Nicholas: Lord of Secrets

Nine

“My lord.” Nick’s butler tapped on the door but did not open it. “Lord Amherst and the Honorable Mr. Darius Lindsey, come to call.”

Nick held Leah’s gaze for one moment longer, then went to the door and spoke quietly to his servant before turning back to her.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Nick said. “You aren’t. I will not have it, and you don’t want to go. Leave your brothers to me.”

She said nothing, and then Trenton and Darius Lindsey joined them in the library.

“Gentlemen,” Nick offered in greeting.

“Leah.” Darius held out his arms to her, while Amherst watched, his expression impossible to read. Leah was in Darius’s embrace in two swift strides.

“She has a bruise on her jaw,” Amherst said with quiet menace. “Leah, tell us you’re all right, save for that.”

“I’m all right,” Leah managed, though her words were muffled against Darius’s coat. “It’s just a bruise, and I’m all right, now, but oh, Trent…”

Nick summarized the events of the afternoon, the threats made to their sister, and the steps he’d already taken to track down the culprit.

“Leah and I had made arrangements to meet in the park at three of the clock.” The day was temperate, but Nick had had a fire lit. He stabbed at it with a wrought-iron poker as he spoke. “The footman told Leah a note had been delivered to Wilton’s kitchen, asking her to come to the park at two, though the note was not signed. Had I not gone to the park quite early to enjoy the day, this kidnapping might well have been successful.”

He crossed the room and passed a brandy to Leah, making sure their fingers brushed as he did. Her hand was ice cold, but her eyes lacked the bruised, wary look they’d had two hours ago.

“That doesn’t prove Wilton’s involved,” Amherst observed, sipping a brandy.

“It doesn’t,” Nick allowed, “but neither did he require that William attend Leah on this outing, when he has on every previous one.”

Leah spoke up. “Nick is right. I was so preoccupied with my own thoughts and pressed for time to make the earlier hour, I left the house without an attendant. Though I doubt William would have been a match for five grown men intent on mischief.”

“I suppose we must wait to hear more from your investigator,” Amherst concluded, “but Leah can stay with me until we have some further word. Even Wilton would not object to her spending some time with my children.”

The look of relief on Leah’s face sliced at Nick’s composure. He told himself her brothers were not kidnappers, and yet the fire received another assault with the poker.

“I can’t allow it,” Nick said, “for several reasons. First, if somebody means Leah harm, then you are bringing that danger to a household with small children. Second, Wilton’s guilt is not something you want to see objectively, my lord, and nobody can blame you for trying to think the best of your father. Third, both in my considerable person and in the bachelor nature of my household, I have more strong arms and hard heads with which to protect the lady.”

“That is logical, Trent,” Darius said. “Wilton makes a bitter enemy, as I well know. You and I can’t afford to antagonize him, and Reston can. I don’t like it”—Darius turned his gaze to Nick—“but I like even less what would have happened to my sister had you not been with her this afternoon. Then too, from my perspective, Hellerington is sniffing around Leah’s skirts because Wilton encouraged it, and to that extent, Wilton is complicit in this mischief if Hellerington is behind it.”

“What do you mean ‘if’?” Nick pressed.

Darius shrugged. “Frommer’s family might have gotten word Leah was to make a match, and taken steps to obstruct it. Wilton might have made an enemy who seeks to take from him his most salable asset and make him look like the miserable excuse for a father he is. Leah might have offended somebody who thought to set her cap for you, Reston. Desperate women are a force to be reckoned with, occasionally a deadly force.”

There was a bleak sort of knowledge in Darius’s dark eyes, and Nick studied the man for some moments in silence.

Nick recalled Leah’s comment that younger sons as a breed tended to shrewdness. “I will pass these thoughts on to my investigator. You make sense, Lindsey, though I wish you didn’t.”

Darius drew Leah against him, pressing his lips to her hair and closing his eyes. “If anything had happened to you, Leah, I don’t know how I would have gone on. You’ll stay with Reston? He’ll have Lady Warne here in no time, I’m guessing, and it won’t be forever.”

Leah’s gaze shot to Nick, who nodded once.

“I will stay here,” Leah said, “with Nick and Lady Warne.”

“So what do we tell Wilton?” Darius asked, turning Leah loose.

