Nicholas: Lord of Secrets (8 page)

“Ethan. I would rise, but lately I cannot even attempt that without assistance. I suppose your arrival confirms my impending death—you, and a lamentable lack of intestinal regularity.”

“My lord.” Ethan gave him the barest nod, his expression so disdainfully composed the earl wanted to laugh. Ah, youth… Except behind the boy’s monumental cool lurked a significant hurt, for which his father knew himself to be responsible.

The earl waved him over to the massive estate desk. “You can glare at me ever so much more effectively at close range, sir.” He waited until his son had prowled away from his post by the door. “One of the advantages of age is I no longer have to hear or see so much of this benighted world, but upon inspection, I must say you are looking well.”

“And you are not,” Ethan said, taking a seat across the desk from his father. Rude of him to appropriate a seat unbidden, but the earl was certain his own wretched appearance had sent his son to his figurative knees.

“I look like hell. The divine wisdom therein is that all will be relieved when I shuffle off this mortal coil, because if I get any uglier, my own daughters will be unable to stand the sight of me.”

Ethan smoothed a wrinkle on a perfectly tailored pair of riding breeches. “You don’t seem particularly perturbed at your approaching demise.”

“I’m not.” The earl’s lips curved in a faint smile. “I’ve lived my three score and ten, and eked out more besides. The earldom is in good condition, thanks largely to your brother, and my children are provided for. One grows tired, Ethan, and the indignities of great age are every bit as burdensome as you suppose they are. The alternative, however, ceases to loom as quite such a fearful option. Why are you here?”

“Because you swived my mother.”

Truly, a son to be proud of. “You always were the quickest of my children.” The earl’s smile widened, but he held his verbal fire until the tea tray had been set on the desk. “You’ll have to pour, lad. My hands shake too badly, and I can barely hold up the teapot. Mine should be only half full, and cool it down with some cream, for I’m likely to spill it.”

Ethan flicked a glance at his old papa spouting off so cheerfully about his egregious infirmities, and then his eyes shifted to his father’s hands, which the earl could not have rendered steady had he wanted to.

“You’ve learned a little restraint,” the earl decided as his son poured for them both. “Can’t say as I ever got the knack, myself. The ladies despaired of me.”

“Was it lack of restraint that caused you to send me off in such disgrace?” The desk was so large Ethan had to get up, walk around it, and hand the earl his half-full, heavily creamed cup of tea. The earl knew a moment of something—shame, relief, glee… gratitude?—when Ethan wrapped his father’s cold fingers around the warm cup.

The earl carefully—and shakily—brought the teacup to his mouth.

“Used to like it hot,” the earl mused on a sigh, “but a lapful of hot tea modifies one’s priorities. Now…” He turned his gaze on his firstborn and saw a handsome man in his prime, completely composed, shrewd and patient enough to wait him out. But approaching death had only heightened the functioning of the earl’s bladder, so waiting all afternoon wasn’t an option.

“The disgrace was mine,” the earl said, looking his son straight in the eye. “I know full well you did not attempt to burn your brother with that iron.”

Ethan took a delicate sip of his tea. “Were you merely being petty and tyrannical then, when you turned the little thugs and perverts of Stoneham loose on me?”

“Perverts.” The earl tasted the word, found it foul. “Interesting choice. I’d discovered you asleep in Nicholas’s bed just the night before, and not for the first time.”

“Of course I was in his bed,” Ethan scoffed, “or he was in mine. How else were we to stay up half the night whispering without waking the younger boys?”

Ethan’s anger swam much, much closer to the surface, so close the earl perceived that the frigid cool in Ethan’s eyes was not impatience, annoyance, nor anything else half so tame.

A betrayed boy yet lurked in the man who’d come to call. A devastated, betrayed boy.

“I comprehend now, Ethan, that you and Nick remained innocent of the most lamentable adolescent behaviors. It took some time, Della’s incessant carping, and raising several more boys before I understood my mistake. By then, you were no longer speaking to any of us, save Della, and things turned out for the best.”

