Nicole Jordan (23 page)

Clearly she would have to devise a new plan for dealing with Nicholas. There
had
to be some way to turn the tables on him so that she could regain control of her life. She was never going to persuade him to leave her alone otherwise—for his sake as well as her own.

The risk he was taking worried Aurora greatly. She lived in constant fear of his exposure. Lord Clune apparently had taken up his sponsorship and was showing Nicholas about London, squiring him to gaming clubs and indulging in other rakish diversions. She felt sure he would get himself killed if he kept up his reckless imposture.

He was better known in England than he presumed, Aurora believed. But when he was nearly recognized, it was by a French émigré, of all people.

Nicholas had escorted Raven and Aurora into a milliner’s shop on Oxford Street. The proprietor, upon seeing him, gave a start and clasped her hands together, exclaiming,
“Mon Dieu!”
under her breath. Then Nicholas removed his beaver hat, fully exposing his dark hair, and the Frenchwoman’s look turned to confusion.

She seemed to recall herself and came forward to greet her clientele, but while Raven contemplated fashionable bonnets, the proprietor eyed Nicholas in puzzlement.

“Pardon, monsieur,” she said finally in a heavy accent. “I did not mean to stare, but you have the appearance of a man I once knew.”

Aurora felt herself tense, yet except for a polite smile, Nicholas kept his expression impassive. “Perhaps you mistake me for my cousin, madame. It happens with some frequency.”

“Your cousin is Mr. Nicholas Sabine of America?”

“Yes.”

The woman moved forward to clasp his hand fervently. “Oh, monsieur, your cousin is truly an angel. He saved the lives of my entire family. Not only mine, but a half dozen other families as well. Never will I forget him or the debt we owe him.”

She was an older woman, with graying hair, but still quite beautiful, with the fine-boned structure and porcelain skin of an aristocrat. Nicholas gave her his most sensual smile, as if she were twenty years younger. “My cousin is a fortunate man, to be remembered so fondly by such a lovely lady.”

The proprietor flushed with pleasure and released his hand, almost in embarrassment. But when sometime later they concluded their shopping, she adamantly refused to let them pay for the three bonnets Raven had chosen.

The moment they left the shop, Raven asked the question that had been burning on Aurora’s lips. “What did she mean, you saved her family? You were too young to be part of their bloody revolution, were you not?”

“Yes. But I happened to be in France afterward, during one of their gruesome governmental purges.”

“And you just
happened
to rescue a half dozen families from the guillotine?” Aurora said dryly.

He shrugged. “Actually, it was only four. And it was a firing squad. The guillotine had been abandoned by then as too ‘uncivilized.’ ”

Raven visibly repressed a laugh at his sarcasm, but Aurora was disturbed to learn of yet another situation where Nicholas could have been killed. She frowned at him over his sister’s head.

“I suppose you mean to claim you didn’t enjoy playing the hero, courting danger and risking your life?”

Nicholas shook his head. “Danger doesn’t trouble me, but I didn’t consciously seek the honor. I just seem to have a knack for becoming embroiled in rescues, even when I don’t intend to.”

“Even so, the problem now,” Aurora said slowly, striving for patience, “is that your exploits have made you infamous enough you cannot hope to escape recognition.”

“There are few people who know anything of my ‘exploits,’as you call them.”

“But if someone whom you met
years
ago recognized you, others will as well.”

“Then I will just deny the acquaintance as I did just now,” he said mildly. “Stop worrying about me, love. It will only give you gray hairs.”

His answer dismayed her. Nicholas seemed oblivious to the danger he was in, indeed, seemed to thrive on it.

Giving him a look of frustration, Aurora marched off toward her carriage, leaving him to follow with his sister.

“You shouldn’t tease her so, Nicholas,” Raven said tightly. “She’s worried that you will come to harm and only wants to protect you.”

Nick glanced at her quizzically, surprised to hear the anger in her voice. “Was I teasing her?”

“You know you were. If you understood what Aurora has endured, you would not be so unkind.”

He raised an eyebrow. “What has she endured?”