“I sent him a note,” Nick said, “telling him Leah had run into Lady Della in the park and would be taking a late tea with her.”

The look Amherst gave him was not exactly friendly. “Believable,” Amherst said, “so why not throw Wilton off the scent further by sending another note saying she’s with me, visiting the children for a day or two?”

“That will serve,” Nick agreed, though he could see matters were moving too quickly from Leah’s perspective. He was not kidnapping her. He was keeping her safe. “Leah, can you live with this plan?” Asking her if she liked the idea didn’t seem prudent.

“I can live with it,” Leah said, “but then what? I can’t hide here forever.”

“Let’s deal with this one day at a time,” Nick suggested. “We are all tired, upset, and flustered. Gentlemen, can I offer you sustenance?”

“I think not,” Amherst said. “I’ve seen with my own eyes that Leah is safe, and we’ve made interim arrangements. If Leah might be visiting me later in the week, I’d best return to home and hearth, and I will want to have a word with my staff as well.”

“I’ll take my leave too,” Darius said, “and go about my usual haunts this evening. There’s always talk, and I can listen for it in a few low places that might yield some useful information.”

After Leah’s brothers had hugged her tightly, Nick walked them to the front door, though leaving his intended alone for even those few minutes flayed his nerves.

“No brooding,” Nick chided when he returned to the library. He sat beside her and laid an arm across her shoulders. “Talk to me, lovey. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I am upset,” Leah said, getting up to pace. “I am not keen on being alone, but I don’t want anybody to hover. I feel angry, but also tainted, and I am tired, Nicholas—tired to my soul—of feeling like an embarrassment, a useless, shameful appendage to my family. My brothers don’t know what to do with me, Society doesn’t know what to do with me, and my father’s plans for me don’t bear mention.”

“And then there’s me,” Nick added, sensing the direction of her ire. “I want to marry you, but only by half measures.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I know you mean well, you mean to give me refuge from what my life has become, but it doesn’t feel like that, Nick. I wish it did, but it doesn’t.”

He wished it did too, but the only thing he knew to do—take her in his arms and kiss her witless—was a direct road to disaster.

“I will order you a bath,” Nick decided, rising, “and send you up a tray, from which, Leah Lindsey, you will eat something. Valentine will be here soon, and he will play you lullabies before I send him elsewhere, and when I’ve set a few more things in motion, you and I will talk.”

He waited for her to protest, but she dropped her arms. “A soaking bath would be appreciated.”

“If you want me, you need only ring, or just yell. I’m not going out again tonight.”

He gave her another up-and-down look, assessing and weighing what he saw. “Come. I’ll take you to your room and show you where Lady Della will be staying.”

And he did, ensconcing her in a lovely, airy guest room, right across the hall from Lady Della’s quarters—and around a corner from Nick’s suite.

“Anybody seeking to travel the corridor you and Della are in has to pass my room. Your bath should be here in a few minutes. Turn around.”

“What?”

“Please turn around,” Nick said. “I have one very matronly housekeeper, Leah, who has retired for the day, and a cook who has likely nodded off over her sherry. I seek to unhook your gown, and then I will take my leave of you.”

He did his best to look entirely sincere, maybe even a trifle testy. She turned around and bowed her head, offering him her nape.

The pose was erotic, at least in the estimation of certain parts of Nick’s anatomy. He gave himself about two seconds to envision kissing her nape, and in those two seconds he caught the floral scent of her.

He’d never unhooked a gown quite so quickly. While he was in the neighborhood, he made short work of her stays then stepped away.

“There’s a vanity behind the privacy screen,” he said, “and you can change there while the water is brought in. You’ll find some things of Della’s hanging on the hooks, and the maids will leave you towels and soap.” He regarded her closely, fisting his hands to keep from touching her. “You’ll be all right?”

She nodded, looking to him forlorn, bruised, and much in need of tenderness rather than solitude.

“Then I’ll leave you for now,” he said. “Soak until you pickle, and I’ll come back later for further discussion.”

Nick left, and Leah felt his absence keenly. Nicholas Haddonfield, she realized as she finished undressing, was a toucher. He gathered information with his hands, with the embrace of his body, with his skin and his nose and his senses. He conveyed it too, conveyed caring and competence, and without his presence, Leah felt every raw edge on every nerve and emotion.

