by Nicholas
A quarter-truth, he corrected himself, then sighed.
He’d misrepresented entirely.
“What did you find to do in my absence?” Nick asked, wishing his conscience would just shut the hell up.
“I hung up my dresses and poked around the house,” Leah said, letting Nick take her arm and steer her down the barn aisle. “I also established menus for the next week with your housekeeper and put my seal of approval on the organization of the pantries. Very impressive staff you have, Lord Reston.”
Her voice had taken on a brittle quality, not quite ironic, but not… Not his usual Leah.
“Lovey?” Nick peered over at her. “Are you feeling all right?”
“No, actually.” She paused in her progress toward the house. “I did not sleep as well as I would have liked last night, Nicholas, and think I might be developing a headache.”
“Understandable,” Nick said, wanting to be relieved, though she’d slept like a new recruit after a forced march. “Della pulled me aside at one point yesterday morning and told me surviving the wedding is harder than surviving the marriage. Shall I escort you up to bed?”
“That might be for the best,” Leah said, relief lacing her tone even to Nick’s ears.
“I want you to feel comfortable here, to consider any residence of ours your home,” he said as he held the back door for her. “You needn’t soldier on for my sake when you’re in pain, and I certainly won’t be putting on airs before you, of all people.”
Lying though his teeth, frequently, but never putting on airs.
“I’ll…” Leah paused, and while he watched, swallowed and looked away. “I’ll try to recall that, Nicholas.”
“I can have a tray sent up later, and I’ll check on you before I turn in.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead, wanting to touch her, though he didn’t deserve to.
“You might consider getting to bed early tonight yourself, Nicholas.”
Nick lifted a hand to her shoulder, contemplating adding an embrace to that prosaic, stolen kiss. An embrace intended to comfort a new wife in a new house—and to comfort a new husband too.
But Leah whirled before he could get his arms around her and left Nick standing alone in the corridor.
***
Leah found over the next few days that the ache did not abate. It got worse as Nick insisted on showing her his progress with Ethan’s birdhouse, and walking with her in their garden, and asking her to help him with French correspondence. Leah tried to think of Nick as some benign, charming cousin or brother-in-law. A man she might know fairly well, and whose company she could enjoy, but not like that.
And her self-deception worked adequately, until Nick would touch his thumb to her lower lip and ask her, “Why so grave, Wife?”—his expression likely the same worried, tender gaze he’d turned on their blond neighbor.
Or until he’d bring Leah breakfast on a tray, then sit on her bed and feed her as he asked her about her plans for the day or her correspondence from her siblings.
Or take her hand and lead her to the kitchen, there to share a cup of tea and a scone pilfered from the pantry. Leah bit into her scone then watched as Nick brought it to his mouth and nibbled off a bite from the same spot.
Nick put the scone down. “You look so forlorn I am about to cry. What can I do to please you?”
“You are a good man, Nicholas,” she said, “but it is harder to be married to you on the terms you’ve set than I ever imagined. Much, much harder.”
Nick regarded the single bite of scone left on his plate. “How is it difficult?”
“I am falling in love with you,” Leah said, “and I don’t want to.”
The kitchen clock ticked softly, the kettle on the hob gave off a low, simmering hiss, and the last of the kindling used to heat the burner shifted in the stove.
“I don’t know what to say,” Nick replied, coming around the table to sit beside her. He reached for her hand, and she closed her eyes, but made no move to withdraw her fingers. Nick was a toucher. He would not understand that what he sought to give as comfort couldn’t always be appreciated as such.
“You don’t have to say anything, Nicholas. You can’t help that you are so naturally affectionate, or that you are charming and kind and considerate. You can’t help that you are handsome and so gloriously well made. You’ve been honest with me, as honorable as circumstances allow. I’m just…”
“I’ve been trying not to hover,” Nick said, stroking the back of her hand with his fingers. “I am somewhat at a loss as well.”
