Tremaine's True Love (9 page)

Nita stepped back and Mr. St. Michael let her go.

“Take the biscuits to the stable lads,” she said. “William will benefit. You’ll probably have word back from Oxfordshire by sunset tomorrow.”

Mr. St. Michael picked up the entire crock of biscuits, kissed Nita’s cheek, then lingered for a moment, near enough that she caught ginger and cinnamon on his breath.

Near enough that she had one instant to consider turning her head.

“I am grateful to have been spared a frigid, dangerous, crackbrained midnight ride, Lady Nita. I meant what I said: I am in your debt. Collect your boon at the time and place of your choosing.”

He marched off to the rack of capes and coats hanging in the back hallway. Nita spared the dirty dishes a thought, grabbed a carrying candle, and took herself up the servants’ stairs, rather than linger in the kitchen.

The stairwell was cold and dark, but she paused on the landing to watch through the oriel window as Mr. St. Michael made his way across the snowy gardens. In the depths of a winter night, he would have hopped on his trusty steed and charged to the rescue of a lot of smelly sheep twenty leagues beyond London.

A gust of chilly air doused the candle. Nita found her way to her room through the familiar darkness, said a prayer for Mr. St. Michael’s sheep, and went to bed.

Her last thought was that she should be a little ashamed of herself. Her mother had taught her that a person in possession of the ability to help, especially a person well-placed in Society, was both privileged and obligated to render aid to those in need.

Nita hadn’t offered her opinion on the sheep out of a sense of privilege or obligation. She’d tendered her diagnosis simply because she hadn’t wanted Mr. St. Michael to leave.

She wasn’t ashamed of that at all.

Nita Haddonfield possessed keen medical insight, long blond hair,
and
curves
. Tremaine had guessed at the first two, but the third…

The third revelation was a problem. His cock had awoken with that problem in mind, a puzzle and an inconvenience. A few minutes of self-gratification did nothing to solve the puzzle.

Why her?

She’d made a fetching picture in a faded velvet dressing gown the same shade of blue as her eyes, and she’d brought a cozy elegance to the business of nibbling biscuits. Tremaine’s imagination—ever as unruly as a healthy tup—had latched on to the idea that Lady Nita would be cozy and
fun
in bed. How he’d leaped to that conclusion about a woman who lacked romantic sentiments, had no use for marriage, and little use for men—

A knock sounded on Tremaine’s door, too decisive to be a footman with more coal or a maid with a tea tray.

“Come in.”

George Haddonfield sauntered through the door, showing a country gentleman’s attire to excellent advantage. “Ready to go down to breakfast, St. Michael?”

“I am, in fact,” Tremaine replied, whipping his cravat into a mathematical. “The earl says I’m to quiz you about coaching inns, packet captains, and French highwaymen.”

George lifted the dish that held Tremaine’s shaving soap and took a whiff. “Beastly time of year to travel. This is quite pleasant. Is it French?”

“Scottish, and no time of year is good for travel. Mud, flies, storms, rain, coaching accidents, pestilence, blistering sun, every season has some blight to offer the weary traveler.”

Tremaine could, that very minute, have been racketing about the snowy lanes of London in a headlong dash for Oxford. What had he been thinking?

“So don’t travel,” George said. “Linger here for another week or so. The ladies would love to show you off at the assembly.”

“A temptation, to be sure.” To be shown off like a prize ram? “I might be leaving today, despite the lure of the assembly. One of my most valuable flocks has taken ill, and I’m awaiting word of their prognosis.”

Tremaine’s wardrobe stood open, and George surveyed its contents.

“You’d be a perishing idiot to ride any distance with the sky promising snow,” George graciously opined. “You’ve traveled on the Continent before. Your waistcoat whispers of Italian silk, and that’s Flemish lace on your shirt cuffs.”

A touch of lace only. French blood would tell. “I’ve traveled at length, though less so in recent years. Why aren’t you married, Haddonfield? You’re comely, well placed, and overly endowed with charm.”

George touched the sleeve of one of Tremaine’s fancier shirts, fingers lingering on the frothy cuff.

“I ought to marry. Travel in quantity doesn’t agree with me.”

Whatever that had to do with anything. Some married men traveled a great deal.

Tremaine dragged a brush through his hair, which was overdue for a shearing. “Lady Nita has also apparently eschewed holy matrimony,” he observed, “while the earl wants nothing more than to see his sisters well settled.”

Now George examined the embroidery on a paisley waistcoat. “I suspect Nicholas made some promise last year to our dying father about finding husbands for the ladies. Nicholas promised Papa he’d marry, and he kept that promise.”

