by Brenda Joyce
So now, as much as he resented her interference, he would hear her out respectfully and patiently.
Isobel promptly closed the door to the small shabby library, leaving them in absolute privacy. “Have you lost your mind?”
“To what, precisely, are you referring?” As if he didn’t know.
“Hadrian! It’s unseemly enough to have a paramour here, but, dear God! Nicole Shelton! How could you?”
A sixth sense warned him of imminent disaster. “I am afraid I am missing something of consequence.”
“Have you ruined her?” Isobel demanded bluntly. “If you have, her father, Shelton, will kill you, regardless of who you are!”
“Mother,” he said slowly, although his mind was racing, “I do not think we need to discuss my—er—indiscretions.”
“Have you ruined her?” Isobel cried.
Anger reared within him. “Of course I have not ruined her,” he snapped. “The lady is no spring maid, and I do not understand your interest.”
“She is no spring maid but she is Shelton’s daughter, Hadrian, and it is not like you to—to—prey on innocents!”
He drew himself up. “Pardon me, but she is no innocent. I fear we are not discussing the same lady.”
“We are discussing Lady Nicole Bragg Shelton, Dragmore’s eldest daughter, and spinster or no, scandal or no, you cannot ruin her!”
He stared, the color seeping from his face. “Spinster?”
“Just what did you think?”
“I thought,” he began, and stopped. “She is unwed?” He could not believe it.
“She is unwed! She was about to marry Lord Percy Hempstead four years ago, but she never showed up for the wedding, leaving the poor fellow standing there alone at the altar. It was a terrible scandal that, of course, ruined her chances for any other marriage. Any other decent marriage, that is. Of course, Shelton could buy her a husband, but what kind of man would he be? We both know Shelton, and I cannot see him compromising his standards in such a manner. Regardless, Nicole is quite an eccentric, or so they say. She is even more reclusive than you. She spends most of her time at Dragmore, rarely venturing out into society. And who can blame her? I saw myself how cruelly she was cut after that scandal. Have you ruined her, Hadrian?”
He was in shock. He was appalled at the terrible mistake he had almost made. He had come dangerously close to ruining a young lady. Yet she had responded to him as if she were a woman of experience, but now he could recall only too clearly those moments when her blushes and her confusion had made her seem uncertain and innocent. But how could he have known? She had attended the masque unescorted and daringly costumed, and hadn’t she flirted with him? Or had he misread her every nuance? Had she purposefully led him on—or had he been the indiscriminate predator? “I have not ruined her,” he said stiffly, and then he stalked from the room.
Nicole wished that her best friend Martha Huntingdon, the Viscountess Serle, would return from London, for she had no one to confide in about the Duke. It was so very nearly unbelievable. That she, too tall and gawky, a dismal failure when she had come out, then ruined by the scandal, should be courted by the charismatic, handsome Duke of Clayborough! For wasn’t that what he was doing? He had invited her to his home, not once, but twice. And he had kissed her. He had told her that she was beautiful. Wasn’t he as powerfully affected by her as she was by him? Didn’t all of his actions indicate that he was courting her?
Nicole knew that she was highly inexperienced when it came to men, but she was almost certain that he would ask her to marry him, and soon. She dreamed of how he would propose, she dreamed of being his Duchess. She saw herself with his child in her arms, and saw him smile affectionately as he watched her and the baby.
And the small doubt she had, the tiny seeds of confusion, the dim memory of his sardonic smile and cool tone, she shoved into the recesses of her memory.
Her father and Chad returned that evening from France, having concluded their business. Ed, her younger brother, attended Cambridge, where he was studying the law. She greeted the Earl and Chad with a beaming smile and hugs, startling them both with her exuberance.
“What’s happened to you?” Chad asked, his handsome face wearing a suspicious frown. “What are you up to now, little sister?”
Chad was almost thirty, with dark hair like their father, although he had inherited his fair coloring from his mother, the Earl’s first wife. He was very handsome in a thoroughly patrician way, while the Earl’s appeal was darker, more dangerous. Nicole scowled at him. “I am up to nothing, brother,” she retorted. “After all, I am not the one who goes out in the evenings and does not return until well after dawn!”
“You are not a man,” Chad pointed out blithely.
“Enough,” the Earl said mildly, his gaze roving over his daughter with warmth. “You are glowing, Nicole. Is there something you want to tell me?” He posed the question casually.
Her father knew her too well. She was his first child with the Countess Jane, and she had spent more time on his knee than any other of her siblings. She was closer to him than either Chad, Ed or Regina. There was a bond between them that was hard to explain, although her mother had teased that it could be explained by the savage blood in both of their veins and the disregard for convention that ensued from it. Nicole had thought it a joke and had been amused by her mother’s wit, but the Earl had seemed somewhat exasperated with his wife for her bald comment.
