Worry that their love would never meet full fruition ate at her heart. “He has servants keeping an eye on me always. I’m surprised there is not one with me right now.”
“The duke has likely given him something for this time.” He cupped her face. “No matter what, in the end, we will be together. I promise you that.”
“Can the duke persuade my brother to consent?” she asked hopefully.
Nick shook his head. “It’s complicated. There is the debt between them. Van Dero plans to ask for something else, something your brother will not like, perhaps even more than this. The duke could not make this his request.”
“What will the duke ask for?”
“I cannot say, and you must swear to say nothing about it.” Nick looked startled. “I confess, I’m surprised I told you that. I am not one to break my friends’ confidences.”
“It is me you’re speaking to. I am yours. I’ll not say a word.” Besides, he’d not told her something Avery didn’t already know. The debt he owed the duke was high.
Wishing to speak of something positive, she said, “Lord Upton doesn’t want me. He doesn’t even know of my brother’s plan to marry me to him.”
Nick lifted his brows. “Truly? Then why—”
“My brother hates you, Nick,” she said. “Before, I thought it only tension, but now…” She sighed. “Had you met before your recent altercation?”
“No.” Nick looked confused. “At least, I don’t believe we had. I believe I’d have remembered meeting a future duke somewhere in the past.”
“Well, I think he holds something against you. He told me about what happened to him a few months ago, how the duke’s men…”
Nick pressed his finger against her lip. “Elisa, we don’t have much time. I don’t want to waste it speaking about your brother.”
Neither did she, but… “I don’t know what we’ll do.”
“Let me handle this.” He kissed her head. His expression soured. “I might have to do something I thought I’d never do.”
“What’s that?”
“Grovel,” he told her. “Court your brother and get him to… like me, get him to consent even if that means begging.”
Elisa’s eyes widened. “You’d do that?” She knew Nick adored her brother just as much as Avery adored him.
He kissed her lips one last time and then pulled away. “For you, I’d do anything.” He began to straighten her hair. “How have you been feeling? Truly?”
She closed her eyes. “Well. I just wish we could be together.”
“Soon,” he promised. Then, with a smile in his voice, he said, “Perhaps, if I tell your brother all I’ve lived through, he’ll give you to me.”
She opened her eyes. “What do you mean?”
He was smiling. “I still have the paper flowers you threw across my study. Upton could never take care of you the way I could.” He was speaking about her madness.
How could she forget that he still thought her mind flawed?
It was partly her fault, she realized.
“Nick, about that.” She cleared her throat. “I’m not mad. I was just trying to push you away. The late nights, the flowers, the eating out in the cold. It was all a ploy to…”
He placed his fingers over her lips, his expression mocking. “Elisa, you have captured my heart, just as you are. You’ve no need to pretend you are anything else.”
Elisa took his hand and put it down. “And I am glad to own your heart, Nickie, but I’m not mad.”
His smile was condescending.
“I’m not mad,” she said again, in a panic. “I can prove it.”
Van Dero stepped back into the hall. “Time to return to the ball.” To Nick, he said, “Are you going home?”
Nick stepped back and grimaced. “Might as well. It could take a while to figure a way out.”
“Do let me know if you need assistance, but I’m confident you’ll have little trouble.” Van Dero held a hand out to Elisa.
Elisa took it.
The doors to every room in the hall opened simultaneously and people flooded in.
Nick was lost to the crowd, a crowd that Elisa suspected were made of men and women who all worked for the duke.
Then she was entering the ballroom again.
Avery was at the door. He looked stressed.
“Lord Alguire has been dealt with,” Van Dero said. “Contract or not, he will trouble you no further.”
Avery relaxed and took Elisa, placing her hand on his arm. “Thank you. I owe you for this.”
“Hmm,” the duke said. “I wouldn’t be too quick to owe me again. Besides, I cannot accept this debt. This I did because it was the right thing to do and nothing more.”
Elisa watched the duke walk away, touched by his kindness and his words.
Avery turned her toward him.
“What happened?” her brother asked.
“I… don’t know.” She was still thinking heavily about her encounter with Nick. It hadn’t bothered her so much when he’d thought her mentally unstable before, not completely. Yet, since living with her brother, the urge to prove her truth had grown.
She still had the missive from the soldier who’d been in Bedlam.
“You were there,” her brother said as he escorted her back onto the dance floor. “Surely, you heard what he said to Lord Alguire.”
Elisa pulled herself from her thoughts of Nick and focused on Alguire. “The duke barely said a word. Alguire seemed to fear him on nothing more than what he already knew about him.”
“Exactly,” Avery said. “You see? Those men cannot be trusted.”
Elisa’s brows furrowed as the music started. “The duke just helped us both, did he not? Yet still, you don’t like him.”
“I don’t trust him. I didn’t say I didn’t like him” Avery corrected as they started to move. He let her go as the dance required and she spun onto the hand of another gentleman. She smiled through the steps and waited until she was reunited with her brother.
