Nicholas: Lord of Secrets

Fourteen

“The kitchen isn’t keeping up with the guests at the buffet.” Nita drew a black handkerchief from her sleeve, a warning to any of the nearby neighbors thronging the house not to approach.

“I’ll get the footmen moving,” Leah said. “Nick’s in the parlor with your sisters, and probably passing around his handkerchief.”

“Oh, my poor Nicky.” Nita bustled away, her expression determined, which left Leah wondering where Ethan had gotten off to. She found him in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea, effectively hiding in plain sight. Her first task was to find the head footman and put the fear of hungry neighbors in him, and then she made directly for Ethan.

“How’s Nick doing?” He moved over as Leah sat beside him.

“He did not enjoy seeing his father’s corpse,” Leah said, stealing a sip of his tea. “And he’s resting more than I’ve ever seen him rest, actually spending time in his bed. But other than that, I think he’s managing. He’s glad you’re here, but why are you dodging your sisters, Ethan Grey?” Leah stole another sip of his tea. “Gracious, that is good. Is the kettle on the hob?”

“Cook is keeping a pot going for the servants,” Ethan said. “I pinched a cup by special dispensation.”

“Nick will appreciate a cup. Shall I send your sisters down here for you to receive them?” She rose, determined that this day should pass with a minimum of difficulty for Nick.

“I…” Ethan dropped his gaze to his nearly empty teacup. “I haven’t seen them for years, Leah. My brothers, I’d run into in Town, but the girls… there’s such a crowd up there, all curious, no doubt, and I don’t want the girls to have to…”

“All right,” Leah interrupted. The late Earl of Haddonfield’s sons were a surprisingly shy bunch—shy and considerate. “I’ll send them to you in the music room, how’s that?”

When she half expected him to bolt, he set his teacup aside. “That will serve.”

Leah eventually shooed the siblings who were present into the music room, and had a tea tray sent to them laden with all manner of appealing food, as well as a brandy decanter. She was directing the restocking of the buffet when the head footman found her and drew her aside.

“Lord Reston…” The man paused, cleared his throat, and started again. “The earl is asking for you, my lady. He’s in the music room, and he said to tell you…”

“Yes?”

“You need to take a break, my lady, and get off your feet for a few minutes. His lordship’s exact words.”

She did not need a break, but his lordship just might need her by his side. Leah gave a few more instructions and found her way to the music room. She slipped inside and saw the family was assembled, seven tall blonds bearing a strong resemblance, and their youngest, Della, petite, dark haired, but still bearing the stamp of the Haddonfield family in her features. Because Ethan was in the middle of a story about Nick as a child, Leah took a quiet seat at Nick’s feet. His hand settled on her nape, and his brandy glass appeared before her eyes. She took a sip and passed it back to him, enjoying the smooth burn of the alcohol and the smoother heat coming from Nick’s fingers caressing her neck.

When Ethan finished, Nita spoke up, reminding them of an occasion when the earl had been spectacularly in error and held accountable by his second wife. Leah felt a draft and looked over to see that another handsome, strapping blond had slipped into the room.

As discreetly as she could, Leah caught Nick’s eye and nodded toward the door.

Nick rose and crossed the room. “Now we are complete.” He drew the fellow to the center of the room and slid an arm around his shoulders. “Our Beckman has come home.”

Beckman was not as tall as Nick, or quite as handsome. He had something of Ethan’s sharper features, and yet in his height, blue eyes, and blond hair, he was unmistakably a Haddonfield. He scanned the room as Nick’s arm slid from his shoulders. “We’re all home, every one of us, and it’s about damned time.”

The room went silent as Beck’s gaze fastened on Ethan, who was blinking at a portrait of a young blond man in old-fashioned regimentals.

Young Della held up her brandy.

“Here’s to family,” she said, “reunited, and isn’t Papa just laughing his harp off to know he’s the reason.”

