by Nicholas
He wasn’t going to be nagged into leaving, and Leah was too tired to argue with him. Then too, she was hardly a blushing virgin, and he was no callow youth.
She wanted him to peek, though, which made the sadness a little harder to ignore. “Close your eyes, Nicholas.”
He did, and she rose, stepping carefully from the tub, and backing into the bath sheet to wrap it around her. Nick’s arms finished the task, enfolding her in clean, soft toweling and his fleeting embrace.
That had been nice, that simple hug. Also heart wrenching.
“Your robe?” Nick held it out then smiled as he saw that holding the bath sheet closed required both of Leah’s hands. “I’ll hang it behind the screen. When you’re decent, I’ll start on your hair.”
“There’s no need for that.”
“Can’t have you taking a chill,” Nick replied, the soul of equanimity. He probably bathed women regularly, the wretch. When Leah had retreated to the screen, Nick bellowed for the footmen to remove the bath, and by the time Leah emerged, it was gone.
And Nick was sitting on her bed.
Maybe her husband-to-be had a cruel streak? “Why are you still here, Nicholas?”
“Because we need to talk, lovey.” Nick’s tone had lost its teasing quality, and Leah knew a sinking dread in the pit of her stomach.
“I’m too tired for this,” she said, crossing to the bureau and retrieving a brush.
Nick rose and prowled across the room to her. “And yet we do need to have a very personal conversation, Leah, and sooner rather than later. I would spare you this if I could, but soon Della will arrive, and until such time as you are my countess, she will afford us little real privacy.”
“You are going to bully me into marrying you,” Leah said, lowering herself to the thick rug on the floor before the hearth. She arranged her robe so she could sit cross-legged, and started on her hair with the brush.
“I will not bully,” Nick said, folding his long frame down behind her, “but I will attempt to persuade. No matter what scheme we concoct, Leah, you will not be safe as long as your father is the male in authority over you.”
“He won’t live forever,” Leah said, giving up the brush without a fight. Nick put it aside and took a towel to her hair, twisting lengths of hair with toweling to wring moisture in his strong grasp.
“You shouldn’t brush it when it’s sopping wet,” Nick chided. “And while your father will not live forever, he is in good health and not that old. He could live for a long time. Rather than coming up with schemes to buy you time, Leah, I think we need to discuss what about marriage to me makes the idea so objectionable.” He wrung the rest of her hair to dampness with the towel, then added, “I want you to be honest.”
Leah drew her knees up and rested her forehead against them. The honest truth was that she was likely to desire this man, to harbor an attraction to him until she was older than Lady Warne. “This topic is hard to even consider.”
“All the more reason to broach it now, when we have peace and quiet, and privacy.”
Leah’s throat constricted, and a wave of homesickness washed through her—but homesickness for where? Not Wilton, though the green terrain of Hampshire had seen most of her childhood years. Not the sterile, tense atmosphere of the earl’s town house, and not even Italy, where she’d known some happiness and much pain. She thought maybe she missed her mother, but in truth, that lady’s life had become so circumscribed by bitterness and disappointment, her death had been a blessing.
“I am tired of being an outsider, Nick,” Leah said, raising her face from her knees. “You do not want to let me in. You want to keep me at arm’s length in this marriage.”
“I want to keep children at arm’s length,” Nick replied, unwrapping the towel from her hair and taking up the brush. “Have you set your heart on children, Leah? Is that why my conditions are so unbearable?”
“One cannot set one’s heart on children,” Leah observed wearily. “They come, or not, as God wills.” They also left, as God willed. “But yes, given my preferences, I’d present my husband with his heirs.”
Nick sighed mightily behind her. “I do not give one goddamn which of my nephews inherits. I love all my brothers and will be proud to call any of their sons my heir.”
“Fine for you, Nick,” Leah said, feeling honesty about to gallop past her common sense. “While I gain significance from what, exactly? Running into all the Society ladies you’ve taken to your bed in my place? Not asking where you go when you are from home night after night? Not allowing myself to drive past the house where I’ve been told you keep your current mistress? I watched my mother suffer torment upon torment at Wilton’s hands. She went into her marriage hoping for the best, offering that man her heart. She ended up bitter, hurt, and as mean to him as he was to her. And supposedly, at one time they cared for each other.”
