by Connie Lane
“The color of your eyes is perfect,” she told him. She wished only that her words were so perfect. They sounded as if they came from very far away, even to her.
Nick, apparently, did not notice. As quickly as he reached for her, he dropped his hand and whisked his tall top hat off. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Then perhaps it’s my hair. Wrong style. Wrong length. Wrong color there, too, perhaps.”
“Your hair…” She had no intention of doing it but when he ran his hand through his hair, he mussed it terribly. She smoothed an errant curl back from his forehead and imagined how it might feel if her gloves were off. “Your hair is quite pleasing.”
Before she could lower her hand to her side, he caught it in his and pressed it to his chest. His heart beat strong and hard against her fingertips. “Then perhaps it is my lack of romanticism. It could be that the ladies are not aware that I have a beating heart or that it might positively race. At the right time. With the right woman.”
It was positively racing now.
The realization hit Willie like a bolt and uncertain what to say or how to control her own heartbeat—which was racing every bit as wildly as his—she spun away. Her head down, her steps quick and as sure as they could be when her head was spinning and her blood pumping so hard she couldn’t hear a thing, she raced into the nearest cross path. Once she was out of sight of the rest of the Vauxhall revelers, she took off running.
“Willie!” Behind her, she heard Nick’s voice and she cursed her impulsiveness as well as her bad luck. Of all the places she might have chosen to run, she had picked the Hermit’s Walk, the smallest of the Vauxhall paths. She pulled to a stop and glanced to her right and the wilderness that bordered the path.
Even before she could think to escape that way, Nick found her.
“Damn it, Willie. I told you I feared there was something about me that makes women run the other way! You didn’t have to prove it.”
His jest was met with silence and Nick tried again. “It must be my lack of a romantic heart after all. That is when you decided to run. When you pressed your hand to my chest.”
“I am not the one who pressed it there.” Willie turned away when she spoke to him and though the movement muffled her voice, it did little to soften the pain that flowed through each of her words.
Before he could stop himself, Nick stepped nearer. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset.”
He might have been convinced if she did not snuffle at the end of the sentence.
“And I never meant to make you cry.” He put his hand on her shoulder.
“I’m not crying.”
“Yes, I can tell. By all the sniffling.” Nick reached for his handkerchief and handed it to her. “I only meant to make you laugh.”
When he held the handkerchief over her shoulder, she snatched it out of his hand and swabbed it under her nose. “I know.” She sniffed. “It’s just that I thought—”
“What?” It wasn’t wise to care, yet Nick could not help himself. Whatever was the matter, it was serious. At least to Willie. Which made him care very much.
“I thought that you had gone. With her. And—”
Nick found himself suddenly smiling. “Did it bother you?”
“It’s none of my concern.”
“That’s not what I asked. I asked if it bothered you to think that Lady Catherine and I—”
“She would make you a serviceable wife.” Willie blew her nose and wiped it vigorously before she turned to him. “Even Lynnette said as much. You are of the same temperament and the same tastes. You laugh at the same jokes and she is not at all shy about—” She thought better of continuing, then thought again. “She wanted you.”
“And I wanted her. At least I wanted to want her.” He angled a finger under her chin and tilted her head up. “That is, until I came to my senses and realized she wasn’t you.”
Willie’s eyes widened in astonishment. Her breath caught. She could not have known that so simple a thing made her look more beautiful than ever.
And that Nick wanted her more than he’d ever wanted anything. Or anyone.
She swallowed hard and though he could feel the tremble of emotion that vibrated through her, she did not step away and she did not lower her gaze. “Are you saying—”
“That it’s you I want. Yes.” The confession was as cleansing as a spring rain and Nick laughed. “It’s as simple as that, Willie. I did not go home with Lady Catherine because I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself in the least. Not unless it was your eyes I was looking into…” He bent and brushed a kiss as light as butterfly wings across her eyes. “And your lips I was kissing…” He touched his lips to hers. “And your body…” Though he warned himself as he had warned himself a dozen times before—that it wasn’t wise to start something that it would be just as foolish to finish—Nick was beyond caring. He pulled Willie closer and trailed a series of slow, deliberate kisses down her neck. He tasted the hollow at the base of her throat and when he heard her moan from deep in her throat and felt her arch her back in response to his touch, he slid his mouth further still, nestling a kiss between her breasts.
“Nick.” The name escaped Willie on the end of a sigh. “I—”
“Yes, I know.” He kissed his way back up again. Along her neck. Across her jaw. He nibbled the delicate skin of her earlobe and fought for some semblance of control at the same time he wondered about the logistics of a man, and a maid, and a covering of wilderness and darkness.
“Nick, I—”
When he kissed his way back to her lips, Willie put her hands on his shoulders. “I must tell you—”
“What?” He smiled down into her eyes and wondered at the reflection of the man who looked back at him from them. “You’re not certain?”
“Oh yes. Very certain, indeed.” Willie pulled out of his reach. “That is why tomorrow, I will be leaving your employment.”