Leah opened her eyes to frown at him. “Please be as blunt as you know how to be, Nicholas. I am not good at reading subtleties from a member of the opposite sex.”
“It’s hard to keep my distance from you,” Nick said on a bewildered sigh, “but I think I should. I’m not sure why I think that, when you’ve never been anything other than welcoming and accommodating, but the feeling is there, that if I’m going to be a husband only by half measures, I should leave you entirely in peace.”
Leah remained silent, and then, perhaps because he was possessed of a certain recklessness, Nick spelled it out for her. “I should leave you in peace, but I don’t want to.”
“This is a dilemma,” Leah said, closing her fingers around Nick’s hand. “How long do you think we can endure it, Nicholas, before we begin to hate each other?”
“I cannot hate you.” The words held relief, topped with a dollop of sadness. “I can hate the part of me that has no conscience and wants to pleasure itself in your body regardless of consequences, but I cannot hate the lady who consented to spend the rest of her life with me, knowing how little I can offer her.”
Heat flooded Leah’s face.
“That is impressively blunt,” she allowed, eyes straight ahead. “But, Nick, where do we go from here? We’re tied together at the ankle by this marriage and will have to spend some time together at least for the short term. I do not like feeling I’m mooning after a man who doesn’t want me, and you cannot enjoy my longing glances and girlish sighs.”
He did not smile. “Of course I can. I am a man, Leah, and all the practical considerations in the world won’t change that. Glance and sigh, and I’ll strut and paw. It’s the way the animal is made.”
Leah heard herself ask, “Do you think we would be better off apart, Nicholas?”
Panic or something like it flared in his blue eyes. Whatever it was, Leah assured herself it wasn’t relief.
“Leah, I haven’t been with another woman since I met you.”
***
In the biblical sense, Nick could tell his wife he’d not strayed. Marriage was turning him into a barrister, though, because he’d spent the entire afternoon in company with a female he never intended for Leah to meet.
And maybe Leah sensed the prevarication, because she would not meet Nick’s gaze.
He wasn’t ready to let her go. Worse, he could not envision the day when he would be ready.
Booted steps sounded swiftly above, and then on the kitchen stairs. Nick exchanged a puzzled look with his wife—his sad, cranky wife—but admitted relief that the conversation had been interrupted. Leah’s courage had towed their discussion out to deep, dangerous waters, and shoals lay all around them.
“Nick?” Ethan’s voice rang with anxiety. “Where the hell are you?”
“Down here,” Nick bellowed, rising from Leah’s side, “and I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when in the presence of my lady wife.” Nick kept his tone teasing and his face arranged in a glad smile until Ethan gained the bottom of the stairs. One look at Ethan’s expression, and Nick’s good cheer evaporated.
“Papa’s gone?”
Ethan gave one tight nod, and for a long moment, Nick stood there in the kitchen, the reality of the moment imprinting itself on his mind: the ticking clock, the low song of the simmering kettle, the lovely spring sunshine pouring in the open kitchen windows, the breeze bringing with it the scent of garden flowers, turned
earth, and the stables.
This is the moment when I become an orphan. When my brother and all my siblings and I become orphans. A chasm opened up in his chest, bottomless and yet filled with pain, sorrow, and bewilderment. Wordlessly he held out an arm to his wife, who was beside him in an instant. The other arm went out to Ethan, who joined them in an odd, strangely comforting three-way embrace.
“Let’s sit,” Leah suggested a few minutes later. “Ethan, your horse?”
“The lads are walking him out,” Ethan said as he led Nick to the table and slid onto the bench next to him.
“You probably haven’t eaten today,” Leah said, frowning at Ethan. “You will eat, Ethan Grey, and no sass. Nicholas?”
He turned to her, trying to fathom her meaning, as though plain English had suddenly become a foreign language at which he had little proficiency.
“I’m going to feed your brother and have some provisions packed for us.” Leah spoke slowly. “I’m also going to have some clothes packed and send word to my brother I’ll be leaving with you today for Belle Maison.”