“Why don’t you like Nick?” Elisa asked.
Avery’s gaze became dark. “You will not call him that. He is Lord Nicholas or Lord Childs to you. Nothing more.”
Oh, yes. There was great tension between her brother and Nick, and she would need to discover the root of it if Nick wished to win her brother over.
“Where’d you get this?”
Elisa looked down to where Avery pointed on her hand.
There sat a ruby on a gold ring. Small clear-cut diamonds surrounded the red stone. It was beautiful and quite expensive. How had she not noticed it before?
She didn’t have to guess where it had come from or who had put it on her finger.
“Take it off.” Avery didn’t have to guess either.
Elisa didn’t. She wouldn’t. All of Nicholas’ promises came back to her. This was just one of them. She couldn’t wait for him to fulfill the others.
∫ ∫ ∫
3 8
* * *
“Might I have a few minutes alone?”
Nicholas watched as Elisa spoke to the footman who’d followed her onto the balcony. He stuck to the shadows. Neither of them had any clue he was there according to the guest list, yet it just so happened that the man who owned the terrace was a friend of Nicholas’ and a member of Van Dero’s organization.
It had been two nights since he’d seen Elisa last, and he wondered if it were just in his mind that she grew more beautiful by the day.
She wore a red silk gown that cupped her bodice deliciously before falling around her curves. As she spoke to the footman, there was confidence in her stance and voice. Her time spent with Belle seemed to be going to good use.
The footman finally responded, “Your brother told me that you were to go nowhere unwatched.”
She sighed and turned away and wrapped her hands around her bare arms. The ring he’d given her caught the light.
That she wore it pleased him.
“Very well.” Her teet
h chattered, and she stuttered as though she were freezing. “Stay if you must, but I have no intention of going back inside anytime soon.”
“I’ll go get your coat and return.” The moment the footman was gone, Elisa dropped the act, closed her eyes, and pointed her face to the moon. The cold had no effect on her. The weather was mild to what they’d experience at his home.
Not willing to waste another minute, he moved forward but slowly. He had no idea what he would say to her. His presence would be a shock. This meeting had not been arranged. She was not expecting to see him tonight.
The old Nick would have thought this moment a coincidence, but he was beginning to sense that a power stronger than either him or Elisa was arranging everything around them.
The door to the balcony was closed. Someone laughed inside. Glass shattered, the sound of it muffled.
Elisa didn’t move. Her back was illuminated in the building’s light. With her red curls pinned high on her head, he could follow the line of her throat and imagined grazing his finger where the dark lacework began.
Nick stood behind her now and said the first thing that came to mind. “The trick with the footman was clever.”
She jumped and there was already a smile on her face when her eyes met his. “Nicholas.” His name from her mouth was always dipped in the sweetest honey and hot emotion.
He tried to recall the last time anyone was this excited to see him or when last anyone stared at him as though he were everything to them.
She was everything to him.
She touched his cheek softly, as though fearing he would vanish.
He covered her hand with his own, reassuring her that he was real.
“Nicholas, how did you get here?” she asked.
“Much the same as you. A carriage, though I did have to come through the back door.”
“It must be humiliating,” she said. “A man like you must be used to coming through the front and being formally announced.”
He shrugged and took her hand in his own. “I’m used to moving so others don’t see me, but being with you has tested my pride more than once.”
She smiled prettily. “Thank you for my ring.”
He lifted the gem to his lips and kissed it. “You’re welcome.” He’d yet to touch her skin. He knew that once he did, it would be hard to let her go. “Do you like it?”
“I do.” She admired it for a moment as she pressed her hand to his chest. Then she lifted her dark eyes to his. “But I like having you more.”
“You shall always have me.” He bent to kiss her, but movement had him spinning away and then jumping into the shadows.
Elisa turned just as the footman presented her with her coat. “Thank you.” She cleared her throat and smiled at him. “As you can see, there is no danger out here. If you wish to stay warm, you can stand on the other side of the door.”
The footman nodded and stepped back inside, but Nick could no longer touch her. He could no longer move into the light. Doing so would be too great a risk. They would have to talk from where they stood.
Elisa turned her back to the glass door and spoke into the night. “I’ve been trying to figure out why my brother doesn’t like you.”
So had Nick. Along with doing all he could to earn Bush’s forgiveness, he’d asked friends who knew Lord Avery why he might not like Nicholas.
“I think I know why,” Nick said.
She looked at him, but then turned away again. She couldn’t be caught speaking to him. “Why?”
“His friend died at the hands of highwaymen.”
“Lord Benjamin Lock,” Elisa said. “I remember him. We called him Ben. He was close to my brother, but I don’t see what that has to do with you.”
“You told the footman there was no danger out here. There is. There is me.”
Elisa tightened her hand on the black iron rail in front of her. “You are not a danger to me, and you are not a highwayman.”
“Many who are close to Van Dero are. Your brother isn’t completely wrong to wish to keep you away from men like us.”
