Sweet Bargain (22 page)

Her first point was to be that Nick could not be faulted for purchasing and restoring an available property. Then she would explain how extremely forbearing he had been about the attacks against his stream and buildings. Next she would point out his generosity to the Shaws once he had connected himself to them. It would not hurt, she thought, to mention that Nick was a fine angler and loved the Ashe as much as any Shaw. As to his conduct toward herself, though she had at first accused him of arrogance and ungentlemanly behavior, he had in fact rescued her on more than one occasion and had treated her with the utmost respect and courtesy since their wedding. She faltered and her steps slowed a little.

Her brother was bound to ask the one question for which she had no answer.
"Does he love you?"
Tom would ask. Much as she would like to be sure that she could answer that question with ringing conviction, she knew she could not. It was the very question that had plagued her in recent days. Did Nick love her? If he did, when had he begun? Surely, if he did love her, she could point to some evidence of that love in his words or actions. But just when she believed his desire for her had increased, he had stopped asking for the bargain kisses.

A knock on the connecting door between their bedrooms startled her out of her thoughts. Slowly she crossed to the door.

"Bel?" came Nick's voice from his room.

She fumbled with the key and managed to open the door.

"You're home," she said. He was the shepherd. She took in his dusty boots and wind-ruffled hair and the patch of sunburn across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.

"Yes, I'm ... home." He said the word with a hesitant wonder. "Are you going out? Has your brother arrived?"

She nodded. Something had changed in him. His eyes were quite as black as they had ever been, but more alive than she had ever seen them. She was reminded of the first time she had seen him smile, of sunlight sparkling off the clear surface of the Ashe.

"May I join you? It will take me but a few minutes to change."

She thought of her speech for Tom. "Do you wish to come? Are you not tired from your journey?"

"I'm fine. It feels good to be ... home. No clocks."

Undecided, she stared at him, and something of her feelings must have appeared on her face, for his smile faded a bit. She wanted him to come, but he must not meet Tom before she had an opportunity to explain herself to her brother. She twisted her hands together in the folds of her shawl, and lowered her gaze from his.

He stepped forward and reached out, taking her hands in his and rubbing his thumbs across the backs of her hands soothingly. "It's all right," he said. "It's a family thing, I know. I don't have to be there. I can meet your brother on another occasion."

She lifted her eyes to his and shook her head. "No," she said, "I want you to come. Come, please." She squeezed the hands that held hers.

He released her and stepped back and nodded. Then he grinned and began to strip off his jacket. With some confusion she excused herself and closed the door between them. She leaned against the door while her heart raced. She prayed she would reach Tom first.

At first glance Nick saw that Captain Tom Shaw had
hero
written all over him, from the gold epaulettes on his broad shoulders to the gleam of his polished boots. The blue eyes, alive with the quick intelligence of all the Shaws, had a heightened intensity in his bronzed face. Though the captain appeared perfectly at ease, there was nothing indolent in his stance. He stood as straight as the mast of his ship. Only the captain's eyes suggested the energy he held in check in his mother's drawing room. Only the captain's unruly fair hair suggested his kinship with young Master Augustus Shaw at his side.

At second glance Nick saw that the captain had an extraordinary effect on the Shaws. While they were not precisely quiet, they seemed to be listening to one another more than Nick had ever observed them to do before. It was as if Tom Shaw's own air of quiet, alert interest in the world around him had spread to the rest of his family. Even the dog sat still at the captain's feet, her ears up in an attitude of patient readiness.

The captain took in Nick's presence with the same easy energy with which he seemed to control the room. Tom Shaw's quick blue gaze lighted first on Bel, and for a moment a smile restored his features to a youthfulness that rivaled his sister's. But when that same blue gaze met Nick's, there was a perceptible hardening of the captain's expression, and Nick knew he was being sized up as an adversary. He did not even blink. At Haverly he had discovered a truth so powerful, so bright and piercing, he felt as if he had seized a magic sword. He loved Bel.