He drew her hair over her shoulders in a slow, soothing caress, proof positive men had more courage than brains. “I can promise never to take a mistress.”
“Nicholas,” Leah said in weary disgust, “you said you’d never taken a mistress—you prefer variety, remember? Don’t think to fence with me then ask that I, alone, be honest.”
Memories of Nick plucking a sprig of arbutus jabbed at Leah’s composure. Perhaps the lady was something beyond even a mistress to him.
“You don’t want us to end up hating each other,” Nick said, his tone aggravatingly reasonable, “and you do want to bear my children. I don’t want you to hate me, either, but neither do I want to think of you naked, handcuffed to a bedpost, while some deranged old man takes a riding crop to you and beats out of you what self-respect you have.”
Leah shuddered at his graphic description. There were rumors about Hellerington…
“I’m sorry. That was not helpful.” Nick fell silent again, and Leah felt him dabbing at a handful of hair with the brush. He was suited to the task, working his way slowly, slowly up each lock, dealing patiently with each little tangle until her hair was drying in smooth, shining waves. He’d do the same with her arguments, parse them one by one, until her resistance to his offer was obliterated.
“What would help?” he asked, putting the brush down and drawing Leah back against his chest. “What would make marriage to me less unattractive to you?”
Less unattractive. He did not know what he asked. She remained against him, holding herself away from him even as their bodies touched.
“You use the word attraction,” she said, “but you don’t want to be attracted to me, and you want to pretend I am not attracted to you. That is the problem in a nutshell, Nick. I need you to protect my very life. You need me merely for the sake of appearances. Our stations are unequal. In any marriage, a man and woman are of unequal station, but an earl’s daughter—even under Wilton’s roof—is raised to expect her consequence, her household skills, and her willingness to secure the succession can even the balance and allow her to hold her head up. Those assets allow her to expect her husband’s protection, respect, and affection.”
“You have those things from me,” Nick said. “And I am attracted to you.”
“Nicholas,” Leah said with pained patience, “the first time you kissed me, you couldn’t even see me. How can you be attracted to someone you can’t see? And yes, I comprehend that when we are… affectionate, your body responds. I am not a virgin, and I understand men are prone to such reactions. That is not the caliber of attraction I would hope for from a husband.”
“You think I become aroused for just any woman?”
“You’ve said as much, Viscount Variety, and you can’t tell me you are attracted to me in any personal way, and then tell me we won’t be intimate. You are frighteningly intelligent, Nicholas, and you would not put yourself in such a position for the rest of your life, wanting what you cannot have, and yet you expect me to step gladly into such a role.”
She was making herself upset with the extent to which she could assure herself of misery in
this marriage, and yet… chained to the bedpost, naked, the sound of a riding crop slicing through the air above her…?
She was going to marry Nicholas Haddonfield and be grateful for the privilege.
“I did not say we would not be intimate,” Nick replied, his voice a whisper against Leah’s neck. “I said I would not risk conception with you.”
“You split hairs, Nicholas.” Leah tried to keep her voice level, but the sensation of Nick’s lips grazing along her neck was infernally distracting.
“How much of a nonvirgin are you?” Nick murmured, switching sides to run his nose over the other side of her neck.
“I am deflowered,” Leah said, but now she did shiver. “Aaron and I both considered that was exactly what Wilton was encouraging.”
“So you’ve had one encounter?” Nick asked, his tongue lapping at the pulse near the base of her throat.
“Th… Three. What are you about, Nicholas?”
“I am making a point,” Nick replied, biting her shoulder gently. “You think I do not suffer attraction to you, but I intend to convince you otherwise. Relax, Leah.”
Suffer attraction to her, like a disease or an excess of drink. “This cannot be a good idea,” Leah said, unsure whether she was trying to convince him or herself.