The ladies were doomed then, all but Lady Nita. Tremaine’s money was on her to thwart her brother, and yet she needed marrying. Needed somebody to share biscuits with her late at night, appreciate her curves, and give her children of her own, lest she waste her days wiping the noses of other people’s offspring and brewing tisanes for other people’s uncles.

Tremaine tucked a sleeve button through the buttonhole on his cuff. “If Bellefonte won’t sell me his merinos, then I’m for Germany. The earl has some notion that he can lead Mr. Nash to the altar by parading the sheep before him.”

The sleeve button wasn’t cooperating, or perhaps Tremaine was in a hurry to get down to breakfast.

“Let me do that.” George captured Tremaine’s wrist and tended to each sleeve button, left then right, with the practiced efficiency of a valet. “I’d not like to see those sheep go to Nash.”

“Neither would I,” Tremaine said, “but my interest is mercantile, while yours is—what?”

George Haddonfield was a pattern card of male beauty, and yet what made his appearance interesting was a quality of self-containment, a guardedness his older brother Nicholas lacked. George had spent time on the Continent too, a sad and weary place in the wake of the Corsican’s protracted spree of republican violence.

“Nash is guardian to his nephew,” George said, straightening a fold of Tremaine’s cravat. “I don’t think the boy is happy. I know he’s not, in fact. Neither is his mother. How a man treats his dependents says a lot about him. No one is more dependent than a wife, and Susannah has no wickedness, no instinct for self-preservation. Managing Nash will take sharp wits and a nimble self-interest.”

Business instincts, in other words.

“Have you shared your sentiments with your brother?” Tremaine asked. He wanted those sheep, wanted them badly, but his question had more to do with keeping them from the wrong hands than putting them in his own. As for Lady Susannah…

Lady Nita didn’t think much of this Nash fellow.

George held the bedroom door open. “Bellefonte wouldn’t be interested in my opinion regarding a possible match for Susannah. He and I manage the civilities, but we’re not close.”

As Beckman hadn’t been close with his brothers, and a fourth brother, Ethan Grey, had apparently been estranged from them all until recently. No wonder Bellefonte fretted over his siblings.

A scattered flock was at the greatest risk for predation.

“I had only the one brother,” Tremaine said as he and George traveled the carpeted corridor. In memory of that late brother, a lazy scoundrel with too much charm, no honor, and little sense, Tremaine would meddle, just a bit.

“I didn’t always like my brother,” he went on, “and I often didn’t respect him, but he’s dead, and even the civilities are lost to us. Talk to the earl, Mr. Haddonfield. Bellefonte is a reasonable man. If Lady Susannah must marry, the union should have at least a chance of happiness.”

Though if Susannah Haddonfield was determined to wed her poetical squire, Tremaine suspected little anybody could say, do, or threaten would stop her.

She had Lady Nita’s firm and misguided example to follow, after all.

* * *

Nita managed breakfast without falling asleep at the table, though she hadn’t rested well through the night.

“What have you planned for today, Nita?” Nicholas’s expression was mere brotherly interest, but if Nita said she wanted to check on wee Annie, he’d set down his teacup and cast a glance at his countess that would bode ill for the King’s peace.

And Nita didn’t dare mention persistent coughs, sore throats, or head colds, though they were on her mind.

“I’m inclined to practice the pianoforte today,” she replied. “Some pieces that might allow the musicians a break at the assembly.”
Then
she’d check on Annie.

“Thoughtful of you,” Leah said, and to Nita’s surprise, a look went the opposite direction, up the table, from countess to earl.

“Mr. St. Michael,” Nita said, “have you plans for today?”

He would say nothing of their shared biscuits and cider, of that Nita was certain. Did he know she’d nearly kissed him, nearly turned a sweet, friendly embrace into something sweet, friendly, and improper?

Why
hadn’t she?

Mr. St. Michael had a dimmer view of marriage than Nita did. He wouldn’t have followed a stolen kiss with awkward declarations or lewd presumptions.

“As it turns out, I’m off for London later today,” he said. “Word came last night that one of my flocks has taken sick. Bellefonte, your man Alfrydd was good enough to send a pigeon for me to Oxfordshire, but in the absence of encouraging news this morning, I must go.”

Another look went winging around the table, this time from Kirsten to Susannah to Della—and what was Della doing at the breakfast table twice in one week?

“A pity that anybody should have to attempt the King’s Highway at this time of year,” the countess said. “Nicholas, please pass the teapot to our guest.”

Nita ate something—eggs, possibly bacon, buttered toast—then excused herself. As Mr. St. Michael had recited his plans for the day, he’d done Nita the courtesy of keeping his gaze elsewhere, yet would a hint of regret have been so inappropriate?

Rather than seek him out and ask such a brazen question, Nita applied herself for the next hour to country-dances at the pianoforte.