Climbing into the steaming, fragrant water helped settle her though, at least enough that she could consider her situation. Nick was coming back to her room to finish the discussion Darius and Trent had interrupted in the library. She had yet to accept Nick’s proposal, and watchdog that he was, he would not rest until she had.

She scrubbed herself from head to foot, then scrubbed herself again. The day’s memories would not wash away, but bathing helped put them at a slight distance. Then too, Nick’s tub was nigh large enough to swim in and shaped to encourage a lady to repose at her bath, and even to close her eyes.

“Lovey.” Leah heard a sound like a chair scraping. “Leah? Sweetheart? Lamb?”

She opened her eyes to find Nicholas Haddonfield looking large and concerned from his perch on a stool by the tub. His sleeves were rolled up, suggesting he’d been sitting there for more than a moment. Gracious.

“I fell asleep,” she murmured—inane comment. She had sense enough not to sit up, but realized the water and the fading bubbles provided her only so much camouflage.

Nick smiled at her with only a hint of innuendo in his expression. “As long as I’m here, shall we wash your hair? I promise not to peek, and your bubbles hide the best parts anyway.”

He sounded as if he were inviting her to stroll his back gardens or take tea on the terrace. Such was the savoir faire of the man who’d proposed to her.

“For now,” Leah muttered. It wasn’t right, however tempting it felt to be with him under such circumstances. It should feel shocking, upsetting, wrong… not reassuring, not comforting. Sitting in the warm water, seeing the concern in Nick’s blue eyes, Leah realized something else: She was going to marry him.

“You’ll have to take down my hair.”

He shifted his stool to sit behind her, giving Leah a measure of privacy in which to grapple with the truth of her realization. Downstairs, she’d told herself marrying Nick was the sensible, safe course. A good match, a friendly match, one she could accommodate if she dwelled on the things Lady Warne and Ethan Grey had suggested about propinquity and happenstance.

Here in Nick’s house, with him so casually at ease with a significant intimacy, accepting the notion took on bodily ramifications. They would occasionally share a bed, or at least a bedroom. She would see him in casual dishabille. He’d know when her monthly plagued her with cramps.

Nick’s fingers in her hair were deft. He stacked her pins neatly on the vanity and tugged her hair down over her shoulders in long, unfettered skeins. He’d undone many a lady’s coiffure. The knowledge left Leah more sad than angry.

“Down you go, lovey. All the way.”

She submerged completely, a baptism of sorts into a marital reality she had yet to inform Nick she’d accepted.

“Now close your eyes,” Nick instructed, “and lean back.” He used both hands to lather her wet hair, taking the weight of her head in one broad palm and massaging soap into her scalp with the other. The sensations were novel, both soothing—to be cared for—and arousing—to entrust her welfare literally into his hands.

The arousing part, she’d have to learn to deal with.

“I’ve always liked your hair,” Nick observed conversationally. “My sisters are all fair, save the youngest, and so many of the blushing little debutantes aspire to that pale-English-rose sort of beauty. On most of them, it’s insipid and childish. You have color and substance. Your hair is full of fiery highlights, and it always smells lovely.”

“You notice too much,” Leah murmured, eyes still closed.

“Dunk.” Nick’s voice held a smile. To Leah’s pleasure, he repeated the shampoo and finished it off with several thorough rinses with warm water.

“My thanks.” Leah sat up, blinking water out of her eyes. “I’ll ring for you when I’m through.”

“Not so fast.” Nick rose from his stool and retrieved a bath sheet from the wardrobe. “We have things to discuss.”

“We can discuss them when I am dry and decently covered,” Leah replied. If the bath water weren’t cooling, though, she would have been just as happy to drift off and discuss things in the morning—or never. Once Nick was assured they’d be marrying, she doubted there would be any more cozy baths.

Which might be for the best, drat the man.

“Out you go, lovey.” Nick averted his face and held the sheet wide. “I won’t peek, if you’ll recall.”

He wasn’t going to be nagged into leaving, and Leah was too tired to argue with him. Then too, she was hardly a blushing virgin, and he was no callow youth.

She wanted him to peek, though, which made the sadness a little harder to ignore. “Close your eyes, Nicholas.”