Thank God and all his angels, Della’s toast had broken the ice, because Nick hadn’t known what to say. Nothing and everything. Love for his siblings swirled through his grief, through his marital woes, through his dread of assuming responsibility for the earldom, and all of it seemed to impair both his ability to speak and his ability to think.

As Beckman wedged into a place beside Ethan, the room once again settled in to storytelling, reminiscing, the occasional teary aside, and more frequent laughter. When Nick resumed his seat, he arranged a leg on either side of Leah’s perch on the floor, and drew her back to lean against his chair. His hands caressed her neck and shoulders, not idly, but because it soothed him to touch his wife.

Nick leaned down, his lips near her ear, his nose nearly buried in the lily of the valley fragrance of her hair. “Your behind has to be getting numb,” he whispered. “I’ll trade you.”

A man could say such a thing to his wife, and watch for the way she tried not to smile.

“Why don’t we shoo the last of the guests away and arrange for a late supper on trays in here for the family?”

“You shoo, Wife. I’ll get word to the kitchen.”

Leah shook her head. “You’re the earl, and I’m sure your letters patent spell out very clearly that you are in charge of shooing on all occasions of state. Come along like a good earl, lest I report you to the Regent.”

Oh, how he loved her, Nick mused as he trailed her from the room. Then his steps slowed and faltered as he realized exactly what he had admitted.

God in heaven, what he’d tried to characterize as fondness, protectiveness, and sexual attraction was much worse than all those combined. All odds to the contrary, he loved his wife, and he’d not even truly become her lover. Nor could he, ever.

“Nicholas?” Leah eyed him curiously. “Are you coming?”

“Yes, lovey.” Nick took her hand and linked his fingers through hers. “A-shooing we will go.” They passed the family parlor, and Leah paused to close the door. Across the hall, neighbors were still eating, drinking, and visiting the day away, leaving Nick to frown in consternation.

“How exactly does this shooing work?” Because Leah would know.

“You find the vicar or the mayor or the local magistrate,” Leah said, “and ask them to clear the room as politely at possible. Their consequence will demand they see to it with all dispatch.”

“I did not learn this at university,” Nick muttered, his eyes lighting on the vicar. In five minutes, the crowd was thinning, his neighbors and friends offering final condolences, until he, Leah, and the servants were the only ones left.

“God’s hairy b—beard.” Nick looped his arms over Leah’s shoulders and drew her close. Time enough later to ponder the disaster looming for a man in love with a wife he could not have. “This has been a long, long day.”

“You’re managing wonderfully,” Leah murmured against his chest, “but the brandy is catching up with me.”

“Was that you who sent the decanter to the music room?” Nick asked, his cheek against her temple. “Little Della was in alt to be taking spirits, but George surreptitiously snitched most of her portion.”

“I am the culprit. Ethan did not want to greet his sisters in public, and the best part of any funeral is the stories.”

“I wasn’t aware funerals had a best part,” Nick said, though the memory of Leah curled at his feet while his siblings laughed and cried together was precious, if not without pain. “Nita was wise to put the actual… service off for a day. We’re going to want tomorrow to recover from today.”

“Can we have the body sealed into its coffin now?” Leah asked, stifling a yawn.

“We can. You are so matter-of-fact, using words like body, coffin, and burial. I did not know I married a woman of such ferocious courage.” And she would need more courage yet, given his feelings for her. “There’s still some daylight. Will you walk with me?”

“Of course.” Leah slipped her arms from his waist. The head footman was smiling at them, the maids were trying to look interested in packing up the food, and the junior footmen were trying to look as busy as the maids.

Nick walked with Leah through the gardens, knowing he had to deal with his marriage and the unexpected turn of his emotions for his new wife, but knowing as well, resolving that situation was beyond him until his father’s death rituals were complete. For now, Leah at his side and in his arms at night was too great a comfort to give up.

He knew he was in particularly dangerous waters when he woke up in the middle of the night, wrapped around her and content simply to stay that way.

“Go back to sleep, lovey.” He kissed her neck and tucked her against him.