Nick nodded, unable to get his voice to work. If he said something, anything, he’d… lose his composure, and he could not allow Leah to see that.
Leah knelt beside his chair. “I’m coming with you to Belle Maison—if that’s what you want?”
He managed a terse nod and barely resisted the compulsion to drag her against his chest. Leah rose and moved off. Nick was aware of her bustling around the kitchen, aware of his brother looking haggard and road weary, and aware that Papa—the earl, his lordship, the only person standing between Nick and a miserable damned title—was gone.
When Leah put a tray of sliced beef, cheddar, sliced bread, and a peeled orange before Ethan, she kissed Nick’s cheek—even her scent helped Nick breathe—then took her leave.
Nick started on the sad, predictable questions. “When?”
“Late last night,” Ethan said, making no move to eat. “He just slipped away, Nick. He was breathing one minute, and then he did not breathe again. Nita and I were there, and he was asleep.”
“You rode here from Belle Maison,” Nick observed, stupidly. Of course Ethan had ridden from Belle Maison.
Ethan’s arm circled Nick’s shoulders. “I’ll go back there with you. I promised you I would.”
“I’ll need to send word to the others,” Nick said, lowering his forehead to his folded arms. “The funeral can’t wait.”
The practicalities, Nick thought vaguely. Leah had foreseen a need to deal with the practicalities.
“We can have a memorial service next month if we can’t all be at the funeral,” Ethan suggested.
With a sigh, Nick nodded and pushed to his feet. “Eat, or Leah will know the reason why. Your horse can stay here, and you’ll travel with us in the coach.”
“If you wish,” Ethan said, regarding Nick.
“Leah did say she’d come with me?” Nick ran a hand through his hair, embarrassed to have to ask but needing the reassurance. Needing his wife.
“She did. You told her it was what you wanted.”
“I do want that,” Nick said. “Give me an hour to jot off some notes and confer with Leah and…” His voice trailed off, and Ethan waited. Eventually, Nick figured out something to say to his brother. “Thank you for bringing me this news, Ethan. I would not have wanted to hear it from anyone else.”
“Not that you wanted to hear it at all, and not that I wanted to bring it. I’ll meet you in an hour.”
What Nick wanted was to find his wife, bury his face against her neck, and let his sorrow overtake him. Instead, he went to the library and penned notes to his solicitors, to his siblings, and, after an attempt at deliberation that ended up being a spate of staring at a blank page, to Leonie.
***
Leah’s husband was being stubborn, in what she suspected was tradition for the earls of Bellefonte.
“Leah, I do not want to put you through this.”
What he clearly did not want was to burden his wife with further evidence of his grief.
“Nonsense.” Leah kept her voice down, though the corridor outside the small parlor housing the old earl’s remains was deserted. “I’ve seen bodies before, Nicholas, and I’ve also not seen bodies.”
He looked haunted, glancing up and down the carpeted hallway. “What does that mean?”
“My Charles wasn’t buried until I’d had a chance to hold him one last time,” Leah said, “though Aaron was taken back to his father’s house after the duel. I was not permitted to see him before they buried him. Both are equally dead, and I felt equal sorrow to lose them.”
Nick grimaced and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I have unpleasant associations with this sort of thing. When Ethan’s mother died, and my stepmother, and…”
He was not only stubborn and grieving, Leah suspected he was also… intimidated by the role he expected himself to fulfill. The idea that Nicholas, the most singularly self-possessed man she’d ever met, should face such a moment alone was untenable.
“What lies in the parlor is not your father, Nicholas. It’s a body that houses no life. You need not go in there.”
He searched her gaze, probably looking for tacit judgments. He would find none, not about this. He shoved away from the wall. “I’m his son. His heir.”
She took his hand, as he’d so often taken hers, and willed him all the reassurance and support within her. When Nick escorted her through the door, she saw that the parlor was rife with lilies, though thank God somebody had also opened the windows.