“It’s a splendid idea,” Nick assured her. “My best idea yet.” He shifted, then scooped her up against his chest and carried her to the bed. Just like that.
She’d known he was strong, but gracious, to be handled like so much eiderdown… Nick sat her on the mattress at the foot of the bed and peeled the covers back, then laid her on the sheets. “The night robe goes, Leah.”
“I am not ready to go to sleep, Nicholas.” Leah tried to sit up but got caught in the curling masses of her hair, and Nick’s hand on her chest gently pushed her back down to the mattress.
“We’re not going to sleep just yet.” Nick pulled his shirt over his head and toed off his house boots. “Not if my arguments are persuasive.” When he was standing beside the bed clad only in his breeches, Leah stared at his naked chest then closed her eyes.
Then opened them again and stared some more.
Ten
Thank you, Jesus, Nick thought, sitting at Leah’s hip and reaching forward to undo the ties of her night robe. He knew when a woman was interested, and Leah Lindsey—soon to be Haddonfield—was far more interested than she wanted to admit, maybe even to herself.
“Nicholas Haddonfield.” Leah’s gaze was glued to his chest. “What are you doing?”
“We’re going to be intimate, Leah Lindsey,” Nick replied as his hands divested her of the night robe. He liked the sound of his own words: he was going to be intimate with her, to give her all manner of pleasure. “But we will not copulate. You have my word on that.”
“And if I want to copulate?” Despite her bravado, Nick knew she’d never said the word aloud before, probably never heard it spoken either.
His countess was a brave woman. Nick left his hand resting on Leah’s abdomen, one thin layer of cotton between his palm and her skin. “I cannot allow it, and I will not ask it of you ere you consent to be my countess, in any case.”
She raised unhappy brown eyes to his face. “You and your allowing. Can’t you see that’s the very thing I object to most strongly?”
His countess was also stubborn. He liked that about her too.
“You do not have enough information on which to base your decision, Leah.” Nick’s hand trailed down, so that his thumb brushed over the crests of her hip bones, then back up, to trace her ribs. “You see us, nodding politely when we pass on the dance floor, and that isn’t how it has to be.”
She watched his hand follow the same pattern, again and again, without pausing. Then, while Leah’s frown had shifted to a look of bewilderment, Nick lifted her against his chest with one hand behind her back. With his free hand, he gathered her hair and collected it to one side, his fingers brushing her neck, her collarbones, and the soft curve of her shoulders.
Oh, yes, they were going to be intimate.
“I have tried to consider how I might be your friend.” Leah got one entire sentence out and fell silent. Nick felt a gratifying sense of progress.
“I would like to be your friend too,” Nick murmured, easing her down to the bed again. “Tell me how to do that.”
“You can’t,” Leah said through clenched teeth. Nick trailed the backs of his fingers down her bare arm, from her shoulder to her wrist and back up again. “You are too cuddly.”
Cuddly. Nobody had accused him of this previously. He rather liked the notion, coming from her. “This is a problem, how?” Nick asked, stroking her arm with deliberation.
“You are always touching people,” Leah said in a rush. “You hug, and pet, and kiss, and clasp hands…”
“I do like to touch.” Nick leaned down and brushed a kiss over Leah’s forehead. He sat back up and smiled down at her in the waning firelight. She looked vaguely puzzled and disoriented. Like she was trying to recall what, exactly, had been coming out of her own mouth. Nick smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her again, this time on the cheek.
“You smell good,” he murmured. “Like spring.”
“That’s another thing. You always smell delicious, better than a man should, and it isn’t just your shaving soap.”
“No?” She spouted the oddest, most endearing notions when she was flustered.
“No. You are clean about your person and in your habits.”
“And this disqualifies me from friendship?” Nick queried, his lips landing on the unbruised side of her jaw, slowly working their way up to her cheek before he lifted back up to sitting position.
“You smell too good to be just my friend,” Leah informed him desperately. “You kiss too well, your touch is too… too…”
“Yes?” He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips and retreated one half inch. “You were saying?” Lazily, he brushed her hair back again, his gaze following the caress of his fingers.