He did, and she rose, stepping carefully from the tub, and backing into the bath sheet to wrap it around her. Nick’s arms finished the task, enfolding her in clean, soft toweling and his fleeting embrace.

That had been nice, that simple hug. Also heart wrenching.

“Your robe?” Nick held it out then smiled as he saw that holding the bath sheet closed required both of Leah’s hands. “I’ll hang it behind the screen. When you’re decent, I’ll start on your hair.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“Can’t have you taking a chill,” Nick replied, the soul of equanimity. He probably bathed women regularly, the wretch. When Leah had retreated to the screen, Nick bellowed for the footmen to remove the bath, and by the time Leah emerged, it was gone.

And Nick was sitting on her bed.

Maybe her husband-to-be had a cruel streak? “Why are you still here, Nicholas?”

“Because we need to talk, lovey.” Nick’s tone had lost its teasing quality, and Leah knew a sinking dread in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m too tired for this,” she said, crossing to the bureau and retrieving a brush.

Nick rose and prowled across the room to her. “And yet we do need to have a very personal conversation, Leah, and sooner rather than later. I would spare you this if I could, but soon Della will arrive, and until such time as you are my countess, she will afford us little real privacy.”

“You are going to bully me into marrying you,” Leah said, lowering herself to the thick rug on the floor before the hearth. She arranged her robe so she could sit cross-legged, and started on her hair with the brush.

“I will not bully,” Nick said, folding his long frame down behind her, “but I will attempt to persuade. No matter what scheme we concoct, Leah, you will not be safe as long as your father is the male in authority over you.”

“He won’t live forever,” Leah said, giving up the brush without a fight. Nick put it aside and took a towel to her hair, twisting lengths of hair with toweling to wring moisture in his strong grasp.

“You shouldn’t brush it when it’s sopping wet,” Nick chided. “And while your father will not live forever, he is in good health and not that old. He could live for a long time. Rather than coming up with schemes to buy you time, Leah, I think we need to discuss what about marriage to me makes the idea so objectionable.” He wrung the rest of her hair to dampness with the towel, then added, “I want you to be honest.”

Leah drew her knees up and rested her forehead against them. The honest truth was that she was likely to desire this man, to harbor an attraction to him until she was older than Lady Warne. “This topic is hard to even consider.”

“All the more reason to broach it now, when we have peace and quiet, and privacy.”

Leah’s throat constricted, and a wave of homesickness washed through her—but homesickness for where? Not Wilton, though the green terrain of Hampshire had seen most of her childhood years. Not the sterile, tense atmosphere of the earl’s town house, and not even Italy, where she’d known some happiness and much pain. She thought maybe she missed her mother, but in truth, that lady’s life had become so circumscribed by bitterness and disappointment, her death had been a blessing.

“I am tired of being an outsider, Nick,” Leah said, raising her face from her knees. “You do not want to let me in. You want to keep me at arm’s length in this marriage.”

“I want to keep children at arm’s length,” Nick replied, unwrapping the towel from her hair and taking up the brush. “Have you set your heart on children, Leah? Is that why my conditions are so unbearable?”

“One cannot set one’s heart on children,” Leah observed wearily. “They come, or not, as God wills.” They also left, as God willed. “But yes, given my preferences, I’d present my husband with his heirs.”

Nick sighed mightily behind her. “I do not give one goddamn which of my nephews inherits. I love all my brothers and will be proud to call any of their sons my heir.”

“Fine for you, Nick,” Leah said, feeling honesty about to gallop past her common sense. “While I gain significance from what, exactly? Running into all the Society ladies you’ve taken to your bed in my place? Not asking where you go when you are from home night after night? Not allowing myself to drive past the house where I’ve been told you keep your current mistress? I watched my mother suffer torment upon torment at Wilton’s hands. She went into her marriage hoping for the best, offering that man her heart. She ended up bitter, hurt, and as mean to him as he was to her. And supposedly, at one time they cared for each other.”

He drew her hair over her shoulders in a slow, soothing caress, proof positive men had more courage than brains. “I can promise never to take a mistress.”

“Nicholas,” Leah said in weary disgust, “you said you’d never taken a mistress—you prefer variety, remember? Don’t think to fence with me then ask that I, alone, be honest.”