Nick’s grip on her hand was tight, probably tighter than he knew.
“He’s… dead,” Nick observed softly after a few silent moments. “There is no mistaking that pallor and that stillness.”
“He’s at peace,” Leah countered. “His body is dead.”
Nick’s grip eased, but she did not allow him to drop her hand.
While Nick made his final farewells to his father, Leah stood beside him and took courage from sharing the moment with him. For all their problems, they were man and wife. If Nick allowed her to remain by his side now, perhaps it boded well for their future.
“He would not want to be seen like this,” Nick said. He sounded so sad, so lost.
“He is disporting with his wives and mistresses, or so you told me.”
A ghost of a smile passed over Nick’s mouth. “Come, else I shall weep like a small boy missing the only person who could ever make me feel like a small boy, regardless of evidence to the contrary.” And yet he didn’t move and he didn’t give up Leah’s hand. “I don’t want to be Bellefonte,” Nick said softly. “I never wanted to be the earl.”
And maybe there was guilt here, for not wanting what his father would bequeath to him. That would be utter male nonsense, of course, but because it was Nick’s male nonsense, Leah shifted to embrace him.
“No loving son wants his father’s title, Nicholas, unless it’s to spare his father a greater sentence to a painful existence.”
Nick’s arms came around her slowly, maybe reluctantly. “Papa didn’t want the title either, and yet he was a fine earl, all things considered. A very fine earl.”
That was not nonsense. That was something Nick could hold close, as Leah held her husband close.
He shifted, so his arm was draped over her shoulders. “Come upstairs with me?”
As if she’d drift away from him now? “Of course.”
And yet, “upstairs” held a curious development. Being newly wed, Leah and her husband had been housed in Nick’s bedroom. Both of their trunks were empty and sitting open at the foot of Nick’s enormous bed. Well, they were married—and the earl’s chambers would require airing and possible redecoration.
Perhaps it simply hadn’t occurred to Nick to direct that Leah be quartered elsewhere. He was that distracted by his bereavement.
Leah sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the late earl.
“I’m of a mind to take a nap,” Nick said, si
tting down and tugging at his boots. “If you’d join me, I’d appreciate it.” Leah glanced at the bed and then back at Nick, but she couldn’t fathom the motivation for his request.
Maybe it was as simple as Nick being tired and unwilling to be alone.
Or perhaps he was aware, as Leah was, of how close they had come to declaring their marriage over before it had begun.
“A nap sounds fine.” Leah crossed the room and sat beside Nick, turning her back only when he’d finished with his boots. His fingers made short work of the hooks and eyes on her dress and the laces of her stays, but then he slid his arms around her waist and held on, a shudder passing through him, then a sigh.
“Off to bed with you,” Nick said, rising and drawing her to her feet. “I’ll be along shortly.”
Leah stripped down to her chemise while Nick undressed himself, but when she saw he intended to come to bed naked, she paused. What was this, and what did she want to do about it?
“I’m just getting comfortable,” Nick said, climbing onto the bed. “You could fill this bed with naked women, Leah, and at present, I could do justice to none of them.”
He was both rejecting her—not that she’d offered anything—and accepting her. She decided to focus on the acceptance, whipped off the chemise, and joined Nick on the bed.
Though that left at least five feet of cool mattress and bedding between them.
“Meet me in the middle?”
He was asking her for something, or maybe admitting that in these circumstances, he was entitled to the comfort of having a loyal wife. After a moment’s hesitation, Leah crab-flopped herself over a couple of feet and lay back, letting Nick take her hand in his.
“Let me hold you, Nicholas,” she said. “I just… I don’t want you to be alone in this bed, not today.”
He was in her arms in a heartbeat, his cheek resting against her breast, his thigh hiked over her legs. He let out the sigh to end all sighs, and closed his eyes, his lashes sweeping against her skin.