“Kiss me, Nicholas.”
“What are friends for?” Nick whispered, claiming her lips gently. He plied her with easy, relaxed strokes of his tongue, burrowing his hands under her shoulders and bracing himself on his forearms. He nibbled, he tasted, he teased until Leah’s tongue entered the lists and her fingers winnowed through his hair and her body began to shift on the bed in slow, needy undulations.
“Please, God… Yes, more…”
“Easy, lovey,” Nick crooned, drawing back one half inch again. “We have all the time in the world.”
They did not. If she didn’t stop moving against him like this, if she didn’t stop touching him everywhere he’d exposed his skin, he would soon lose his wits entirely.
Leah whimpered into his mouth and half rolled to hook her leg over his hips. “What, lovey?” Nick murmured. “Tell me.”
“Come. Here.” Leah’s hands went dodging south, to try to encircle Nick’s waist and drag him over her, but fortunately for his flagging self-restraint, she got distracted on the vast plane of his chest, delineating slabs of muscle, ribs, sternum, and… nipples.
“Easy.” Nick tried to catch one of those hands as it skimmed directly over a nipple, paused, and returned for closer investigation.
Leah left off plundering his mouth long enough to gaze up at him. “Will I hurt you? Here?” Another feathery, shivery brush of her fingers.
“Never. Not ever.” Though she would kill him dead, dead, dead with her innocent explorations. He closed his eyes and waited for her to set her hands loose on him again.
She used both hands, and Nick lifted a few inches to allow her free run of his chest. Kissing paused as the fascination of caressing and being caressed became too absorbing, then too frustrating.
“Nicholas, get in this bed, please.”
He knew a moment’s indecision—did he get under the covers with her? Try for the nightgown now? Shuck his bloody, bedamned, infernally too-tight breeches? No, not that, because
the sight of his erect cock would give her the vapors, virgin or not—and do nothing to calm the riot in his body. He stood, lifted the covers, and budged in as Leah obligingly shifted to the center of the bed.
“Better,” Leah muttered, turning her face into his bicep.
“Let me hold you.” Nick smiled at her shyness, having already seen enough—felt enough—to know he could coax her past that and have a wonderful time doing it, too.
“No.” Leah kept her nose pressed to Nick’s arm. “I want you to…”
“You want me to what, lovey?” Nick heard a novel note of tenderness in his own voice, some humor, and a hint of puzzlement.
“Here.” Leah threaded an arm under his neck and pulled at his waistband until she conveyed her general intent. “Over me. Please.”
The last was whispered against Nick’s collarbone, but he heard her, oh yes, he most assuredly did. Slowly, he let her tug, pull, wiggle, and whisper him into position over her, his weight braced on his knees and forearms.
“This is where you want me?” Nick asked, crouched above her. He kissed her forehead again, needing to kiss her somewhere. Anywhere.
“For now,” Leah replied, her tongue running along his jawbone. “Don’t worry that you’ll crush me.”
“I’m tangled in your nightgown,” Nick said, his frustration real. He bunched the cotton in one hand and drew it up to Leah’s hips. “Lift up, Leah, it’s coming off.”
“But then I’ll be naked.”
“You’ll be naked under the covers,” Nick reminded her, not sure how that made things any better. “I can’t see you, and I can’t get tangled in your nightgown.”
She lifted her hips, and the nightgown went sailing to the foot of the bed. Nick’s reward for this bit of swashbuckling was to feel Leah’s naked chest pressed to his, and to feel his control go careening across his mental decks like so many loose cannon.
“Kiss me, Nick,” Leah ordered, her mouth seizing his.
Too late, Nick realized he was in bed with that most voracious and fascinating of creatures, the near-virgin. Leah had lost her reputation when she’d run off with Frommer, but she had by no means had her curiosity appeased. She was already deemed lost to propriety, and she’d been royally cheated of the pleasures such a sacrifice should have gained her. She was bent on making up for lost time, and Nick was the lucky, bedamned man in her bed when her passions slipped the leash.