“She may be a wealthy duke’s daughter, but her father made her life a misery. It must have been wretched for her, living under that tyrant’s thumb, having to suffer his rages.”

“I trust you mean to explain what you are talking about.”

Raven glanced toward the carriage where Aurora awaited her. “There is no time to discuss it now. Meet me at Tobley’s Bookshop tomorrow afternoon and I will tell you.”

His concern aroused, Nick found himself impatiently waiting for Raven the next afternoon. When eventually she arrived with her maid, he followed her to a rear corner of the shop. They each pretended to peruse the shelves of novels while Raven explained what she had meant about the Duke of Eversley’s rages.

“His grace has a vicious temper,” she murmured in a hushed voice, “that I had the misfortune to witness shortly after we arrived in England. I was living with my Aunt Dalrymple by then, but Aurora spent the first few days at her family’s London house. Naturally she wrote to her father and told him of her marriage to you. She was concerned about his reaction, I knew, but I never dreamed it would be so violent. The duke came to London in a fury, outraged because she had sullied the family name by wedding a condemned criminal. I saw their confrontation myself.”

Raven shuddered. “I had just been admitted to their house by the butler—Aurora planned to escort me shopping, you see—when I heard someone shouting. I found Aurora in the drawing room with her father. His grace was standing there, shaking his fists at her and screaming. I could scarcely believe how livid he was. When Aurora tried to calm him, he picked up a heavy vase and threw it at her! Thank God it missed and merely shattered against the wall. It could have killed her.”

Nick felt a sudden knot of anger and revulsion coil in his gut at the picture his sister had drawn for him.

“To my shame,” Raven went on in a low voice, “I was too stunned to react, but her butler tried to intervene. That poor man is nearly a relic, he’s so old, yet even though he was no match for the duke physically, he stepped between them. Eversley shoved him to the floor and went after Aurora, his fist raised. I honestly believe he would have struck her if he hadn’t seen me. He stopped only because he didn’t wish to commit such an outrageous indiscretion in front of a stranger.”

“What happened then?” Nick asked in a hard voice.

“Well, the duke looked as if he would have an apoplectic fit, trying to control himself. He warned Aurora to get out of his sight, in fact, to leave his house entirely—saying that she was no longer his daughter—and then he stormed out.”

Raven drew a measured breath. “Aurora was shaking, but she was more concerned for poor Danby, who had struck his head on a table when he was pushed. It was only later, after he had been tended to, that she confessed that sort of violence from her father was not uncommon. I think Aurora was vastly relieved he had washed his hands of her. She wouldn’t say anything else against him, but later O’Malley was able to glean more from her servants than she would divulge to me. The tales only confirmed what I saw, that the duke is a terrible tyrant.”

“
Tyrant
is obviously too tame a word,” Nick said sardonically.

Raven nodded. “From what I gather, Aurora had to keep others safe from his rages for years, at no little cost to herself. That wasn’t the first time he had threatened to strike her.”

Nick’s brows snapped together in a scowl of disbelief. “Eversley beat her? His own daughter?”

“It’s monstrous, I know. But his servants paid even more dearly for his temper. Reportedly he took a crop to a groom once and nearly blinded the poor man.”

Nick felt his gut tighten, repulsed by the thought of any man taking his anger out on defenseless dependents. And the idea of Aurora being at Eversley’s mercy sickened him.

“Every one of her servants,” Raven added quietly, “says that Aurora did her best to protect them from her father’s fits of violence. More than once she had to physically intervene. And when he turned them out without a reference for the slightest infraction, she found them positions elsewhere. She never forgot them, either. When she set up her own household several months ago, she searched out those who had suffered at her father’s hands and offered them employment. At least two of them were nearly destitute and were so pitifully grateful…. It is small wonder they think Aurora is a saint.”

“No, it’s no wonder,” he replied tersely, struggling to keep his anger in check. When he’d proposed to her, Aurora had implied her father would be angry at her marriage, but never could he have imagined she would be in actual danger.