Ethan took another measured sip of his tea, then another, clearly trying to absorb the explanation the earl offered, but no doubt stumbling over the emotional enormity of the wrong done him, and not for the first time.

“In what manner,” Ethan spoke very softly, “do you consider things turned out for the best?”

“The two of you were entangled. You protected Nick. He protected you.”

“Is that not what brothers do?” Ethan asked with chilly civility.

“Not when one will take a seat in the Lords and the other is merely an earl’s by-blow. Sooner or later, you and Nicholas were going to have to face facts. I did neither of you any service by letting you get so close in the first place.”

The earl reassured himself of this version of the facts regularly. Things had worked out for the best—or they would soon.

“So having made that mistake,” Ethan said, but not quite dispassionately, “your only recourse was to compound it by separating us the way you did, bellowing accusations, and setting us against each other?”

The earl let his teacup clatter unsteadily onto its saucer. “I’ve said I was wrong, both in what I did and how I did it. I am not a perfect man, as you well know. But admit to me, please, that both you and Nicholas thrive, and despite my errors, you are both people to be reckoned with, capable of standing on your own two feet.”

Ethan rose to those two feet with an ease the earl tried not to envy. “You think old age alone has impaired your hearing and vision,
sir
. I can assure you, your faculties have long been wanting, else you would have realized Nick and I have always been capable of standing on our own two feet, regardless of our relationship as brothers or friends. Good day.”

He departed in a few brisk strides, closing the door with enviable decorum.

Round
one
to
the
pup, your bloody uncrapping lordship
. The earl sat back with a sigh, sipping his cooling tea disconsolately. God willing, there would be a round two.

***

Valentine took a seat at Nick’s Broadwood and folded down the music rack, then petted the instrument as if it were an obedient mistress. “So tell me what you seek in a wife, Nicholas. The hunt doesn’t seem to be progressing, and the Season doesn’t last forever.”

Satan’s hairy testicles.
“This line of questioning—upon which you seem fixated—does not bode well for our friendship, Valentine.”

There was no heat in Nick’s reply. He’d never go a round of fisticuffs with a friend whose hands were so very talented. Instead he went to the sideboard and poured them each a brandy. “Any woman who marries me has to understand it will be a marriage for the sake of appearances only, and leave me in peace for the rest of my days.”

Val’s opening flourishes at the keyboard came to an abrupt pause. “In God’s name, why?”

“Why what?” Nick set Val’s drink on the piano’s lamp stand.

“Shame on you.” Val moved the drink to a little music table. “Why wouldn’t you, of all the randy creatures on God’s earth, marry a woman to take to your bed?”

Nick lowered himself to the sofa and regarded the drink he really did not want. “Firstly, I don’t need to marry to find women by the pairs and trios in my bed. Secondly, I do not intend to have children with my wife, because my size makes me poor breeding stock. Thirdly, I will not take advantage of some sweet young thing by taking her to my bed, then tossing her over while I go look for livelier game elsewhere, thus precipitating endless painful and avoidable scenes involving many damp handkerchiefs, broken vases, and hurt feelings.”

“You are full of tripe,” Val said calmly. When he resumed playing, the clever bastard chose a lullaby. Sweet, lyrical, and perfectly suited to cadging confidences from unsuspecting friends. “First, you adore women and invariably make them happy, at least bed-wise. There are
witnesses
to this, Nick. Eyewitnesses. Second, you are superb breeding stock, being handsome, intelligent, prodigiously healthy, and, for want of a better word, lusty. Find a great strapping country girl and space your children, but do not tell somebody who is only a bit shorter than you that size makes you dangerous to your wife. Third, even you have lost your appetite lately for the easy conquests, if you can call them that. You are posturing to take a real wife, my friend.”

The little song lilted along, while Nick considered firing a pillow at Valentine’s head.

“I am posturing to court the semblance of a real wife.” Nick stretched out on the long sofa, his drink resting on his chest. “The fiction must be credible, at least until one of my brothers can go about the business in earnest.”