She had always been the apple of his eye and she knew it. He knew her too well, and he was too clever, besides. Nicole was certainly not ready to tell anyone in her family that she had a suitor, much less that it was the Duke of Clayborough. She dared not question herself too closely as to her motivations in keeping this affair a secret, when she had never kept secrets from her family before. She thought about what had happened today by the brook for the zillionth time and she blushed. “No, Father,” she said as demurely as possible. “I am just happy you are home, I have missed you.” Quickly, she hugged him again, but the look he gave her was doubtful.
The next morning, Nicole again had two maids help her to dress for her rendezvous with the Duke. Fortunately, both Chad and the Earl were out on the estate, tending to its affairs, so they would not remark on her unusual attire and wonder just where she had gone in her finery. She invariably accompanied them, but today she had managed to lie and say she had a headache. Both men had looked at her skeptically, and Chad had even burst out laughing.
“You?” he had said incredulously. “You have a headache?” Still laughing, he had ridden away with her father, and Nicole had wanted to throttle him.
She appeared at Chapman Hall shortly after noon, unable to wait another moment. Before she had even dismounted, a footman taking her reins in front of the house, she saw the Duke step out from inside the Hall, as if he had been waiting for her.
Nicole flashed him a blinding smile, but there was no response. His expression was stern. For an instant unease assailed her, but then she thanked the footman and slipped to the ground. When she looked up, the Duke was dismissing the footman and telling him that a groom would not be necessary, perplexing Nicole. If they were going riding again why had he not ordered his mount brought around?
She grew somber, her joy fading as she realized how hard and closed his face actually was. There was no warmth in his eyes as they finally settled on her countenance. “Has something happened?” she asked, her heart beating uncertainly.
“I am afraid so,” he said firmly. “It appears that I am to be forever apologizing to you. I have made a terrible mistake, but not as terrible as it could have been.”
“What—what mistake?” Her heart started to sink. He could not mean he had mistaken his feelings for her, she knew that he could not mean that!
His jaw clenched. “I did not realize you were unwed.”
At first Nicole did not understand. He had not realized she was unmarried? So what? Then, horribly, the first inkling of comprehension began. “
What are you saying?”
“I assumed you to be married, of course.”
“You thought me married?” she echoed.
He said nothing.
He had thought her married. If he had thought her married, his intention had not been to court her. She stared at him, stricken. “But—you kissed me!”
He shifted impatiently. “Certainly you cannot be so naive as to think a man would refrain from kissing a woman just because she is married.”
Her understanding swelled, horribly. He had thought her married—he had not been intending to ask her to marry him. He had thought her to be married, and not just to be married, but to be a certain kind of married woman, one of no morals. He had not been courting her, far from it. To use his own words, he had merely wanted to tumble her! She gasped, hurt, anger and dismay overwhelming her at once. He had been amusing himself at her expense!
Her dreams crumbled into the dust at her feet.
“I am sorry. I know I must appear a very low sort, but frankly, I am so used to married ladies offering themselves to me that…”
“I did not offer myself to you!” Nicole cried, crushed, devastated. Tears filled her eyes.
“I mistook your manner, then. Obviously, Lady Shelton, you may not come here again.” His gaze held hers, dark and fathomless.
Nicole was in shock and hurt beyond words. “Obviously,” she managed with a ghost of her old spirit, “I would be ten times the fool should I return here. You will certainly never see me again!”
She yanked the reins from his hand, and before he could assist her, she leapt into the saddle. It was made for riding sidesaddle, and she had no choice but to do so. It did not matter, the only thing that mattered was to escape him as quickly as possible. Tears of grief and humiliation blinding her, her breast knotted in pain, she spurred her mare into a gallop, and left him standing alone in a cloud of dust.
Nicole used the excuse of her headache to remain closeted in her room that afternoon and all that evening. She did not come down to supper. Both the Earl and Chad came to inquire after her and it took a supreme amount of self-control to hide her shattered heart from them. Not wanting to rouse more suspicion than she already had, she accepted the tray that Annie brought up, then gave its contents to one of the house cats.
Her misery deepened with the night. How naive she had been! How stupid! To believe in fairy tales when fairy tales did not exist, at least not for her, never for her. Foolishly she had fallen in love with the Duke; not with the man he really was, but with a man she had created in her own wild imagination. That man did not exist, and the Duke was nothing more than an immoral philanderer.
And just as foolishly she had thought him to be in love with her, too.
She was too hurt to hate him, at least for now.
She almost gave in to tears but she fought them. When she had first come out and had not been accepted by her peers, that had hurt horribly, too. At the time, it had been the most shocking blow of her life. She had grown up at Dragmore where she was accepted and loved by everyone from the lowest stableboy to her adoring parents. There had never been a day in her life—until her debut—that she had not felt secure. But her debut had changed all that.
For the fact was that Nicole was different from the other young ladies of society and they discerned this immediately. She had absolutely nothing in common with them. She had been raised to be active and to think for herself, and as a consequence, she was forthright and outspoken; they had been raised to be pretty, modest and demure, and they simpered with the men and gossiped with each other. Their predominant interests in life were the latest fashions and capturing a husband, and because Nicole honestly did not share those interests, she was an outcast from the start. She could not be forgiven for such sacrilege.
