“I’m not sure mentally matters a great deal. We can all be reduced to mewling infancy under the wrong circumstances. Tell me about her, Nicholas. You are clearly a devoted papa, and she adores you.”
“She adores anyone,” Nick said, wearily to Leah’s ears, maybe guardedly as well. “It scares the hell out of me, if you want the truth. Someday, some bloody young swain will come along, delivering the eggs, and walk off with her heart if not her virtue.”
He went on, pouring out a litany of every father’s hopes and fears for his daughter, his fondest memories and most harrowing moments. Leah listened, leading Nick around to the back gardens at Clover Down as the words continued to flow from him, haltingly at first, but then more steadily, until his voice was a rumbling torrent of paternal devotion.
When it had been full dark for more than an hour and the crickets were chirping at the moon, Leah sat beside Nick among the newly blooming roses, holding his hand and hoping she was reading the situation correctly.
“So how did she come to be as she is?”
“Fevers, though I didn’t realize it until my old nurse informed me of it this week. I thought Leonie was born that way.”
“It must have been quite a shock,” Leah said, “to be what, fifteen years old, and a father?”
“It was a shock. I didn’t find out about Leonie until I was seventeen. I’d been dallying for several years at that point and had come to comprehend the precautions that must be taken. As a very young fellow, though, I was heedless.”
“You got somebody with child. I can’t understand why the young lady didn’t simply apply to you for support.”
“She was a relation of Magda’s,” Nick said. “Daughter to a tenant, and she went to Magda first, thinking to rid herself of the child. Even the heir to an earldom is a poor bet for one’s future when he’s fifteen years of age.”
“Your father pensioned her off?” Leah suggested, drawing Nick’s hand through hers.
“Magda sent the girl to live with cousins here in Kent,” Nick said. “Then announced her own retirement about a year later. No one thought anything of it, given that Magda is older than dirt.”
“And you would have been sixteen when your nurse left Belle Maison.”
“Sixteen, and as is the case at that age, a very different heir than I would have been at fourteen or fifteen. I charged off to university, full of my considerable self, ready to have at adult life.”
“What happened?”
“When I was seventeen, Leonie’s mother died,” Nick said, his arm stealing around Leah’s waist. “Of influenza or high fevers, I’m not sure exactly what, but Magda thought at that point I was old enough to intervene. Her own little pension wasn’t going to be sufficient to raise an earl’s by-blow, and I had grown up enough in her opinion to do the right thing. Magda is, after all, elderly, and she didn’t want Leonie getting attached to her just as her own health failed—or worse.”
In other words, Magda had not wanted Leonie embarking on the series of losses that had marked Nick’s early upbringing.
“You became Papa to a two-year-old at seventeen.”
“Nearer three,” Nick recalled, “and she was gorgeous, all blond curls, smiles, and big blue eyes. I understood when I first held her what it was that drove my father to be so fierce sometimes, so irrationally protective. Leonie is the most tenderhearted, dear person…”
“Like her papa.” Leah laid her head on Nick’s shoulder and heard a great, heartfelt sigh go out of him. “Nicholas, did you really think I would censor you or your daughter because she hasn’t the same kind of intelligence as the empty-headed twits you danced with all spring?”
“I was cautious,” Nick said slowly, resting his cheek against Leah’s temple, “but I’m trying to tell myself it wasn’t without some reason.”
Leah waited, sensing they were reaching the most difficult part for Nicholas.
“I mentioned I did not know Leonie’s ailment was caused by fevers until recently,” Nick said. “I assumed she was born simple, that it was tainted blood causing her mind to remain that of a child. I had an uncle who was the same way, and we never talked about him, but he was still sailing boats and climbing trees as his hair turned gray.”
“You probably got on well with him.”
“The one time I met him, yes, but he was kept hidden away on some little estate in Shropshire, and I understand why.”
“He was an embarrassment?”
“I honestly don’t think so. I think it was the only way Grandpapa could protect his son from ridicule. Leonie could play with children her own age when she was very young, but even then, she was taunted for her height. Children being what they are, the taunts soon included her mental abilities, and she withdrew to her dolls and toys, and storybooks.”
“So she can read a little. Reading has always been one of my secret comforts.”
Nick’s hand began the gentle caress along the length of her spine Leah loved.
Leonie taught him that gentleness, too. Leah had observed it in his every interaction with his daughter.
“I am so lucky Leonie’s a female, a creature who can dwell in peace at home. If my heir had been similarly afflicted, a young man who’d be forced to socialize and be seen—I cannot bear to see Leonie cry. How could I have kept the next Viscount Reston safe and happy?”
The question had haunted Nick for years, for as long as he’d known he had a daughter. How would he keep an heir to an earldom safe? Who would love his children, should they all turn out to have Leonie’s limitations?
Except, he knew the answers to those questions now, or knew enough of them. With the Countess of Bellefonte snuggled into his arms, Nick knew she would have managed those difficulties with him and made it look easy.
Nick went silent, trying to find a name for the feeling that was expanding from his chest to his vitals and outward. It was more than relief at Leah’s reaction, more than gratitude to be able to envision a future that included his wife and his daughter. He turned to straddle the bench and drew Leah against his chest.
“I was afraid,” he finally got out. “I was afraid for my children, for my brothers and sisters, afraid for you. I was afraid…” He’d been terrified, and he was still daunted, but his fears were no longer going to dictate the limits of his happiness or those of the people he loved.
“Any father would be concerned,” Leah said against his chest. “But you’ve kept Leonie safe, and she’s happy, too. She has her papa’s love, and that has been enough.”
“Enough.” Nick nodded against Leah’s hair. “Enough for my youthful by-blow, but I could not see how to protect my heir had he similarly been afflicted, or my legitimate daughters, who would be expected to make come outs and good matches, and bear children of their own. Society is so…”
“Mean,” Leah interjected. “Judgmental, petty, spiteful, and in the end, stupid. You know this, because you are so wonderfully grand in your proportions, including the proportions of your heart.”
“I’m too damned big,” Nick corrected her tersely. “Which has resulted in my being a freak, albeit one popular with the ladies.”
“Ladies can be discerning. This explains why you were willing to nip off to the shires for a few years and forgo your place in Society.”
“And travel frequently,” Nick said, “and bury myself in commerce before my father’s demise, and trot from one family holding to another. My idea of hell is to endure Polite Society for any length of time, and then too, moving around so much allows me to drop in on Leonie frequently.”
“Well, that will have to stop,” Leah said sternly.
A cold trickle of dread seeped down Nick’s spine. Surely Leah wasn’t going to deny him time with his daughter? “What do you mean?”
Leah pushed off his chest to regard him in the moonlight. “You love that child with your whole soul, Nicholas Haddonfield, and it breaks your heart to have to part from her, never knowing when you can steal another little visit, never seeing her day to day as all parents can see their children. You missed her first two years, and it simply won’t
