor—ow! Martine, really,
must
you be so rough?—my passion for Lord Sebastian has completely flamed out. I just don't want to see him—or any of the Bartholomews—anytime soon. Is that wrong of me?”

“I should say not,” Eleanor said loyally. And she went away to tell the viscount that Nicola still refused to see him.

There was one person, however, who came to call that Nicola could not refuse to see. And that was her guardian, Lord Renshaw.

“Oh, no,” Nicola moaned when she learned this. “Not the Grouser! I wonder what
he
can want?”

But Nicola was fairly certain she knew what her guardian wanted. And so when she entered the drawing room where he was waiting to see her—a handkerchief held to his nose because all of the roses in the room, gifts from the viscount, were making him sneeze—she had her defense already well prepared.

“Never fear, my lord,” Nicola said lightly, as she swept into the room. “I shall pay back, to the penny, the money you lent me for my trousseau. Indeed, I spent only a small portion of it, on silk orange blossoms for my wedding slippers. You may have the rest at once…. ”

The Grouser, his eyes red-rimmed, intoned from behind the handkerchief, “I did not come here, you foolish girl, to speak to you about the money I lent you. I came to ask if you'd lost your senses.”

Nicola looked at her guardian in some surprise. She ought, she knew, to have expected an attack of the sort, as the Grouser was extremely old-fashioned and traditional. Still, she hadn't supposed that, aside from the money she'd wasted, Lord Renshaw would care much about her decision not to marry the viscount.

“I'm terribly sorry to have disappointed you, my lord,” Nicola said with some affront. “But I would think you'd want me to marry a man who loved me. Lord Sebastian, as it happens, does not.”

“Love!” the Grouser cried, as if the word were very distasteful indeed. “That's all girls like you ever think about. I suppose that's why you refused to marry my son. Because you didn't think him enough in love with you. This, I see, is what comes of an education. Ridiculous idea, educating women. They thrust those poets in front of you—this Byron fellow, and Wordsworth and Walter Scott—and fill your heads with nonsense about knights and love matches. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, Nicola, but there are no knights in real life, nor do love matches happen nearly as often as they do in books. In real life, Nicola, men and women marry because it is prudent…and it would have been exceedingly prudent for you to have married the Viscount Farnsworth.”

Stung, Nicola managed to keep her temper in check long enough to say, as mildly as she could, “Prudent, perhaps, from a financial respect, my lord, but not so far as my heart was concerned.”

“Your heart.” The Grouser blew his nose noisily. “What about your belly, young woman? Because I'm wondering how you think you are going to go on feeding it if you keep turning down suitor after suitor. One hundred pounds a year does not go far, and you won't always be able to depend upon your schoolmates' parents to feed and house you.”

Nicola narrowed her eyes at her guardian. Really, but he was a most odious creature. She didn't know what she'd done to deserve to be saddled with such an obnoxious relation.

“I can always,” Nicola said, far more sweetly than she felt, “go back to Beckwell Abbey, can't I, my lord? Seeing as how I didn't sell it. Do you not think that, at least, was prudent of me, given the circumstances?”

The Grouser, having finally found a corner of the room far enough from the roses that he could breathe without sneezing, lowered his handkerchief and sent a glare in her direction.

“No, I most certainly do not,” he said quite angrily. “You could live comfortably and well on twelve thousand pounds. Still can. The offer stands, you know. All you have to do is say the word, and—”

Nicola felt something bubble up inside of her. For once it wasn't laughter. No, it was anger, hot and dark.

“Sell the abbey?” Nicola's voice rose dangerously in both volume and tone. “Sell my only home? Oh, that's rich. And I don't suppose you'd happen to know why your Mr. Pease wants to buy the abbey, would you?”

The Grouser looked slightly taken aback. He had known, of course, that his ward had a temper—hadn't she once flown at him in a rage for suggesting it would be cheaper, in the long run, to have her aged pony put down than to keep feeding it the mashed oats its age and infirmity required?—but it had been some time since he'd seen her quite this angry.

“I'm sure I don't know,” the Grouser replied. “And I hardly think it any of your business what the man chooses to do with something he has paid fair price for…. ”

“Run a train through it!” Nicola shouted. Yes, shouted, Madame Vieuxvincent's warnings against a lady raising her voice in the house—or anywhere, for that matter—be damned. “That's what Mr. Pease wants to do with Beckwell Abbey. Run a railroad straight through the middle of it!”

Lord Renshaw looked stunned. He stood with his handkerchief half-forgotten in his fingers, and simply stared at her.

“How do you think that's going to make the local farmers feel?” Nicola demanded, her voice continuing to ring out at decibels that would have shocked Madame excessively. “Having great loads of coal thundering through their pastureland? Oh, I'm sure the sheep will like that very much!”

The Grouser, some of his astonishment seeming to ebb, eyed Nicola warily.

“Now, now,” he said, in tones Nicola assumed he thought soothing, but which, thanks to the roses, were quite the opposite, being phlegmy and unctuous. “Now, now, my dear. I don't know where you heard this terrible rumor, but I assure you, it is all a mistake—”

“It isn't a mistake,” Nicola raged. “It's perfectly true.” She had the map with her—indeed, she was rarely without it. She had taken to pulling it out often, whenever she felt her resolve against marrying Lord Sebastian needed bolstering. For it was not easy, giving up a god…even a god who had treated her so shabbily.

She thought about pulling it out to show to Lord Renshaw. But that, she knew, would only lead to unpleasant questions as to how she'd come to obtain such a thing. It was one thing to break Madame's rule about shouting. It was quite another to rightfully be accused of both snooping and pilfering. And Nicola wasn't in a mood to hear her guardian chasten her for thievery.

“Allow me to assure you,” Nicola said, keeping the map safely inside her sleeve, where it had fit so snugly since she'd found it, “that what I am telling you is true. You see now why I can never sell, don't you, my lord? Because while I have a breath in my body, Beckwell Abbey will remain standing.”

She thought for a moment that Lord Renshaw did see, that he was as horrified as she was over the idea of metal tracks being laid across the buttercup-dotted pastureland that surrounded her ancestral home. That he too could not stand the idea of a locomotive—a much, much larger one than the
Catch Me Who Can
—thundering through the middle of what had once been Beckwell Abbey's breakfast room, with its leaded glass in diamond-shaped panes, heavy oak beams, and flagstoned floor. That he was appalled as she was at the thought of the thick black smoke that hung over the Killingworth Colliery clouding the clear blue that canopied her childhood home, the most beautiful place, in her opinion, in the entire world. That he, too, understood the moral responsibility she had to protect, at all costs, these things that had been bequeathed her.