Nicholas: Lord of Secrets

“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,