“You are serious about this,” Val said, frowning at Nick over the lid of the piano.

Nick waved a hand. “I killed my mother, you know.”

Val didn’t dignify that with a rejoinder, and the music grew even softer. “If you were going to marry in earnest, what sort of wife would you seek?”

Nick didn’t answer. He kept his eyes closed, let his breathing slow and deepen, let the music wash through the melancholy Val’s choice of topic left in his chest. What sort of wife would Nick choose, if he had any sort of meaningful choice?

A woman who could love him, of course. A woman who didn’t care he’d be an earl, who didn’t care he was too damned big to fit even in a ballroom, who didn’t care that the one thing he must never do was attempt to secure the Bellefonte succession.

***

“Leah danced the supper waltz with Reston again,” Darius said as he appropriated a drink from his brother’s decanter.

“And that’s good?” Trenton Lindsey, Viscount Amherst, watched his younger brother pour, thinking Darius’s eyes held a hint of something desperate.

“It’s good. She seems to like him, and he’s not Hellerington. The talk about Reston seems harmless enough—he enjoys the ladies of a certain reputation, but nothing more condemnatory than that. Have you seen Reston?” Darius tossed the drink back and punctuated the question with a glower.

“I doubt it. I do not circulate, to speak of, unless I’m escorting Leah. You know that.”

“He’s big,” Darius said. “Enormously tall with the muscles of a stevedore.”

A hazy impression tried to coalesce from the swampier regions of Trent’s memory. “Blond? Like Wotan or Thor in evening dress?”

Darius eyed the sideboard, his expression shifting to include a touch of consternation. “Berserker of the Bedroom is one of his nicknames. Biggest damned peer of the realm I’ve ever seen.”

Trent ran a finger over the sideboard and found a smudge of dust accumulated on his fingertip—a metaphor for his memory, perhaps. “I have met him, at Tatt’s. Reston seemed genial enough.”

“Always. He pulled me aside tonight and warned me very pleasantly that one of my female associates tried to threaten him when he’d parted from her.”

Female
associates.
A prudent older brother didn’t touch that with a garden rake in one hand and a bullwhip in the other. “What kind of lady would threaten that much man?”

“She is no lady at all,” Darius said on a sigh. “Why do you think I found her of any interest? Reston backed her down somehow, though.”

Interesting word choice. Rather than dwell on the implications, Trent took the empty glass from his brother’s hand and set it on the sideboard. “One wonders, Darius. There are naughty women, and then there are mean, wicked women. One should distinguish.”

Darius picked the glass right back up. “And their characteristics are always easily discernible across a ballroom?”

“Perhaps not.” Trent smiled in response. “But across a bedroom, one’s instincts are usually reliable.”

“Across a bedroom, it’s usually one’s instincts getting one into mischief.” Darius made short work of a second drink and set the empty glass down.

“Valid point.” Trent’s smile faded. “Darius, I can’t help but renew my expression of concern for you. Whatever is amiss, I wish you’d tell me.”

“Nothing is amiss.” Darius clinked the stopper into the decanter then did it again. “Nothing more than usual, anyway. My thanks for the brandy. You’re managing well enough?”

“Anytime, and yes, I’m managing,” Trent murmured, watching the way his brother’s eyes strayed to the darkness beyond the window. They were lying to each other, and Trent felt despair taking up residence beside the permanent sadness in his gut. “Come by in the morning, and we’ll look at Leah’s schedule. You need some decent rest, and I can be her escort.”

“It will be afternoon before I can get here,” Darius said, hand on the door latch. “Midafternoon.”

“Until then.” Trent watched his brother silently slip out into the darkened corridor, even as he wondered what could possibly be worth remaining out and about for what little remained of a cold, dark night.

“Did you know your father is selling off property?” Nick passed Leah the bag of bread crumbs and kept his gaze on the swan coming closer to their side of the pond. When Leah tossed a handful of crumbs onto the water, the swan retreated, while the ducks swarmed into the water, honking and flapping with no dignity whatsoever.

