Saving Grace (46 page)

“I came to give you an invitation.” Her brow furrowed, and her lips pressed together, as if in deep concentration. “You are invited to come to dinner this eve. At our house. You’ll be eating in the big people dining room,” she added, as if that ought to be enticement enough.

“The big people.” Nicholas let out a low whistle. “That does sound important. However —”

“Papa said you would say no, so I am to tell you something else,” she added. “He would like to pick a new mother for me, and he would like your blessing. It is
most
important that you come.”

Lady Sutherland clucked her disapproval. “I never —”

Nicholas held up a hand. “It’s all right, Mother.”

Don’t shoot the messenger,
his father would have said. Nicholas leaned forward, doing his best to fight the anger battling to erupt from within.
The nerve of Preston, first, to hide his daughter and then to send her to ask me
that.
A cowardly act if ever there was one. I’ve released Grace from our betrothal; what more does he expect? For me to be happy for him?

“Your father was right,” Nicholas said. “I do not wish to come. It is difficult for me to visit your house.”

“Why?” Beth asked, tilting her head to the side and giving him such a look of wide-eyed innocence that he could not immediately answer.

Why?
What could he say that she could understand and would be appropriate for her to hear? Certainly not that he loved the woman who was to become her new mother — the same woman her father loved. He couldn’t very well tell Beth that he held her father responsible for her mother’s death.

Nicholas realized that it would require a new cordiality with Preston if he were to have the opportunity to get to know his daughter.

If we are henceforth to have this miraculous child to be a part of our lives, I will have to be civil.

Preston had extended no small olive branch in sending his daughter. Perhaps it was not so much an act of cowardice as an attempt at reconciliation.

Something Grace had much to do with, no doubt.

If I go to dinner, I will see Grace again
.
All the more reason to refuse.

Nicholas leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees as he attempted an explanation. “It is difficult for me to visit your home because your mother died there. She was my sister, and I loved her very much.”

“Oh,” Beth said, her face crumpling with compassion far beyond her years. “It is not good to be sad. Mother would want you to be happy.” She sighed. “That is what Father says, though sometimes I hear him being sad at night, when he thinks I am asleep.”

“How is he sad?” Nicholas asked, already wary of her answer, imagining the child hearing someone crying out at odd times after dark. Was Preston engaging in illicit affairs during the night?

Has he been kissing Grace in his study, as I kissed her in mine?
The possibility brought a sharp pain to his chest.

“Papa cries,” Beth said. “He holds Mother’s portrait, and he cries.”

Nicholas sat back against the cushions, wanting distance from the child, from everyone in the room — Kingsley, still waiting by the door, his mother, eying him with a worried expression. Nicholas looked away, to the far corner, but he could not rid himself of the picture Beth had painted. He didn’t want to think of Preston hurting that way. It was easier to imagine, instead, that his brother-in-law was no longer affected by his loss, that his carelessness that night had cost him nothing.

But it did gain him one thing.
Nicholas forced his gaze back to the girl still standing before them, rocking from one foot to the other, eyes flitting about the room casually, completely unaware of the magnitude of her revelation.

Nicholas drew in a deep breath, reining in his emotions — something he would not have been able to do a few months ago. He glanced at his mother and noted apprehension on her face. Her opportunity to be a grandmother depended upon what he said.

“I will go,” Nicholas said quietly. “And I will even play nicely.”

Though it will only be play acting, it may kill me.

His mother sighed with apparent relief. She reached over, patting his knee. “Thank you, Nicholas. I know it will be difficult, but look at her.” Their attention returned to Beth, who was hopping from flower to flower in the pattern on the rug.

“Beth,” Nicholas called to her. She turned, stepping carefully across the rug until she stood before them again. “You may tell your father that I will come,” Nicholas said.

Her face brightened. “Oh, I’m so glad. And now I am able to stay the afternoon and play. He said I might if you agreed to come home with me.”

Clever of him,
Nicholas thought begrudgingly. “And what if I’d said no?”

Her lips twisted as she thought on his question. She shrugged. “I don’t know. He said you would come even though you wouldn’t want to.”

The devil take you, Preston,
Nicholas thought as he stood. But as he looked down on the tow-headed child, he knew his mood was not nearly as dark as it might have been.

Elizabeth’s child. My niece. I am an uncle.
It might not be his children who filled these empty halls as he had imagined not long ago, but this unexpected gift felt like heaven’s miracle. He held his hand out to his niece, intending to make the most of the afternoon at his home, as the evening was sure to be torture at Preston’s.

Watching Grace and Preston together would not be as painful as the night had been when he’d waited in Preston’s salon, listening for happy news but hearing of Elizabeth’s death instead. But it would hurt.

And it will go on hurting beyond tonight.
Seeing them together would put an end to his fantasy that Grace would someday return to him. No longer could he use that crutch to cope. It would mean an end to his pretended conversations with her, to the cherished memory of those moments in his study.

I’ll not even have revenge to fill the emptiness,
he realized. Not if he wished to know the child skipping along beside him.

She would force him to give up the demons of his past and face those of the future as best he could. Nicholas swallowed his doubts and fears in the hope that this miniature version of his sister was worth it.