He loved her so much that he could give her up if she wished him to, or fight dragons to keep her if he must. He nodded at Tom Shaw. The evening would bring them together sooner or later.

Bel felt she had never been more distracted in her life. The excitement of seeing Tom safe and whole and yet altered by his years at sea, the necessity to speak to him alone, and the sense that Darlington and Auggie had already further prejudiced Tom's view of Nick kept her from any close attention to the remarks of those around her. More than once she had received odd looks at answers she believed to be perfectly unexceptional until she attempted to recall what her companion had been saying. And the evening wore on without the opportunity she was longing for.

At one point, in passing her, with Ellen clinging to his sleeve, Tom had leaned Bel's way and whispered, "I got your letters, all of them." And he seemed to invest this remark with such significance that Bel's knees gave way a little, and she was compelled to lean heavily on her escort's arm for a step.

It was hours before the moment that Nick had anticipated arrived. He had been introduced to the captain early on, but it was not until the tea tray was brought in after supper that the shifting of guests at the party allowed the two men a chance to talk. Bel was settled on a sofa at the far end of the room, engaged in conversation with Ellen and Mrs. Fletcher and Phil. She looked up, alarm evident in her eyes, as Nick turned to Tom, but Nick took the step anyway.

"Haverly," said the captain in his low crisp tones, "I think you should know that I received certain letters from my sister, written between May and July this year. The letters, which are still in my possession, raise serious doubts in my mind about your behavior toward my sister."

Nick raised an eyebrow. He could imagine the sorts of things she had said about him in May. "What do you doubt, Captain Shaw?" he asked.

"That you love my sister, that you mean to be the sort of husband she deserves."

"Those are serious doubts," Nick agreed mildly. He found it very satisfying to watch the tightening of the captain's jaw. Tom Shaw was not as cool as he first appeared.

"I want an explanation, Haverly," the captain demanded with as much force as their circumstances allowed.

"Fine," said Nick. "When and where?"

"Tomorrow, dawn."

Nick looked into the fierce blue eyes and taut, angry face of his opponent. "Dawn?" he asked, unable to resist a certain ironic inflection in saying it.

Tom Shaw looked as if he were tempted to laugh, but he evidently controlled the impulse. "I don't mean pistols, Haverly."

"Good," said Nick. "I don't have any. Where?"

"You name the place."

Nick looked up briefly and saw that Auggie Shaw and Darlington were watching his exchange with Tom Shaw. If the captain was aware of them he didn't show it. Nick shrugged. For once in his life he had nothing to fear or to hide, and he would definitely relish fighting for Bel. In fact, he had been wanting to fight someone or something all summer. So he said to the captain, "The Thill cottage is empty. Do you know the place?"

The captain nodded.

"I will be there," Nick said. He turned and strolled across the drawing room toward his love.

Some confusion at the end of the evening required that Bel and Nick convey Uncle Fletcher home in their carriage, so Bel was obliged to wait for an opportunity to speak to her husband about the quiet exchange she had observed between him and her brother. Then on the stairs, just as she readied herself to begin her confession, her husband had excused himself and descended to his library.

Taken by surprise, Bel had continued up to her room. She found her maid waiting and gently dismissed the girl. For a few moments she considered that perhaps there was no need for alarm, that her brother and husband might not have touched on the matters contained in her letters. She untied her slippers and folded her shawl. She removed her necklace and ear-bobs and began to pull the pins from her hair. But such complacency was impossible to maintain. She knew her brother's willingness to defend her. She had seen the smug looks on the faces of Auggie and Darlington as Nick and Tom talked. And she knew her husband would meet any challenge.

With a flash of insight it occurred to her that her husband would wait until he believed her asleep before he returned to his room. Carefully she trimmed the lamps, leaving just a single candle burning where its glow could not be seen under the door or through the window, and she waited.