“I am not in his confidence regarding financial matters,” Leah said. “Regarding any matters, really. What is he selling?”

“The smaller of the two estates in Surrey.” Nick turned slightly to admire Leah’s profile. The breeze was such that her scent drifted over to him, redolent of lily of the valley, and he was struck by the simple beauty of her features on a lovely spring day.

“We used to have four estates, total.” Both her tone and her expression were… sad. He wanted, badly, to make that sadness go away. “Wilton would go to Trenton, of course, and then Ambrose Place to Darius. The two little properties were to be Mama’s gifts to Em and me, for our dowries. But when Darius escorted me to Italy, the earl sold Ambrose Place.”

“There’s a path around the pond,” Nick said. “Shall we stroll?”

“I’d like that.”

“The lady and I will stroll the path around the water,” Nick informed their liveried watchdog, who was at the ready up on the gravel walk. “There is no need for you to accompany us.”

Wilton’s minion nodded, though his expression was disgruntled.

“Come.” Nick winged his arm, then tucked his hand over Leah’s and led her away from the footman. “And walk slowly, if you please. I’ve been in want of your company.”

“I’ve danced with you twice so far this week.”

“That is your presence,” Nick said. “I miss your company.” He let a comfortable silence stretch while they put some distance between themselves and the footman. When they had wandered out of earshot, Nick bent down and unabashedly inhaled Leah’s fragrance.

“I don’t believe I’ve encountered lily of the valley on another woman. It suits you wonderfully.”

“I like your scent as well. Sandalwood, but something else too.”

“It’s blended exclusively for me. I didn’t want it too sweet, but sandalwood alone can be cloying. Now, why would your papa be selling an estate that should have been held in trust for you?”

“Because he does not consider himself under any obligation to provide a dowry for me,” Leah said. “I am fallen, and thus not worthy of such an honor.”

The sadness was muted behind a mask of composure, while hurt lingered in her eyes.

“Just how fallen are you?”

This silence was not quite so comfortable. The answer was none of Nick’s business, and yet, he wouldn’t withdraw the question.

“You ran off with that young man,” Nick guessed, “because you allowed him liberties.”

“I did,” Leah said, gaze fixed on the flat surface of the water. “Liberties only a husband should be allowed.”

So she was not a virgin, and Nick let out a long, slow breath. He hurt for her, because she’d thought to gift her lover with something irreplaceable, only to have the lover taken from her permanently. But another part of him, the part that panted and wagged its tail, was relieved. Stealing kisses from a woman of experience was not quite so reprehensible as stealing kisses from a virgin.

“You are not entirely chaste,” Nick concluded. “Take it from me, Leah, not as many brides are as they would have you believe. And many a wedding night would be more pleasant if there were fewer still.”

She moved along for a few steps, showing no reaction to his words. Nick realized belatedly that speaking from experience on this topic was perhaps not quite gentlemanly of him—for all it was honest.

“I should not have eloped,” Leah said. “But the earl had told Aaron he would not provide me a dowry, though he also said he would not withhold his blessing on a fait accompli. Aaron was convinced the earl was
telling
us to elope. Eloping would provide an explanation for my lack of dowry that Polite Society would accept without censuring my father.”

Something about this recitation did not add up. “You were intimate with Frommer, then he asked for your hand, and the earl told you to elope?”

“I was not intimate with Aaron until we had eloped. Aaron asked for my hand then met with the earl to gain his blessing. The earl said he would not dower me, that he expected Aaron to be able to support a wife without needing additional funds. At that point, Aaron believed the earl was telling him to spirit me away, and alas for me, I believed the same thing.”

“So you thought you had Wilton’s tacit approval,” Nick said. Perhaps some fathers were that subtle—his certainly was not. “Could Aaron have been that mistaken?”

“I’ve had a long time to consider this.” Leah leaned more heavily on Nick’s arm as the ground became slightly uneven. “And no, I do not think he was mistaken. Younger sons, as a lot, tend to be shrewd people, and Aaron was a very intelligent young man. I believe the earl intended to be rid of me, but then changed his mind for some reason, came after us, and called Aaron out.”