“Come along,” he said, voice gruff with too many emotions. “I’ll show you your mother’s old room, and then I’ll teach you to slide on the banister the way she did.”

Nicholas allowed Beth to pull him up the steps to her house. “Papa, Papa. We’re home.” Her tiny voice echoed through the bright room — a room Elizabeth had loved, Nicholas remembered.

A moment later, Preston’s study door opened, and he walked toward them, his arms opened wide for his daughter.

They had better be for her,
Nicholas thought with dire humor. He might be here, but he was in no mood to hug Preston.
But where is Grace?

Preston swept his daughter into his arms. “I missed you today. Did you have fun with your grandmother and uncle?” As he spoke, he looked over her shoulder at Nicholas.

Beth nodded. “I played with Mommy’s old toys, and I learned how to slide a banister.”

“Did you?” Preston’s tone held a note of concern, but he smiled at her warmly. He looked at Nicholas. “Dinner is ready. Shall we join our other guests?”

Nicholas followed him to the dining room, though he could have walked there on his own. Elizabeth had invited them over frequently during her marriage. They had spent many a pleasant hour at this table.

Even with Preston.
How could he have forgotten those times? Their laughter and sparring, the heated debates, which Elizabeth was often the center of, the constant competitions between him and Preston that, while not always friendly, had proven great entertainment.

The room was not empty, but the person he had been most looking forward to seeing, the one he had dreaded seeing as well,
was not present. Grace’s siblings stood near the door, waiting for them, but she was not with them.

When they took their seats, Nicholas noticed that no additional places had been set. “Is Grace ill again?”

I’ll murder Preston right here if he’s done her any harm.

“I hope not,” Preston said. He glanced down the table at her siblings. “Was Grace well the last time you saw her?”

“It depends upon what you mean by the word
well
,” Helen said, using more words than Nicholas had heard from her during the entire time she had resided at his house.

“What Helen means,” Christopher said, “is that Grace is healthy in body, but her spirits are quite low.”

“Why is that?” Nicholas leaned back so the servant could pour his drink. “Why is she not here with you?”

“She would not come,” Helen said. “It is too painful for her to be so near you.”

“So near me?” Nicholas stood and threw down his napkin. “That is absurd. She lived in my home for three months and endured my company quite well.”

“No small miracle,” Preston muttered.

“Whatever she has told you is not true,” Nicholas said. “I treated her with the utmost respect, gave her every courtesy, let her go when the blasted inheritance came through and Christopher made it clear you intended to propose.”

Christopher picked up his spoon and began sipping his soup. “
Letting her go
is the offense I believe she finds most painful.”

The others began to eat as well, and Nicholas looked from one to another, feeling both perplexed and angered at their lack of concern over Grace.

“If she does not wish to reside here, then why are you not with her?” he demanded of Preston. “If she were my fiancée, I would be with her instead of letting her go off alone to who knows where.”

“She
was
your fiancée,” Helen said quietly, head down as she buttered her bread. “And you did let her go off alone.”

“I let her do what she’d wanted to do all along, what she had dreamed of and planned for years.”

“Dreams can change, milord.” Helen turned to look at Preston, her eyes softening. Preston reached for her, taking her hand in his on the table in plain sight.

“What is this?” Nicholas asked, gesturing at their joined hands.

“
This,
” Preston said, “is why I asked you here tonight. Helen and I have discovered that we have feelings for each other, and I should like your blessing in courting her with the intent that she shall become my wife.”

Helen blushed prettily, reminding Nicholas so much of her sister that it physically hurt. He took a long drink of wine, feeling stunned beyond reasoning.

“Helen,” he said. “It is
Helen
you wish to marry. Not Grace?”

“Grace would not have him,” Christopher said, taking another bite of meat and rendering himself unable to speak for a moment or two.

Nicholas glanced at Helen to see if the frank assessment of the situation bothered her.

“It is true,” she said, with only a slight wistfulness to her tone. “And I knew it would be so all along. Her letters were full of stories about you, Lord Sutherland. We could all tell, very early on, that it was you she was falling in love with. It was why we encouraged her to stay.”

Nicholas looked to Preston for confirmation and received it in his slow nod.

“I did care for her,” Preston admitted. “But my affection was never returned, and my feelings for Grace were never what they are for Helen. I only wish it had not taken me so long to come to a realization of what was right in front of me — what I had so near for so long yet failed to recognize or appreciate.”

Nicholas knew exactly what he meant. What he didn’t know was how to proceed from here. That Grace was not with Preston, and that she might still care for him, was enough that he wanted to run for his carriage.

After a minute of uncomfortable silence, during which all three stared at him, Nicholas asked, “Will you tell me where she is?”

“I’ll do better than that,” Preston said. “I’ll take you to her.”

Helen came running down the stairs and rushed past Grace, her gathered skirts swishing. “He’s here!”

“Goodness,” Grace exclaimed. She set aside the book she’d been reading and glanced out the window in time to see a familiar carriage stop in front of the house. “
Who’s
here?” she whispered. She brought a hand to her chest and leaned forward for a closer look at the Sutherland crest emblazoned on the side of the landau.