“Your ladies will be safely tucked away in the country,” Ethan assured him. “Is there more you would ask of me?”
Nick was silent, and Ethan reached over and plucked Nick’s empty teacup from his hand.
“This is me, Nicholas,” Ethan said in low, impatient tones. “I accidentally branded your bony little arse, I was the first person to get drunk with you, and I wouldn’t know how to read if you hadn’t taught me my letters. What?”
“Come to his funeral,” Nick said, his gaze on his empty hands. “Not the service, if you don’t want to, but to Belle Maison.”
Ethan rose and ran a hand across hair slightly darker than Nick’s. “I did ask.”
He turned his back to Nick, staring into the fire as a plethora of emotions rioted through him—resentment, surprise, and something else. An elusive little bolt of warmth Ethan wasn’t about to examine too closely. Nick needed him, and for the first time in more than ten years, Ethan could help. The sneering, righteous rejection he’d practiced off and on for all that time was the last thing on Ethan’s mind.
“You don’t have to.” Nick rose as well. “I’m presuming, to put such a request to you.”
Ethan half turned and regarded his younger brother—his harried, tired, worried, very large younger brother who had gone into the shining-armor business, whether he admitted it or not. “I’ll go. I’ll escort Della and your damsel, and when Bellefonte goes to his reward, I’ll at least put in an appearance, if you’re still certain you want me there when the time comes.”
“I will,” Nick assured him, eyeing him grimly. “Beck is lying low in Portsmouth, Dolph and George will probably be skipping around from one house party to the next, you’ll be easy to reach, and…”
“And?”
Nick slapped riding gloves against his thigh in a slow, solid rhythm. “And of real use. To me. To the girls. They’ve missed you.”
Ethan said nothing rather than remark on all the letters he’d never received from his devoted sisters.
Nick turned his back and reached for the door latch. “God knows I’ve missed you too.”
And then he was gone.
“Wilton has made it plain that I’m to secure Lady Warne’s sponsorship for Emily, and that’s the only reason he’s allowing me to accept this invitation.” Leah ambled along on Nick’s arm at a decorous pace completely at variance with the panic building inside her.
“What aren’t you telling me, Leah?” Nick’s tone was pleasant, a gentleman escorting a lady on a casual ramble by the duck pond on a spring day.
She wasn’t telling him she was scared nigh to death, wasn’t telling him she needed his embrace with a desperation that qualified as pathetic.
“Wilton’s getting worse, Nick. He no longer seems to care what befalls me or who learns of it.”
Nick’s hand closed over hers in a warm, reassuring squeeze. “In two days’ time, you’ll be ensconced at Clover Down. Because I must away to Belle Maison, my brother Ethan will escort you, and you can pry all my boyhood secrets from him. We were incorrigible, of course…”
She let the soothing patter of his voice wash over her, let herself believe that a week in the country would work some miracle where Wilton was concerned. She also let Nick draw her once again into the privacy of the willow bower on the far side of the pond.
“You are pale, lovey,” Nick said, wrapping his arms around her. “Your eyes are haunted, and fatigue shows around your mouth.” He bent his head and brushed his lips over that mouth. “You must not fret. All will be well.”
When he held her like this, Leah could believe it—Nicholas seemed to believe it, but then, his father hadn’t murdered his betrothed, and all but promised to deliver him, bound hand and foot, into a life of abject depravity.
She let herself cling to him for just a few more minutes, storing up the sandalwood scent of him, the heat of his tall body, the solid muscles enveloping her, and then she forced herself to step away.
“For two more days, I can manage, Nicholas. I’m not usually inclined to such dramatics.”
The look he gave her was searching, far more serious than his usual genial expression. Meeting his gaze, Leah was struck in a whole different way with how very attractive he was, and how male. The woman he married had best guard her heart and guard it well.
The breeze stirred, teasing a lock of blond hair across Nick’s brow. They were still in the sheltering embrace of the willow branches, so Leah allowed herself to smooth that errant lock back into place.
“Two days, lovey, and then Ethan and Lady Warne will kidnap you from your tower. Wilton won’t risk anything drastic when he knows you’re expected by a dowager marchioness at week’s end. Be strong for two more days.”
He kissed her again, a sound smack on the lips. One of his kisses for courage—though what did it say about her, that she was starting to catalogue the kisses of a man whom she had no intention of marrying?
It nearly killed Nick to leave Clover Down without stopping in at Blossom Court, but he’d learned years ago that Leonie was a creature of routine. She loved him, and he loved her, but that meant he loved her enough that if she wasn’t expecting him, he could no longer disturb her peace by just dropping by.
When he did reach his father’s side, he was glad he hadn’t tarried on the way.
“What took you so infernally long to get here, boy?” Bellefonte’s voice had lost volume but not bite, Nick noted as he mentally armored himself for this interview.
“One doesn’t leave Town in the middle of the Season without having to send out regrets, confer with solicitors, and make other arrangements.” He met his father’s gaze, but it was an effort. The old man was losing ground, and that, not the earl’s temper, his displeasure, or his infernal meddling, was what bothered Nick most.
“Perhaps one doesn’t.” The earl’s scowl eased. “You’re too skinny, Reston.”
“Too much dancing.”
“Not enough dancing. You’ve brought me no sweet young thing for my approval.”
“I’m considering a few possibilities,” Nick said, “but I figure you’re too stubborn to die until I find the right lady, so there is no real hurry.”
“Cheeky.” The earl grinned fleetingly. “You get that from me, but don’t be too cocky, my boy.”
“Of course not.” Nick nodded graciously and forced himself to take a seat opposite the desk that now seemed to dwarf its owner. “I want this marriage business over with probably more than you do.”
The grin evaporated. “You don’t make sense. Of all my lusty boys, you are the lustiest of the lot. Word is you’ll swive anything in skirts—unlike your nancy brother, George, by the way—so what’s the delay in finding a countess?”
“In the first place,” Nick said pleasantly, “I do not swive anything in skirts, but am, rather, very choosy about my partners. In the second place, keep your beak out of my personal business, or I’ll dawdle until June to make a selection and let her choose the wedding date. In the third place, not just any woman could take on the family you’ve created, my lord, much less your rather generously proportioned heir.”
The earl waved a bony, mottled hand. “Marry some bovine parson’s daughter, my boy. You know I believe in the occasional outcross.”
“I will consider that advice,” Nick said, his tone somewhere between bored and pleasant.
“See that you do,” Bellefonte snapped. “This dying business is tedious, young man. I do not relish becoming an ugly, odoriferous old stick, and I would be done with it sooner rather than later. Your dithering wears on me,