“Did everybody else trundle off to bed when you told them to?” Leah asked, her lips brushing his forearm where it lay across her collarbone.

“I made sure Nita got to bed,” Nick replied. “And Ethan has sought his bed. The rest of them are in need of a good visit without the elders around.”

“You’re an elder?”

“Head of the family, God help me.”

Leah scooted over to her back and considered him by the waning firelight. To accommodate her change in position, Nick threaded her arm under his neck, hiked one of Leah’s legs over his hips, and shifted up to prop his head on his palm.

“You have been head of this family for several years, I think.” She brushed his hair back from his forehead. “You’re going to have to say the eulogy.”

“I’ve worked on it some.” Nick’s hand smoothed down her sternum and rested on her belly. So smooth, her skin, such a delight to stroke. “It doesn’t seem natural, to publicly praise a man who was in truth very private, but I suppose it’s expected.”

“There are the rituals, and then there is the grieving, the real mourning, which is god-awfully miserable work.”

“We’ll mourn.” Nick leaned down and kissed her shoulder. “Nita said it was Papa’s wish we not observe deep mourning for more than six months, and then only on formal occasions. He’d buried two wives, two mistresses, and two babies, and didn’t see the sense in all the ritual and display.”

“Two children?” Leah’s hand drifted up the column of Nick’s throat. The touch was soothing and quite… personal.

“Between Nita and George,” Nick said. “A boy and a girl, both of whom died in infancy. He wanted to stop trying at that point, but my stepmother was desperate for more babies.”

“Everybody grieves differently,” Leah said. “Why don’t you want children, Nicholas? The real reason, if you please.”

Nick rolled slightly and buried his face against Leah’s neck. He had not seen this coming, not now. “There is risk to you, Leah. Honest-to-God risk, no matter what medical assurances are given, no matter how safely you bore your son.”

“You still think you killed your mother? I was certain you were bruiting that about as a mean sort of jest.”

“I would never jest about a woman’s death, much less my mother’s,” Nick said, his words muffled against Leah’s neck. His tongue slipped softly along Leah’s jaw, just taking a taste of female sweetness and warmth—to distract her, to comfort him.

“But you had nothing to do with your mother’s death, Nicholas. If anybody was to blame, it was your father.”

“I respectfully disagree.” Nick’s hand slid over Leah’s stomach, coming to rest on her opposite hip. “He was a third son inheriting a title later in life, and intent on doing his duty, and he succeeded, as yours truly lives and breathes.”

“But you were being weaned,” Leah said. “It was your father’s fixation on producing a spare that cost your mother her life.”

Nick abruptly pulled back and stared down at her. “I have the sense we are talking at cross purposes.”

“As do I.”

“My mother died as a result of complications following childbirth, and I am the only child she bore.” He knew this; he’d known it all his life.

“You were shy of a year old, Nick,” Leah said gently. “Della told me Sara had conceived again and was weaning you at your father’s insistence. Losing that second child before the pregnancy was full term is what led to her eventual death.”

Silence, filled only by the hiss of the last of the embers in the fireplace.

“Nana told you this?” Nick said slowly, rolling to his back.

“She most assuredly did.” Leah propped herself on his chest and peered at him. “You had nothing to do with your mother’s death. Not. One. Thing.”

He lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to fathom the sense of her words. There was loss in what she said, but loss of a burden as well as loss of a dearly held belief. Leah tucked a leg across his body, folded herself down over his chest, and slid an arm behind his neck.

Did she seek to anchor him physically while his entire world went tumbling?

“You honestly thought you killed your own mother. Oh, Nicholas…”

His arms came around her, carefully, slowly. “How did Della convey this… information?”

“We’d finished fitting my wedding dress,” Leah said, “and I asked her if you’d killed your mother.”

“You were afraid?” Of course she’d be afraid. Nick was afraid.