She had created the scandal herself, but Nicole had not expected society to turn on her as cruelly as it had. Actually, she had not thought much about what she was doing, knowing only at the last minute that she just could not go through with the marriage. She had never loved Percy Hempstead, never cared one way or another about him. Her first two years out she had shown no interest in any suitor, which was why her father had finally stepped in and offered her one prospect after another. They had fought. Nicole had begged not to be married off like some brood mare sent to stud, but he was deaf to her pleas.
“There are dozens of fine, eligible men for you to choose from,” he had raged at her. “Yet in two years you’ve turned every one of them away! I will not allow you to ruin your future, Nicole, so now I am going to find you the right man!”
Nicole had run from him, furious and upset, yet knowing, too, that he was motivated by love for her, thought he was doing what was best, and also thought that one day, she would look back and agree that he had been right.
Percy Hempstead was a few years older than she was, good looking, pleasant, the heir to the Earl of Langston. Nicole wished she could summon up some interest in him, for he was clearly very nice, kind to everyone, including his horses and dogs, a true test of character. He was also a hard worker, not a wastrel, and many young women had set their caps for him. Even Martha oohed and aahed over him, declaring how handsome he was with his dark hair and blue eyes and his finely sculpted features. Pressured by everyone, and liking Percy as a friend, she had finally agreed to the alliance.
As the wedding approached, her original objections to being wed grew stronger and stronger. She didn’t love him. She barely knew him, he was practically a stranger. She didn’t want to be married. She didn’t want to be a wife—whose two primary functions in life were to be a beautiful ornament and to give her husband sons. She did not want to leave Dragmore. Panic filled her at the thought. She knew instinctively that Percy would never let her rise with the sun and ride beside him across his tenant farms. He would expect her to amuse herself with other ladies and proper womanly pastimes, always to be properly dressed, to be passive and obedient—to be, in short, the ideal woman. Terrible fear filled Nicole. Her life was about to be changed irrevocably, forever.
She could not go through with it. The night before the wedding, she ran away. She had a note delivered to Percy, begging his forgiveness, but she knew there was no reasonable explanation she could offer to him or anyone else for her behavior. She left another note for her parents. She did not run very far, for it wasn’t necessary. It was enough to be missing on the day of her wedding and to have sent Percy the note. More than five hundred guests had been expected, and although she hadn’t left Percy literally standing at the altar as the gossips later claimed, what she had done was ruinous enough. Percy never spoke to her again, and six months later he married a proper Victorian miss.
Her father did not speak to her, either, for almost a month after the first brunt of his rage had spewed forth. Nicole was desperately sorry that she had hurt Percy and she was just as sorry she had upset her parents, but she was not sorry she had not married Percy.
She had only a short week to recover from what she had done. In the following months, her parents had gone out as usual, and Nicole had accompanied them everywhere. “You will not hide at Dragmore,” her father had said to her, the only words he’d spoken to her in a week. “You will face what you have done.”
It had been awful, going to one ball or “at-home” after another, being stared at, being gossiped about the moment her back was turned. She knew her parents were suffering as much as she was, and in a way, she hurt for them even more than she hurt for herself. Nicole held her head high and acted as if nothing was wrong, but inside she felt like some strange species of animal in a zoo. After a few months her parents allowed her to do as she wished, but by then her appearance was no longer an event, and the gossip-mongers had found new fodder for their mills.
Now, lying on her bed, staring up at the gold pleats of the canopy overhead, she wanted to weep in a way she had never wanted to before. Her life had been perfect until she had turned eighteen and come out. Then it had been one disaster after another. She s
hould have learned her lesson. But no, naive to the end, she had looked at the Duke, fallen in love, and stupidly thought him to be her knight in shining armor. Never would she be such a fool again!
She turned onto her side, dry-eyed. He had thought her to be married. He had never had an honorable intention towards her. Suddenly she clenched her fist, the beginnings of anger sweeping over her. How despicable he was!
That morning Nicole was up with the sun, as usual. She had spent a restless night burning with newfound anger. Her adrenaline gave her strength, and despite barely having slept, she was not tired. She joined her father and brother for breakfast, dressed in her breeches, determined to join them that day and continue her life as if nothing had ever happened. As if the Duke of Clayborough did not exist.
Both men looked at her. “You look like hell,” Chad said.
Nicole ignored him, sitting on her father’s left, across from her brother. She poured herself tea, feeling her father’s regard upon her. “The headache lasted most of the night.”
“I want you to see a physician,” the Earl said.
“I’m fine now, Father, really,” Nicole said, but she could not summon up a smile for his benefit.
“You are never ill,” Nicholas Shelton said flatly. “I want you to rest today, Nicole.”
She set her mouth firmly. “I want to ride with you and Chad.”
“Absolutely not.” He looked at her, and she knew better than to argue.
After she had eaten breakfast, Nicole felt tired and drained. When Chad and the Earl left, she returned to her bedroom and flopped on the bed, suddenly exhausted. The Duke’s handsome golden image swam before her. She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. “Go away, damn you to hell!” It was the most shocking curse she knew.