“If you hit those keys any harder, the poor instrument will lose its tuning.”

Tremaine St. Michael had ventured into the music room, a pair of worn saddlebags over his shoulder. Nita brought the music to a cadence and folded the lid over the keys.

“Mr. St. Michael. I gather you’re leaving us.”

Leaving her.

He took a seat on the piano bench, which left little room for Nita. “I honestly don’t want to, my lady. I looked forward to turning down the room with you, learning how you cheat at cards, or singing a few verses of ‘Green Grow the Rashes, O.’”

“Mr. Burns again?”

“At his philosophical best. Will you walk with me to the stables, my dear?”

The door to the music room was open, which preserved Nita from an impulse to kiss Mr. St. Michael. She’d refrained the previous night—good manners, common sense, some inconvenient virtue had denied her a single instant of shared pleasure.

“I’ll need my cloak.”

Mr. St. Michael stayed right where he was, which meant Nita was more or less penned onto the piano bench.

“I told the earl the Chalmers boys would be useful in any effort to harvest timber from the home wood,” Mr. St. Michael said. “They’ll know where the deadfall is, where the saplings haven’t enough light. The girl, Mary, is plenty old enough to start in the scullery.”

Nita hadn’t dared make that suggestion, though many apprentices began work at age six.

“Mary is needed at home, especially now that the new baby is here.”

“The baby has a mother.” Mr. St. Michael rose, his tone quite severe. “An infant that young ought to be in her mother’s care.”

Nita came to her feet before he could assist her. “Addy tries, but she can’t find honest work, and that leaves only what vice the
men
in the shire will indulge in, and she drinks.”

Such was the fate of women who did not preserve their virtue for marriage. Mr. St. Michael spared Nita that sermon, though Nicholas had alluded to it enough to disappoint Nita more than a little.

As if any of her brothers had preserved
their
virtue for holy matrimony? As if they knew for a fact that Addy had cast her good name heedlessly aside, not had it wheedled from her by a predatory scoundrel—or worse?

Mr. St. Michael held Nita’s cloak for her when they reached the kitchen door, and when Nita would have closed the frogs herself, his hands were already at her throat, competent and brisk. He did up the fastenings exactly right—snug enough to be warm, loose enough to allow movement and breathing.

“Have you a bonnet, Lady Nita?”

So formal. If Nita had had a bonnet, she might have smacked him with it, surely the most childish impulse she’d felt in years.

“We’re only walking to the stables, Mr. St. Michael, and the sun has hardly graced the shire in days.” What would freckles on Nita’s nose matter, anyway? “I take it you couldn’t sleep?” she asked by way of small talk.

His eyes looked weary to her, like the gaze of a mother who’d been up through the night with a colicky infant.

“I did not sleep well; you’re right, my lady. I’m accustomed to waking up in strange beds, but I do worry for those sheep.”

Nita let him hold the door for her, though his observation was odd.

Mr. St. Michael bent near. “I meant I travel a great deal, and spend many nights in inns, lodging houses, and the homes of acquaintances. You have a naughty imagination, Lady Nita.”

She took his arm, though she was entirely capable of walking the gardens without a man’s escort. Nita did have a naughty imagination, about which she’d nearly forgotten.

“Will you send word when you reach Oxfordshire, Mr. St. Michael?”

“I’ll have your Mr. Belmont send a pigeon, but you mustn’t worry. I’m a seasoned traveler, William is an excellent fellow under saddle, and the distance isn’t that great.”

The distance was endless, for Mr. St. Michael, having failed to wrangle Nicholas’s sheep free, would never cross paths with Nita again.

“I wish you had taught me a few verses of that song, the one about Mr. Burns’s philosophy.” Nita wished this more dearly than she wished to study German medical treatises on surgical procedures.

“The song is a bit naughty too,” Mr. St. Michael replied. “The lyrics are at once profound and frivolous.” He paused among the shorn hedges and dead roses and offered Nita a mellow baritone serenade:

The sweetest hours that e’er I spend,

Are spent among the lasses, O!

But gie me a cannie hour at e’en,

My arms about my dearie, O,

An’ warl’y cares an’ war’ly men

May a’ gae tapsalteerie, O!

“Burns goes on in that vein,” Mr. St. Michael said. “About how lovely and dear the ladies are, nature’s best work. Men are simply the practice model, while women have the greatest wisdom and so forth.”

“Those are frivolous sentiments?” Nita asked. To be sung to was precious, not frivolous at all. Maybe this was why Susannah was so susceptible to Mr. Nash’s recitations, because when a man offered exquisite verse, his gaze full of sincerity and sentiment, a lady was helpless not to listen.