“Curious,” Leah clarified, her cheek over his heart. “Your heartbeat is steadier than the beat of a clock. I love that you are so tall that your heart lies right under my ear when you hold me.”

That simple little compliment, coming on the heels of unexpected absolution for his mother’s death, sliced at Nick’s soul. She thought he was handsome, when most women of her station thought he was a freak. She was protective of him—all seventeen damned stone of him—when by any sane lights, protecting ought to be his exclusive domain.

“Leah…” But he had no words, so he kissed her. He meant to express things beyond words—gratitude, wonder, relief, and tenderness—but Leah surprised him. When his lips pressed against hers, she groaned softly and fitted her mouth over his. Tentatively, her tongue seamed his lips, asking entrance even as her hand moved over the contours of Nick’s shoulders.

He let her tempt him, assuring himself he was equal to the self-restraint needed to enjoy the kiss without letting it go too far. In careful increments, Nick felt Leah exploring the limits of a passionate kiss between spouses naked, in bed, in the privacy of deepest night. She sampled the heat of his mouth, the pleasures and textures of his tongue, and the soft fullness of his lips.

Without Nick wanting it or willing it, his wife was also learning how easily a well-kissed man became aroused.

“Lovey, we have to slow down.”

“You’re wrong,” Leah muttered, taking his hand and fitting it over her breast. “You were wrong about your mother, and you’re wrong about this too, Husband.” She closed his fingers over the fullness of her breast, and Nick felt a flash of heat from his hand to his groin. Leah’s head fell back, and her back arched, begging him to repeat the caress.

She had every right to expect pleasure of him. Nick marshaled his self-discipline, despite the hard throbbing in his cock. He brought his free hand up, framed Leah’s other breast with it, and urged her closer to his mouth.

“Nicholas…” His name was a hiss of pleasure and longing, and Leah’s nails digging into Nick’s forearm only confirmed the intensity of her passion. Gently, he laved her nipple with his tongue, knowing he could not deny her satisfaction, not on one of the last nights they would spend together. He was condemned to please, and take little for himself, just as he had been so often in the past.

Leah didn’t know of his devil’s bargain, though, and when her fingers feathered over Nick’s nipples, Nick felt pleasure buck through his body. His cock leaped at her sex, longing coursing through him with an ache he felt in his soul. The ache turned to torture when Leah eased her body over him, caressing his length with the slick heat of her sex.

“Leah…” Nick rasped, pressing his face to her chest. “You can’t…”

She did it again, and desire coiled more tightly in Nick’s vitals.

“We can,” she retorted in a fierce whisper.

“No.” Nick grabbed her wrists, but she used her body weight to push her hands apart and spread his arms out on the bed. With unerring instinct, she positioned herself so the head of Nick’s cock was nudging at the opening in her body.

“Leah… you must not.”

“You did not kill your mother, your reservations are groundless, and I need you.” As she captured him with her body and shifted that first, exquisite half inch downward, Nick went utterly still. Leah’s head dropped forward on a gusty exhale, and she eased her hips forward.

“Easy,” Nick cautioned, resigned to yet greater self-restraint. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“You couldn’t,” she whispered, rocking her hips in a small, slow pattern of thrust and retreat. “You feel wonderful to me, absolutely, gloriously… Ah, Nicholas…” He lay beneath her, letting her have complete control as she took him more and more deeply into her body. His hands eased away from her wrists and moved gently over her face, then her neck and shoulders. He stroked her breasts, her belly, and her arms, and all the while watched her expression in the last of the firelight.

“I want…” Leah opened her eyes to plead with him silently.

He wanted to cry, to weep with the knowledge of what could not be his.

“I know,” Nick replied. “But slowly, Leah, and gently. I will not forgive myself if I hurt you.”

She shook her head. “You are lovely inside me, so sweet and full and unbearably… God… All I want is more of you. More and more…”

Her words hammered at him, hammered at the place inside him that said he was not entitled to take pleasure from a woman, not ever, for surely it pleased him to hear her sighs and her lavish compliments. It pleased him, warmed his soul, and aroused his body. He was already fighting the tightening up behind his balls that signaled his own impending orgasm, and the feel of Leah slowly hilting him in her body pushed his control to the limits.