14
Nick wasn’t exactly sure when his life started falling apart.
He vaguely remembered a time when things were simple. The town held pleasures for a man who knew where to look and could afford them, and like so many other men of his age and station, he was not averse to seeking them out and making the most of them. There was drink. There were women. There was no end to amusements from gaming to boxing and from the turf to the theater.
He had been content then.
Even though he assured himself it was true, the thought sat on his shoulders like the fog that draped the trees outside and uncomfortable with it, Nick shivered and lifted the glass of claret that stood ready at his elbow.
“If not content, then at least satisfied,” he assured himself. “With the gaming. And the boxing. With the wine. With the women.”
With the predictability.
And with the very fact that while it was all amusing and diverting and damn good fun, none of it meant much of anything.
Which was exactly the way he’d always liked it.
“Now…” Because he could think of no other way to handle the muddle in which he found himself, he drank his claret and hoped for inspiration and when it did not come with the first sip or even with the second, he plunked down his glass.
“Not to your likin’, my lord?” Rooster O’Reilly scurried into Nick’s dressing room, a clothing brush in one hand and the coat Nick had worn the night before to Vauxhall Gardens in the other. “I can get you something else if you’d rather. A good glass of ale, that’s what a man in your state of mind needs.”
“My state of mind?” Nick wasn’t sure whether to be amused or irritated. “Would you mind telling me, Mr. O’Reilly, exactly what you think that state of mind might be?”
Rooster, apparently, did not recognize irony when he heard it. On his way past, he stopped and perched himself on the edge of the dressing table where Nick sat.
“No doubt about that, sir,” he said. “And no doubt about what’s causin’ it all. Herself is upstairs even no
w.” As if he could see up to where the servants had their rooms, he looked at the ceiling. “She’s packin’ and no mistake. Boxes and trunks and bags and all. I hear the girls say that she’s leavin’. And soon. And while none of them is willin’ to venture a guess as to why, or at least none of them is willin’ to say what they might think…”
Rather than sit there and listen to everything he already knew, Nick scraped back his chair and stood. He walked as far as the window and nudged aside the draperies. Just as he suspected, there was not much to see. Fog shrouded the city as neatly as if it had been wrapped in lamb’s wool. Even so, he could make out the shape of the sturdy wagon that was stopped in front of the house. He had not a shred of doubt that Willie had hired it to take her away.
He dropped the drapery back into place and turned, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against the wall. “Are you willing to venture a guess?” he asked Rooster.
“No guess needed at all about it. You came home last night lookin’ like thunder. And Miss Willie…well…” Although Nick suspected he’d already come near to wearing a hole through the fabric, Rooster started brushing his coat again. “No mistakin’ the way her eyes was red, if you’ll forgive me for mentioning it, sir. Between the two of you…” Rooster stood and put down the coat. He set his shoulders and planted his feet, much as Nick had seen him do in the ring when he was readying himself to be on the receiving end of a punishing blow.
“Between the two of you, sir, you’ll be drivin’ us all to drink. Which isn’t a bad place for a man to be driven, if you catch my meanin’, sir, but in an instance such as this, it isn’t the most ideal of solutions to your problem.”
“If I have a problem.”
Rooster had the good grace not to look at Nick as if he were a madman. “Of course you have a problem and no mistake about that. She’s walkin’ out on you!”
“Let her walk!” Too edgy to keep still, Nick pushed off from the wall and did a turn around the room. “If that’s the way she feels—”
“The way she feels is as plain as the nose on your very own face, if you’ll pardon the familiarity, my lord. And as plain as mine.” Rooster poked a finger at his misshapen nose. “She’s upset and hurt.”
“Hurt?” Nick decided then and there that Rooster had no idea what he was talking about. “It was her idea to—”
He pulled back the words before they had a chance to leave his mouth. It was bad enough that the staff was already abuzz over Willie’s imminent departure. He didn’t need to add to the gossip by letting anyone know what had happened on the Hermit’s Walk.
Or that Nick was still stinging from the rejection.
“All I’m sayin’ sir, if you’ll excuse me sayin’ it at all, is that sometimes things on the outside of the boxin’ ring ain’t so different from things inside. A mill is a mill, whether a man is usin’ his morleys…” He demonstrated, raising his fists. “Or not. And sometimes, a man has to take it on the chin, if you take my meanin’.”
“Even if he ends up with his nose smashed and his gut aching as if a fist had been poked through it?”
“That’s the beauty of the thing, sir!” Rooster’s grin revealed any number of missing teeth. “Though sometimes he takes a pummelin’, there are other times when he can get in a few licks of his own.”
“Are you suggesting that I box Willie’s ears?”
“Not at all, sir, and if I ever said such a thing—so help me God—my dear, departed mother herself would come back from the grave and give me a lickin’ the likes of which I’d never recover from. That’s not what I meant at all.” Rooster hung Nick’s coat in the wardrobe that took up a goodly portion of the wall and went about the room, straightening and tidying.