She looked at him. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your brother isn’t entirely wrong, yet he is still wrong. Also, his efforts will gain him nothing. We shall be together.”
Her lips split into a grin again before she looked out at the moon again.
He asked. “How have you been spending your days?”
“With Belle. She is helping me readjust to Society.” She sighed. “It would be easier if my brother allowed me out more during the day. He fears we will run into one another.”
“Perhaps I should have someone inform him that I’ve left town.”
“But you won’t actually leave, will you?”
“Not without you. Do you like the city?”
“I like the noise,” she confessed. “I like the people. I enjoy looking at them. I watch them from my window sometimes. I like listening to their conversations and laughter. It is so different than the screams and crying at Bedlam.”
He still didn’t understand how she’d survived such a place. It wasn’t fair that her freedoms were limited because of him. He wanted her completely free, to do and move as she pleased, but that would not happen so long as she lived in her brother’s house, because Nick would not stop chasing after her.
“You are quiet,” she told him. “Has my talk about Bedlam disturbed you?”
“No. I want to know everything about you.” He leaned against the wall. “And part of me is content just to hear your voice.”
She looked toward him again. “I asked Belle about Maria.”
Nick stiffened. “What did she say?”
“She said Maria was mad. She said she ran in front of the carriage. Is that how you see me?”
Nick cursed the light that divided them and kept him in the shadows. He needed to be near her. “This is not the best time to have this conversation.
* * *
Elisa couldn’t have thought of a more apt time. She’d told Belle about her conversation with Nicholas at her father’s party days ago. It had been Belle who’d told her everything about Maria. It was upsetting that Nicholas hadn’t thought to share it with her.
“You said you thought Maria and I were nothing alike.”
“You aren’t,” he said.
“So you don’t think me mad?” she asked.
Nick popped out of the dark, just enough so she could see his eyes but not the rest of him. His expression was foreboding. “Belle had no right.”
“Belle is my friend. She had every right.” And Elisa needed to understand the man she would marry better.
“Maria never listened, not to her father or to anyone. While I was young, I idolized her,” he confessed. “She stood up for herself in ways I never had. She was confident in her decisions even when they didn’t turn out as she planned. It was only later I realized how reckless she was.” He shook his head and then retreated again.
“You are not like Maria.”
Elisa tried to imagine the woman he’d described. “You mean I’m obedient. I listen and do as you say.”
“I do not wish to fight tonight.”
He seemed to never wish to have this discussion, but tonight he stood in the shadow and she was in the light. He couldn’t silence her with kisses and the touch of his fingers. “I don’t want to fight. I want to understand.” Was she simply another Maria to him?
“Understand that you are Elisa. You are who I wish to spend the rest of my life with. Nothing else matters.”
Except it did. The longer she stayed with her brother, the more she realized how the world saw her. It had been different at Bedlam, but not so much at Nicholas’ castle. She’d been allowed to go outside into the courtyard but not beyond the wall.
Of course, she’d been hiding from Lord Alguire at the time.
“If we marry, can I ride beyond the wall at the castle?” she asked.
“Of course, you can. I would live to fulfill your desires.” H
is voice dipped.
The effect had Elisa ready to peel herself out of her coat, but she told herself not to be so easily distracted. “Could I ride unaccompanied on my own property?” The wall wasn’t where Nick’s property stopped and started. It went beyond that and into the trees.
Nicholas was quiet for a moment and then said, “I can’t guarantee that.”
“So, I’ll be a prisoner again. With you.”
“No.” She watched him shift in the dark. He sighed. “My life is complicated, Elisa. I am a man with enemies. It would be unwise to let you out on your own.” After another pause, he said, “I would not survive if something were to happen to you.”
Her heart tugged at the confession. “I approve of your answer.”
He let out another sigh, this one with relief.
“But I’m not mad,” she said. “Agree or disagree?”
“Elisa.”
“Goodnight, Nicholas.” She left him there in the shadows and returned inside.
∫ ∫ ∫
3 9
* * *
Nicholas arrived at Reddington’s home at what he knew to be a reasonable hour. He was surprised when he was allowed entrance but was not surprised at all when he was shown to the duke’s study.
Lord Reddington himself wasn’t there, but Avery filled the man’s place just as he’d been born to do. Sitting across from Nicholas, he still managed to look down as though from a higher position.
Nicholas had been thinking about what Elisa had said about her brother and tried to place the man’s face in his past, but his years in the service of Van Dero made many faces a blur.
He knew he’d never been formally introduced to the Marquess of Goldstone. He’d have remembered that, yet Elisa seemed certain that they’d met before.
Where?
“Lord Nicholas,” Avery began. “I am not at all surprised to see you, but if you’ve come to see my sister, you should know that her schedule is full, and she is not available. She will never be available to you.” He had a miniature object in his hand. A horse perhaps, one that matched the animal of the family seal above his head. He tapped the bronze object on the desk as he waited for Nicholas to speak.
A Knight of Vengeance: (The Valiant Love Regency Romance) (A Historical Romance Book) Page 18