Memories of Nick plucking a sprig of arbutus jabbed at Leah’s composure. Perhaps the lady was something beyond even a mistress to him.

“You don’t want us to end up hating each other,” Nick said, his tone aggravatingly reasonable, “and you do want to bear my children. I don’t want you to hate me, either, but neither do I want to think of you naked, handcuffed to a bedpost, while some deranged old man takes a riding crop to you and beats out of you what self-respect you have.”

Leah shuddered at his graphic description. There were rumors about Hellerington…

“I’m sorry. That was not helpful.” Nick fell silent again, and Leah felt him dabbing at a handful of hair with the brush. He was suited to the task, working his way slowly, slowly up each lock, dealing patiently with each little tangle until her hair was drying in smooth, shining waves. He’d do the same with her arguments, parse them one by one, until her resistance to his offer was obliterated.

“What would help?” he asked, putting the brush down and drawing Leah back against his chest. “What would make marriage to me less unattractive to you?”

Less unattractive. He did not know what he asked. She remained against him, holding herself away from him even as their bodies touched.

“You use the word attraction,” she said, “but you don’t want to be attracted to me, and you want to pretend I am not attracted to you. That is the problem in a nutshell, Nick. I need you to protect my very life. You need me merely for the sake of appearances. Our stations are unequal. In any marriage, a man and woman are of unequal station, but an earl’s daughter—even under Wilton’s roof—is raised to expect her consequence, her household skills, and her willingness to secure the succession can even the balance and allow her to hold her head up. Those assets allow her to expect her husband’s protection, respect, and affection.”

“You have those things from me,” Nick said. “And I am attracted to you.”

“Nicholas,” Leah said with pained patience, “the first time you kissed me, you couldn’t even see me. How can you be attracted to someone you can’t see? And yes, I comprehend that when we are… affectionate, your body responds. I am not a virgin, and I understand men are prone to such reactions. That is not the caliber of attraction I would hope for from a husband.”

“You think I become aroused for just any woman?”

“You’ve said as much, Viscount Variety, and you can’t tell me you are attracted to me in any personal way, and then tell me we won’t be intimate. You are frighteningly intelligent, Nicholas, and you would not put yourself in such a position for the rest of your life, wanting what you cannot have, and yet you expect me to step gladly into such a role.”

She was making herself upset with the extent to which she could assure herself of misery in this marriage, and yet… chained to the bedpost, naked, the sound of a riding crop slicing through the air above her…?

She was going to marry Nicholas Haddonfield and be grateful for the privilege.

“I did not say we would not be intimate,” Nick replied, his voice a whisper against Leah’s neck. “I said I would not risk conception with you.”

“You split hairs, Nicholas.” Leah tried to keep her voice level, but the sensation of Nick’s lips grazing along her neck was infernally distracting.

“How much of a nonvirgin are you?” Nick murmured, switching sides to run his nose over the other side of her neck.

“I am deflowered,” Leah said, but now she did shiver. “Aaron and I both considered that was exactly what Wilton was encouraging.”

“So you’ve had one encounter?” Nick asked, his tongue lapping at the pulse near the base of her throat.

“Th… Three. What are you about, Nicholas?”

“I am making a point,” Nick replied, biting her shoulder gently. “You think I do not suffer attraction to you, but I intend to convince you otherwise. Relax, Leah.”

Suffer attraction to her, like a disease or an excess of drink. “This cannot be a good idea,” Leah said, unsure whether she was trying to convince him or herself.

“It’s a splendid idea,” Nick assured her. “My best idea yet.” He shifted, then scooped her up against his chest and carried her to the bed. Just like that.

She’d known he was strong, but gracious, to be handled like so much eiderdown… Nick sat her on the mattress at the foot of the bed and peeled the covers back, then laid her on the sheets. “The night robe goes, Leah.”

“I am not ready to go to sleep, Nicholas.” Leah tried to sit up but got caught in the curling masses of her hair, and Nick’s hand on her chest gently pushed her back down to the mattress.

“We’re not going to sleep just yet.” Nick pulled his shirt over his head and toed off his house boots. “Not if my arguments are persuasive.” When he was standing beside the bed clad only in his breeches, Leah stared at his naked chest then closed her eyes.

Then opened them again and stared some more.