“What I mean, sir, is that a man has to make a show of things. Even if he loses in the end…well…” He pulled himself up to his full height—which was not very tall at all—and straightened his shoulders. “Even if he loses in the end, sir, at least then he knows that he’s done all he could.”
“And I haven’t?”
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but if you had, that there wagon wouldn’t be out in the street with them big bruisers tryin’ to load it and Jem and Mr. Finch getting in their way sly-like so as they don’t realize it’s happenin’. Just so they can delay things so that Miss Willie don’t walk out on us. And on you, sir.”
As much as Nick hated to admit it, he knew Rooster was right. After Willie’s pronouncement last night and their return home in complete and completely uncomfortable silence, he had done nothing to try to change her mind.
He hadn’t attempted to reason with her because he’d determined that their situation was well beyond reason.
He hadn’t tried to argue, either, because he knew that arguing with Willie—about anything—was the surest way to make a man feel as if his nose were up against a brick wall and his determination was getting him nowhere at all except the place that she wanted him to go.
He hadn’t endeavored to talk to her because once they were in the house and she had fled up the stairs and he had retreated to his room with a bottle of brandy that soured after the first taste, he had convinced himself that what was done was done. And there wasn’t a thing that could change that.
“She was jealous,” he said, trying to reason through the thing aloud and hoping that by doing so, he would gain Rooster’s support. “There was another woman, you see, and—”
“Of course she was jealous.” As if it were a thing even the dimmest Tom-a-Doddle would have understood from the start, Rooster shook his head sadly. “The woman was beautiful, I venture, and as she was probably one of them that Miss Willie has said you might want to marry, she was probably well dressed and wealthy and as able to charm a man as a robin is to sing.”
It was as if Rooster had been there.
Nick groaned. “I told Willie that none of it made any difference. That the clothes and the jewels and all the blunt from here to Edinburgh didn’t mean a thing. But—”
“But you didn’t rightly show her.”
Nick defended himself instinctively. “I tried.”
“Beggin’ your pardon and not for the first time this afternoon, my lord. May I say, sir, that tryin’ a man’s way and tryin’ a woman’s way…well, they are two different things.”
“Which means I should try again.”
The thought had not occurred to Nick before now and now that it did, he felt a bit as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “You think I should march up there and—” As quickly as it lifted, the weight descended again. “And what?” he asked Rooster.
Rooster shook his head. “That’s what comes from havin’ the looks and the title and the money all your life. You’ve never had to work for a woman like us regular blokes do. And now that you do—”
“Now that I do, I’m not sure which way to turn.” Nick glanced down at the dressing table where he’d been seated earlier. Before they left for Vauxhall the night before, Willie had gone over her list of marriageable ladies with him and because there was something unsettling about thinking of her walking around with his future in her pocket, he had asked to keep it. It lay right where he’d left it and he picked it up and read it over quickly. A plan formed and his mood lifted.
“Rooster…” On his way to the door, Nick clapped Rooster O’Reilly on the back. “You’re a genius!”
“Put down that portmanteau!”
Nick’s voice rang through the tiny room like a death knell and startled, Willie had no choice but to listen. Too stunned by his sudden appearance, his tone of voice and the grim expression on his face to do anything else, she set down her bag.
He strode into the room like a coming storm and Clover, Bess, Marie, and Flossie—who had been helping Willie pack at the same time they were trying to convince her to stay—took one look at him and scattered into the passageway like frightened mice. Without even bothering to turn around, Nick reached for the door and slammed it closed. It rattled on its hinges.
“You’re not leaving,” he told Willie.
“Not—” Except for the black look on his face, she might have been tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the thing. “Of course I am leaving.” Her voice sounded especially small in light of the fact that his vibrated through the small confines of her room like cannon fire.
“There is a wagon waiting out front that is loaded with my things and I am going—”
“Nowhere.” Nick cut off her argument with the sharp movement of one hand. “You are going nowhere, Miss Culpepper. Not for a good long while. Not until I say it is time for you to leave.”
“Really?” Not as frightened by his inflated performance as she was simply fascinated by it, Willie stepped back and took stock of the man. “I left my father’s custody a good long while ago,” she told him. “What makes you think you can act the churl much as he did and that I will listen to you any better than I ever listened to him?”
“What, you ask?” As if it were exactly the question Nick had been waiting for, his eyes gleamed. With a flourish, he whipped a single sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and dangled it in front of Willie’s nose. “This is all I need, I think,” he said, and though he sounded eminently pleased with himself, Willie was not exactly sure why. The paper was so close to her eyes, the words on it were no more than a blur.
Carefully, so that he would not get the idea she was trying to renew the kind of soul-searing, mindnumbing, blood-heating contact they had had the night before, Willie reached for his hand and pushed it until the paper was a decipherable distance away. The writing came into focus immediately and she recognized her own hand.
“It is my list,” she said.
“Aha!” Pleased, though she could not have said why, Nick whisked the paper away. “That’s it exactly,” he said, looking mightily satisfied. “And so, of course you see why you cannot leave.”