do for you to miss any more. She’s clever enough to try to extract promises from you regarding your next visit, and she wants to be with you more as well.”
Nick buried his face against her neck, his throat constricting. “She’s difficult, she has a temper, she’s loud, and she can be clumsy when she’s happy—also when she isn’t.”
“I have a temper when my courses are near,” Leah said. “I hate needlepoint, and I will hoard chocolates if left to my own devices. She is your daughter, and of all people, Nicholas, of all
“She knows I love her,” Nick said roughly. “She has to know that.”
“Of course she does, but it’s the sort of thing that can be doubted even while one knows it.” Leah folded herself back against him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and tucked in close. “She’s your daughter. She should live with her papa.”
And now what Nick felt was beyond words, beyond even the concepts of hope, joy, and gratitude. It made him humble and invincible, determined and at peace. It gave him the strength to cry and the courage to accept the miracle he held in his arms.
Sitting on the stone bench in the moonlight, his backside going numb, his wife in his arms, Nicholas Haddonfield knew he was absolutely and unshakably, unequivocally and eternally
“I believe you have something that belongs to my wife.” Nick allowed himself to glower at his father-in-law, though he relished those two little words:
“Why would I retain any evidence of the blight she embodied under my own roof?” Wilton replied mildly.
Nick braced himself on his fists and leaned over Wilton’s ornate desk. “Because at some point,” he replied in equally unimpressed tones, “you considered it might gain you leverage, with someone, somewhere, to be able to prove her marriage to Frommer was legal, and to conceal such evidence in the meanwhile.”
“How do you reach such an absurd conclusion?” Wilton rose and turned his back on Nick, his posture suggesting he was absorbed in the study of the gardens behind the Wilton town house.
“Hellerington was forthcoming,” Nick said. And Nick had been inclined to believe the man, even when he claimed to have had nothing to do with an attempted abduction from the park. “Seems while taking the waters in Bath, your old friend got some charming little trollop pregnant. He no longer pants after Leah, which, under the circumstances, is most wise of him, albeit inconvenient for you.”
“Hellerington’s doings are no concern of mine.”
“Not now,” Nick said, “but you saved those marriage lines in case you needed to convince Hellerington you could not keep your promise to him, that you had no authority to promise your widowed daughter’s hand to anyone.”
“Widowed…” Wilton did turn then, and though he hid it well, Nick saw the fear behind the calculation in the older man’s eyes.
“Widowed,” Nick said. “Widowed, entitled to both her portion and her inheritance from her mother, which— alas—we will find mysteriously plundered by none other than my father-in-law.”
“You are making wild accusations against a peer of the realm,” Wilton spat, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Peer being the operative word,” Nick retorted, “when I now enjoy that status myself. Did you really think Hellerington would keep his mouth shut forever? You promised him a wife if he kept the details of the duel to himself, reneged on your promise, and now he neither needs nor wants the only wife you could have procured for him.”
“He doesn’t know the details of any duel,” Wilton shot back, his voice rising.
“One can hardly call it a duel when a young man trips before the count is done and his pistol discharges while he yet faces away from his opponent, and that opponent turns, sees the young man on the ground, and shoots him in the back. I agree with you, it doesn’t qualify as a duel, but it bears an exact resemblance to murder.”
“You don’t know that’s what happened,” Wilton hissed. “You can’t know that.”
“First hand? Perhaps not, but I have Lord Hellerington’s sworn affidavit, and that will do to get things started.”
“You would not dare,” Wilton retorted, desperation ruining his attempt at indignation.
“I might not, but Frommer’s brother heard the same tale from young Frommer on that unfortunate man’s deathbed. Because the marquis was himself not an eyewitness, he did not feel he could come forth with the tale, his inattentiveness at the scene reflecting further dishonor on the proceedings, and on himself. In short, Wilton, you got lucky. But deathbed confessions are admissible hearsay in a court of law.”
Nick let that sink in and felt a petty gratification as he watched the color leach from Wilton’s face. A silence spread through the room, full of satisfaction on Nick’s part, no doubt full of dread on Wilton’s.
“What will you do, Bellefonte?”
“Don’t know.” Nick’s tone was jaunty to the point of nastiness. “I know what you’re going to do, though.”
Wilton nodded shakily, waiting.
“You’re going to retire to Wilton Acres,” Nick said, “where you will attend your estate in such a manner as to ensure a reasonable profit. You will sell the town house you purchased for that viperous little mistress of yours, and you will lease out this property, should your sons not be interested in its use. With those proceeds and the profits off Wilton, you will repay your children what you’ve stolen from them, with reasonable interest. You will not circulate in Society at any level, Wilton. Not for at least five years.”
He was banishing his father-in-law, as Leah had been banished, but Wilton at least had the grace to ask one question. “Emily?”
“She will enjoy my grandmother’s hospitality,” Nick said, “and that of her sister’s household, under my protection, and that of her brothers. They are aware of your situation, by the way, and agree that short of causing the scandal you deserve and they do not, this is the best course.”
Wilton sat heavily in one of the delicate, expensive chairs, staring at Nick mutely.
“I suggest you start packing,” Nick said softly, tapping his hat onto his head and pulling on his gloves.
Wilton addressed the carpet before Nick could move to the door. “It was an accident—with Frommer. I wanted to scare him off, of course. He could have taken Leah’s portion, and there was none to be had, but when his gun went off…” Wilton shook his head. “I panicked. It was an accident, I swear. I hate the girl on some level, hate that her mother did what she did, hate that I couldn’t… But I just wanted Frommer backed off enough never to ask the wrong questions, you know? About dowries, of course, but also about inheritances. I made a mistake.”
“As perhaps the girl’s mother made a mistake, one for which you could not forgive her.”
Wilton nodded miserably but said nothing further.
“Wilton,” Nick said before his compassion evaporated in the heat of his contempt, “I believe you did not premeditate murder. You will live out your days in the country anyway, because what you did before and after that accident was deliberate cruelty toward those you should have protected.”
Another nod, and then Wilton seemed to shrink and draw in on himself, a physical metaphor for the shriveling of his soul.
If indeed he still possessed one.
“I don’t understand,” Leah muttered, glancing over at Nick as their coach rumbled off toward Darius’s estate. “You went to call on Wilton?”
“I am your husband.” Nick took pleasure in reminding them both, though his errand with Wilton had meant Leah had awoken alone in their bed. “Your battles are mine to fight.”
“You beat him?” Leah’s tone bore equal hints of relish and dismay.
“Figuratively. You and Frommer were legally married, Leah. Your father encouraged the elopement to explain the lack of dowry, but he’d forgotten you also had inheritances—funds he’d stolen several years before—of which Frommer might have gotten wind. Those funds were to go to you in trust upon your marriage, a hedge against your father’s embezzlement of your dowry.”
The coach slowed to make the turn from the lane, shifting Leah’s weight more snugly against Nick’s