“Nicholas?” Leah settled herself slowly and completely onto him then folded down onto his chest. “You aren’t moving with me.”

“I don’t dare,” he whispered, finding her mouth with his. “But you can move, Leah.” His hands caressed her back then gripped her hips, encouraging her into a slow, languorous rhythm. “Come like this for me.” He trailed one hand up to cup her breast and tease her nipple. “Take your pleasure of me.”

Torture me so this one memory, at least, will be mine.

He knew she couldn’t help herself. He intended that his voice, his hands, his kisses, the throbbing fullness of his cock lodged deep in her body, and the need to be as close to him as life on earth allowed converge. As soon as Leah withdrew and pressed forward again, he felt her silently shatter. Nick did move then; he rocked himself inside her, prolonging and intensifying her pleasure with slow undulations of his hips and glancing caresses to her breasts. When her passion ebbed, Nick brushed his thumb against the top of her sex and drove her up again, more forcefully still.

“Nicholas… oh, Nicholas…” She breathed his name so softly Nick felt it more as exhalations against his chest than words. His arousal clawed at him, and yet he let his hips fall still and cradled Leah against his body.

“You are all right?” he whispered.

“I am… utterly replete,” Leah whispered back. “But you are not. You touch me so carefully, Nicholas, so caringly, but you haven’t found your pleasure.”

“Leah, I can’t…” He didn’t know how to tell her what he needed, but any minute—any second—it would be too late. With a soft groan, he rolled them and lifted himself out of her body, then lay himself over her, tightly seaming his wet cock between them.

“I’m sorry,” he rasped, thrusting against her belly until pleasure radiated through him and he spent his seed between their unjoined bodies. “I’m just so… damnably sorry.”

He lay between her legs, physical repletion warring with self-disgust, while Leah’s arms went around him and her hands threaded through the hair at his nape.

The haven she offered was precious and never to be his. If he allowed the embrace, then he might allow the confidences such embraces engendered.

The thought inspired him to lever up, taking his weight on his forearms and knees.

“Don’t go.” Leah tightened her grip. “I like your weight on me.”

Confound the woman. “You can’t breathe,” Nick answered, more harshly than he’d intended. “And I’ve made a mess of you. Let me go, Leah. Please.”

Her arms slid from his neck, and she let her legs fall open. He extricated himself from her, crossed the room, and fetched the basin and towel kept near the hearth. As he sopped one end of the towel in the water then rubbed it briskly over his flat stomach and his genitals, all he could think was: What have I done? What have I done?

“Say something,” Leah prompted, her voice catching, as if tears threatened.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said flatly. “That should never have happened.” He used the towel on her as impersonally as he could, when what he wanted was to bury himself in her again and again and again.

“Why shouldn’t it have happened?” Leah asked, bewilderment coming to the fore. “It was beautiful, and ordained by God, and one of the few pleasures any married person is entitled to expect of his or her mate.”

Beautiful—and potentially tragic.

“But not us,” Nick said, firing the towel across the room with unnecessary force. “We’re not entitled to that. I am not entitled to that.”

“But, Nicholas, why not?”

“I could get you with child, even if I don’t spend inside your body,” Nick said wearily. “I wish it were not so, Leah. I desperately wish it were not so, but I was honest about my terms when you agreed to marry me. I am profoundly sorry to have breached my word to you as far as I have, and I can only hope there won’t be consequences we both regret.”

“I do not understand you,” Leah said in quiet misery. “You are a sumptuous lover, Nicholas, and I will not, not ever, regret what has passed between us here tonight. I will instead resent until my last day that you deny us both what is our right.”

She flopped back down to the bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.

He had hurt her, hurt her in the one area a spouse’s trust and protection ought to be inviolate, and the need to comfort her was a living, writhing misery in Nick’s soul.