“What could have been worth murder?”

“Dueling is frowned upon,” Leah said, “but illegal in a technical sense only. For the most part, if discretion is observed, it’s tolerated.”

“Let’s pause here,” Nick said as the path wound through a stand of willows leafing out in gauzy foliage. The swaying boughs formed curtains of soft green that hung to the ground when the breeze was still. “Come.” Nick shifted to grasp Leah’s hand in his. “We can appropriate some privacy.”

He parted the feathery green leaves and drew her under the canopy of a large tree, effectively screening them with new growth on all sides.

“And why do we need privacy?” Leah asked, even as she did not withdraw her hand from his.

Nick smiled at her over his shoulder, then stopped and turned to face her. “Because I need to hold you.” He drew her against his body, and a sigh escaped her. She relaxed against him while his hand settled between her shoulder blades, pressing her closer.

“The more I learn of your situation, Leah”—Nick rested his chin against her temple as he spoke—“the less I like your papa.”

“Good,” Leah said, her cheek on his chest. “Don’t like him. Don’t trust him. Don’t underestimate him.”

The feel of her quiet in his arms was enough to make Nick lose the train of the discussion entirely, which would not do when time was limited and dire consequences threatened. She had seemed to him in need of a little affection, was all, not a mauling in broad daylight.

“Why would Wilton change his mind about letting you marry Frommer?”

“I have suspicions,” Leah said. “I think Mama’s settlements specified that the Surrey estate was to come to me upon my lawful marriage. I don’t think the earl realized this, at least not until after Aaron and I had departed for Manchester.”

“Manchester? Why not Scotland?”

“There was need for haste regarding the nuptials.” Leah rubbed her cheek over his shirt like a tired child might. “Aaron got us a special license. His brother went to school with the man who held the living at a town on the way called Little Weldon, and we planned on having the ceremony en route.”

“I see.” Nick’s hand on her back started a slow, easy stroking over her shoulder blades, more to soothe him than her. “Do you know who Aaron’s seconds were?”

“A friend,” Leah responded, her voice sounding sleepy and distracted. “Victor someone. I forget the other one. A brother, maybe.”

“Who would your father’s seconds have been?” Nick asked, thinking they could be having this discussion while they walked, though he didn’t want to move from the spot—ever. Leah’s weight leaning against his length so trustingly made his chest feel strange, even while it settled something inside him too.

“I don’t know who his seconds were.” Leah pulled back to peer up at Nick. “Why is this ancient history relevant, particularly when anything that discredits the earl will discredit Emily?”

Nick guided her head back to his chest. “Let’s hope the earl recalls that if the time ever comes to discuss the past with him. I would really like to know who the seconds were, though.”

“Trent might know, or Darius.”

Nick reluctantly loosened his hold on her and grasped her hand once more, leading her back to the path. “You don’t think Trenton was your father’s second?”

“I do not. Trent approved of Aaron, and so did Darius. Mama liked him too.”

“And you loved him.”

Leah nodded then tipped her gaze down, and Nick knew he’d again summoned her tears. “I am so sorry,” Nick said in the same quiet voice. “Sorry to make you talk about it, sorry you had to go through it.”

“I wasn’t
in
love with him,” Leah said. “Though I loved him, and he said that was enough. The rest would come in time. He was a good man, and he did not deserve to die for me. I was just so eager to leave my father’s house…”

“You loved him,” Nick reminded her, “and you’ve said he was a shrewd young man, and he knew you weren’t in love with him. You were honest with him, and you were prepared to give him your entire future. That was enough for him. It would be enough for any man who loved you.”

Honesty
being
a
precious
necessity
in
any
true
union.
Nick kicked the thought away.

For Nick, the conversation regarding Leah’s elopement brought a greater sense of concern regarding the Earl of Wilton’s behavior toward his daughter. Wilton hadn’t been a papa enraged to find some young scoundrel had spirited his daughter away. He’d been instead a calculating, scheming spider, who spun a web of circumstances around his daughter and her intended, until one was killed and the other run out of the country.