Her patience was soon rewarded by the quiet click of the door to her husband's room. With equal quietness she turned the key of the connecting door and pulled it open. He was crossing his bedroom, his boots in one hand, his jacket and cravat and waistcoat draped over his other arm, his white cambric shirt loose about him—her shepherd. He froze at her opening the door, then turned to face her.

"I have something to ask you and something to tell you," she said.

"Where would you like to begin?" he asked, putting his boots down and dropping his clothes on a chair. He took a few steps in her direction but when his gaze took in her bare feet and loose hair, he stopped.

She drew herself up. "Have you agreed to meet my brother?"

"Not for a duel, if that's what you're fearing."

"But you have agreed to meet him?"

"He'd like an explanation of how you came to be married to me so abruptly, and it seems fair enough to give him one."

"I think that my brother already harbors an unjust opinion of how we came to be married." She took a deep breath. "You see, I ... wrote to him about ... our first meeting and your accusations and ... I even mentioned that we had made a bargain and that you would be demanding your 'pound of flesh.' "

"Your brother mentioned your letters," Nick said quietly.

"So you see, I ought to meet him to explain, not you," she pleaded.

"I don't see," he said bluntly. "Your brother has every right to hold me accountable for my behavior toward you." He paused. "I think he will find the truth acceptable."

"The truth?"

Nick lowered his eyes from hers. She was entirely too tempting to look at with her hair down and her toes peeking from beneath the hem of her gown. "I think your brother should know that an annulment is still possible, with a generous settlement for you, of course," he finished, as coolly as he could.

Bel reached for the door frame and held tightly. That was their agreement, but he made it sound less a matter of her choice than a foregone conclusion. Sometime while he had been away at Haverly, he had apparently given up on their marriage. Well, she could hardly blame him for that. He had allied himself with a family too proud to see the merit and worth of one outside their own fair circle, with a wife so proud she must wait to see her husband humble himself before she would admit to a desire to enter his bed.

She tried a smile. "So when do you meet my brother?"

Nick looked up. Her false brightness did not deceive him. "Tomorrow ... afternoon," he lied. "It will be quite civilized. There will be others around." He hoped that would throw her off a bit.

"Oh," she said. "So I ought to bid you good night?"

"Yes," he said.

There was something in that strained syllable that reminded her of other moments between them, moments when she had been sure he desired her. She straightened and released her hold on the door frame. "Do you want a
bargain
kiss?" she asked.

"Lord," he said with sudden vehemence, "I blackmailed you into that bargain, and it's cost you much more than the kisses we agreed to that day. No, I do not want a bargain kiss. I release you from that bargain."

Bel thought she had never seen him truly angry before; his eyes were snapping, his fists closing and unclosing at his sides. Her ploy had failed, and it did not seem to be the moment to offer to come to his bed as she might have found the courage to do if he had been holding her and kissing her. She called on her reserves of pride.

"Thank you," she said. "Good night then."

"Good night," he said.

She turned and firmly closed the door. He did not love her.

Nick stared blankly at the closed door. He had not meant to release her in quite that way, but the temptation to seize her and drag her to his bed had been growing upon him from the moment she'd opened the door between their rooms.

He turned and sank into the chair that held his clothes. Lord, he could fight anyone right now—twice.

Chapter 19

THE SUN'S BRIGHT rim was just visible above the wooded hills to the east when Nick reined in at Thill cottage. Somewhere nearby a horse whinnied, and from the cottage itself he could hear voices. He dismounted, pulled the reins over his mount's head, and secured them to a sturdy branch of the hedge surrounding the cottage yard. He stretched his arms above his head, then shook them, loosening the tension in his body. Then he stepped up to the opening in the hedge.

Before him was a patch of unscythed grass, yellow from late summer heat, and beyond it at the cottage door stood Tom and Auggie Shaw and Darlington. The captain was out of uniform, and Nick sensed that without the blue and gold reminders of his rank, Tom Shaw was apt to be much less restrained in his behavior than he had been the night before.

"Good morning, Haverly," said the captain. He turned and said a curt word to his companions and strode out into the yard to meet Nick.