He hadn’t the right. He also hadn’t the right to stalk from the bed and leave her even more alone than she felt now.

And he hadn’t the courage to ask her if she wanted him to leave.

So he waited until Leah fell asleep then carefully folded himself around her once more, and like a thief in the night stole what consolation from her he could, while darkness hid his anguish.

“Is it time to rise?” Leah asked, blinking.

“Not yet,” Nick said. “There’s tea on the hearth. Shall I fetch you a cup?”

He was polite, at least. They’d spent the previous day being so polite Leah’s teeth nigh ached with it, and then last night in his sleep, Nick had held her desperately close.

“Fetch us both a cup.” Leah pushed her braid over her shoulder and wrestled the pillows behind her back. “How are you on this day, Nicholas?”

He rose from the bed, naked—at least he wasn’t going to deny her that much. “I feel like I felt when Ethan was sent north to school: bewildered, powerless to stop someone I love and rely on from being taken away.” He brought the whole tray to the bedside table and sat on the mattress, his back to Leah.

“You have known a bucketload of loss,” Leah said. She wrestled the bedclothes aside and knee-walked over to Nick, wrapping her arms around his shoulders for a brief hug. He tolerated it, closing his eyes on a sigh.

“Let’s drink this in bed,” Nick suggested, maybe by way of an olive branch. “Soon enough we’ll be up and about, dressed in sobriety and grief.”

“Maybe at first, but you grieve in proportion to how you loved, and eventually, the love pushes back through the loss.” She knew this. If it was all he’d allow her to give him, she’d offer it freely.

Nick settled back against his pillows and sipped his tea.

“You speak such eloquent words, Wife. Nonetheless, I am royally out of charity with my papa, and that is hardly worthy of me or the life he lived.”

Of course he’d be angry, and Nick was not comfortable with anger in any sense.

“You think I wasn’t wroth with my mother for leaving me so soon after my child died? It frightens us to be without our parents, whether they were doing much parenting before they died or not. Nicholas?”

“Wife?”

Wife—that was something.

“For today, don’t shut me out. I know you are displeased and upset over what passed between us in this bed, but you bury your father today, and that must take precedence over our troubles. Your family will need to lean on you, and…” She looked away, self-conscious, yet unwilling to back down. “I am inviting you to lean on me.”

“I have leaned on you.” Nick reached out a long arm and let the backs of his fingers drift over her cheek. “And, Leah, I am so damned sorry about the way I spoke to you the other night. You are not to blame.”

And then she was angry. Angry at the big, noisy family who assumed Nick would take on every difficulty and see to every problem. Angry at the mother who’d died and left him with such a load of guilt, even his broad shoulders should not have to bear it alone.

And she was angry at him, so stubbornly determined to keep every burden ever thrust upon him.

“We can deal with all that later, Nicholas, agreed?” She studied her teacup lest she start shouting at him.

“We’ll deal with it later, and you have my thanks for your understanding.”

“I am your wife, and I would be your friend.”

Nick turned to set his teacup aside and spoke to Leah over his shoulder.

“Will you let me hold you? I know I should not ask this of you, but I can behave, Leah. I promise you that, it’s just…”

“Of course.” Leah passed him her teacup and scooted over. She settled against his side, where she fit as if God had made her just for that cozy location. Nick’s hand fell to her shoulder, brushed her braid aside, and began drawing slow patterns on her arm and her back, until she was dozing contently in his arms, his chin resting on her temple.

A soft tap on the door heralded the arrival of breakfast. Nick brought the covers up to Leah’s chin and bade the serving maid enter, then dismissed her after she’d built up the fire.

Before he could leave the bed, Leah climbed over to straddle Nick’s lap. There were mounds of bed covers between them, softly compressed between their bodies. She batted them aside until she got her arms around Nick’s neck, hugging him close at the start of this most trying day.