In all likelihood, the only thing that had stayed the earl’s hand from further mischief against Leah had been the hovering presence of her brothers.

Words formed, and he let them pass from his brain out into the pretty spring day. “I think I had better offer for you.”

Leah stiffened but didn’t break contact with him.

“Hear me out,” Nick said, glancing up to find they were more than halfway around the pond. “I do not intend that you be stuck with me, but I do want your father to believe his interests are better served by keeping you in good health, rather than by allowing harm to come to you.”

“This offering does not contemplate marriage,” Leah replied. She was going to argue the notion, when Nick really and truly wanted her assent. “If I must cry off, my chances of ever being married will be reduced if I jilt you.”

“When you cry off,” Nick said, “it will not be as great a problem as you foresee. I will commit some outrageous act of philandering, and you will be pitied by Polite Society. You will be more greatly esteemed for putting me in my place, not less.”

“I am not willing to cost you your good name.”

“I am not willing for you to be at risk of harm under your father’s roof,” Nick said.

“I could be your mistress.”

Nick stopped in midstride and peered down at her. By St. Michael’s mighty sword, she was serious. The hound in him was barking approval of her mad scheme before he could toss the damned beast in the nearest rain barrel.

He closed his eyes, the better to obscure his wayward impulses from Leah’s notice. “Lamb, you would disgrace your siblings by becoming my mistress, and it’s well known I do not keep a particular mistress. I am rather thought to be a connoisseur of variety.”

“Oh.” Leah’s face flamed, and Nick felt awash in contrition.

For not agreeing to ruin her?

“Leah”—Nick’s tone took on a cajoling note—“you were casting about for a solution, tossing out any idea, no matter how unlikely. I comprehend that, and let’s keep thinking, though I did not embark on this project to ruin you, delightful as the process might be for me.” Delightful, captivating, pleasurable, exhausting.

Nick kicked his internal hound hard in the ribs.

Leah looked off into the distance, where a nanny and her charge were throwing a ball for a brown-and-white spaniel. “It was just a thought.”

He leaned down to speak directly in her ear. “A wonderful, scandalous thought. You should never have put such an idea in my head.”

“What other ideas can we come up with?” Leah asked, eyes front, shoulders back.

The ideas that came to mind were not constructive, not in the least.

“You could get engaged to someone else,” Nick suggested. Ethan might do it, provided the engagement were temporary. Beckman was another possibility, though he’d have to be retrieved from Portsmouth first.

“An engagement is not a permanent solution,” Leah said, “but I’d take it, if it were the only option.”

“Engagements can last months, years even. If you are engaged to my brother Beckman, the earl will no doubt soon be casting our family into mourning. That would buy you a year.”

“That is ghoulish, Nick, to use your father’s death that way, to buy me time to escape Wilton.”

Impossible woman—not that he particularly liked the idea of even a temporary engagement between Beckman and Leah. “I can get you to the Continent. You could go back to Italy and wait Wilton out. He won’t live forever.”

If anything, her pretty mouth became more grim. “I will not become your dependent, though Italy has a certain appeal. I was happy there, all things considered. I would be there without a brother or father, though, so it could be more difficult than it was five years ago.”

“Would your brothers help you leave the country?” This was an obvious solution, one he should have thought of sooner, and the only one she wasn’t shooting down right out of the gate. “You are not a minor, so you should be free to leave, and you already know the language, I presume?”

“I do. It isn’t so different from Latin, though I’m rusty, of course. I think supporting me would be a hardship for Darius and Trent though.”

“Why is that?” Nick slowed his steps as much as he could, because they would soon come back to their starting point.

“Darius has tied his coin up in that place in Kent,” Leah explained. “When Ambrose Place was sold, Darius took what little my mother left him and sank it into his own property. He gets a very small stipend from the Wilton estate, but Trenton and I are both puzzled as to how Darius supports himself. I don’t think Darius has coin to spare, and Trenton is in much the same boat, because his funds are derived from those of his children.”