“What are you thinking?” Raven asked, eyeing his scowling face.

The smile Nick gave was wintery. “About how much I would enjoy ten minutes alone with the duke.”

“I know,” Raven said, understanding. “He deserves to be taught what it is like being at the mercy of someone stronger and more powerful. But you cannot reveal yourself to him, Nicholas. You are supposed to be in disguise.”

His jaw hardened in frustration at the reminder, but then his tension eased. As Nicholas Sabine, he was severely constrained by the need for secrecy, but as Brandon Deverill, he was under no such restrictions. He could repay the duke for all the grief the illustrious bastard had caused his daughter….

“Now what are you thinking?” Raven asked with a frown.

“That the day will come when the duke receives his just desserts,” Nick replied enigmatically.

Apparently satisfied, Raven turned to reshelve the book she had been pretending to read, then added thoughtfully, “I’m certain her father is the main reason Aurora is so concerned about propriety. It is not that she is afraid of defying convention per se, but because the duke threatened her. He vowed that if she caused any further scandal, he would whip her like a stableboy and lock her away where she could no longer sully his name. That is why she is so careful to observe her widowhood, why she doesn’t go out in society. She doesn’t want to give her father any ammunition to use against her. She knows what he is capable of.”

Raven turned back to Nicholas. “But I hope you see now that her concern for your safety is not really irrational at all. It has become second nature for her to worry about others, to try to protect them from harm.”

Nick nodded slowly. It explained so much about Aurora. Why she claimed to want a quiet, serene life. Why she seemed afraid of passion. Why she had chosen a reportedly intellectual milquetoast like March to love. After being subjected to her father’s fits of temper all her life, she would abhor any emotion that was too intense.

It explained, too, Nick realized, why she had reacted like a mother tigress when she’d seen him being beaten on the quay in St. Kitts; why she had intervened to save a total stranger. And why she had wed him—a pirate and accused murderer—despite all the serious disadvantages. She had wanted to escape her father and his rages.

Her widowhood provided her the safe haven she yearned for, but in reality, she had turned it into a prison, where emotion, desire, passion, had no place.

Scowling, Nick stared unseeingly at the rows of leather-bound volumes before him. He finally was beginning to understand what drove Aurora. Her reserve was far more ingrained and complex than he had first thought, but at least now he could better see what he was up against, and why she resisted him so fiercely. He imperiled her haven, threatened her passionless existence.

His resolve hardening, Nick set his jaw in determination. The task of teaching Aurora to trust him, to open up to him, would be more difficult than he ever imagined. But somehow he would find a way to free her from the joyless prison she had deliberately created for herself.

Chapter Thirteen

Two evenings later, Aurora received a glimpse of Nicholas’s renewed purpose. She had already retired to bed when she heard a soft clink against her window pane, then another. Her startlement quickly turned to dismay when she realized someone was throwing pebbles and trying to get her attention.

Knowing it could only be Nicholas, she went to open the window and peer down. He stood in silver shadow beneath the oak tree, looking up at her.

Her heart did its usual somersault. She hadn’t seen him at all today; in fact, she hadn’t left the house. A hard rain had prevented her morning ride in the park, and Raven had had an afternoon engagement with her aunt. But the clouds had cleared and now a bright moon drenched the night.

“What are you doing, loitering beneath my window?” Aurora demanded in a whisper.

“I’ve come to rescue you and take you for a drive,” he answered less quietly.

“In the dead of night?”

“It isn’t even midnight yet. And you’ve been trapped inside all day.”

“I have already retired for the night.”

“Do you mean to invite me up there?”

“Of course not!”

“Then you had best come down here.”

“Nicholas, I am in my nightclothes.”

“I don’t mind,” he said with a wicked edge of amusement to his voice. “Get dressed and come down, Aurora. You don’t want me knocking on your front door and waking the servants, I’m certain.”

His implied threat exasperated her. “I have no intention of being alone with you in the middle of the night.”

“I thought that might concern you, so I brought a lad with me. He’s holding my horses as we speak. And I have a curricle.”