“I know, Nicholas, we have dreadful difficulties ahead, sad things to say to each other, but one grief at a time is more than enough. For today, I am your devoted wife, if you’ll allow it.”

“I’ll allow it.” Nick pressed his face to her throat. “I don’t deserve it, but I’ll allow it.” Unspoken between them hung two words that held back a wealth of foreboding and misery. Nick would allow her support—for now. Only for now.

“Leah?” Nick poked his head into the ladies’ parlor—the Squealery, according to the late earl—the day after the burial in the late afternoon, and found his wife surrounded by all of his sisters, addressing replies to cards of condolence.

“Nicholas?”

“A word with you, if you can spare me a moment,” Nick said, purposely not letting even one sister catch his eye. “I’ll meet you in the gardens.”

Nick waited for her on the same bench they’d occupied after the viewing, feeling more solemn than even at the burial.

“You look very serious, Nicholas.” Leah took her seat beside him, her fingers twining with his. In just a few short days, this had become their habit—to hold hands, regardless of the company or the hour.

“I am serious,” he said, his gaze tracing over each of her features. She was tired and probably didn’t even realize it. “I asked you out here to let you know I have considered your suggestion that we separate, and find myself agreeing to it.”

Leah’s fingers went limp in his. Nick had never hated himself more.

“I see.” Leah’s voice held no more life than her fingers. “Is this to be a permanent separation?”

“If I were less selfish,” Nick said, “I would tell you that yes, this is permanent, except for those unavoidable family occasions when we must be seen together, or the periodic meeting we schedule for business purposes. Then too, you’ll be expected to attend my investiture. But I am selfish, Leah, and so I will say I do not know how long we will need to live apart, and I regret this development, because it hurts you.”

“What about you, Nicholas?” She withdrew her hand from his and regarded him with an appearance of dispassion. “Does this development hurt you as well, or will you be relieved to be shut of me?”

“It is not what I’d wish for either of us,” Nick said. “Particularly not what I’d wish for you. You have to know, Leah…” He raised a hand to touch her face, but at her utterly contained expression, he never connected with her cheek.

“Know what?”

“I cannot trust myself to behave around you as I promised I would and I can see no other means of keeping my word,” Nick offered stiffly. “You deserve better, but I cannot undo our marriage, and for the sake of your safety, I will not even try.”

“My safety?” Leah hissed incredulously. “I wish…” She rose to her feet as Nick saw tears gathering in her eyes. “I wish I could hate you, Nicholas. I cannot understand this decision you’ve made, to dwell in the loneliest form of hell imaginable, and to fashion a cell for me there as well. You are a lovable man, intelligent, kind, and decent. Your decision makes no sense to me, not now, when I see what potential we have together.”

She stalked off, skirts swishing madly, leaving Nick to sit in the dying sun and curse his fate.

When he came to bed that night, Nick found Leah doing a credible impersonation of sound sleep, though she was given away by the speed with which the pulse in her throat leaped and the fact that her mouth was closed. In sleep, Leah’s lips parted the barest fraction of an inch. Still, Nick didn’t blame her for avoiding him. He shifted and climbed naked onto the mattress, hating the ache in his chest and knowing she likely felt something similar.

Which was entirely his arrogant, presumptuous fault. He’d thought he could be a sexual convenience for her, within the limits of his self-imposed marital celibacy. He’d planned on being her, what? Her sexual friend, as he’d been to so many other women? And her husband, entitled and bound to protect her, and her social escort when duty required it.

He’d never, ever planned on seeing the depths of her courage, her humor, her tenacity, her loyalty to family. Her passion for him, and not just for the pleasure he could give her.

On a sigh, he shifted across the bed and reached for her. She surprised him by meeting him and cuddling into his arms as if they’d been married for twenty good, happy years. But when Nick leaned down to rest his cheek against hers, he felt the lingering dampness of her tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Leah said nothing, but lacing her fingers through his, drew his arm securely about her waist.

Which left him feeling, as impossible as it seemed, yet sorrier still.