“What more could there possibly be?” Montagne asked, his lips parting in wonder.
Nicholas gave him time to prepare. “I wish to marry your daughter,” he said at last.
Montagne covered his mouth with a hand. “Good God. Which one?”
“Your eldest. Véronique.”
The man’s jaw fell open and he stared blankly at Nicholas, then looked around the study as if to ensure he was not dreaming, that all of this was really happening.
“Are you truly Prince Nicholas of Petersbourg?” he asked in disbelief. “The country? I do not understand how this can be real.”
Nicholas found himself somehow charmed by the man’s humility, and almost wanted to laugh and smack him firmly on the back to help him get the news down.
“It is very real, sir,” he replied with a smile. “I am sure you know that your daughter is an extraordinary young woman. Not only is she charming and beautiful, but she is also intelligent, capable, and strong. Needless to say, this entire experience has been bizarre, but she was a steady, calm presence throughout, and I found myself depending on her, confiding in her, trusting her. I have never known another woman who could compare to her in all the qualities that would make a woman a fine wife. She is a remarkable person, and I believe she is destined to be my bride.”
There. He had said all the right things—the words a father needed to hear when a man entered his home and asked permission to marry his daughter.
Were all those words true? Yes, Nicholas did believe Véronique was extraordinary, for no other woman had ever incited such impulsiveness in him before, or brought him even close to considering a life of matrimony.
He did not want to let her go, or lose her altogether. He had never felt that way about any other woman.
So this must be it, then, he thought. It had to be, for he felt somehow transformed.
“Well … of course my answer must be yes,” Montagne said, “for clearly you are an extraordinary man yourself, and what father does not want the very best for his daughter? If you love and respect Véronique as much as you claim, how could I possibly object?”
He had never said love.
Or had he?
Montagne rose to his feet and offered his hand. “I am most pleased, sir. Most pleased indeed!”
“As am I,” Nicholas replied. “I thank you for your generosity, monsieur.”
Montagne’s eyebrows flew up with laughter. “You are thanking me? Good heavens, man! You have it backwards! You have brought my daughters home to me, along with the deed to this property. I hardly know what to say. I cannot believe my luck!”
A sudden dark cloud rolled over Nicholas’s optimism. He waited for Montagne to sit down again.
With some concern, he took a seat himself and said, “It is not luck, sir. It is a direct result of your daughter’s personal sacrifice and devotion to you. Therefore, you must make a pledge to me when you accept this deed. You will give up the card table and never again take part in any sort of wager. You mustn’t lose everything to this dangerous vice of yours—which has very nearly ruined all of you. There will never be a second chance like this, and I assure you, if you repeat such a blunder, I will wash my hands of you.”
Montagne’s whole face seemed to crumple and sink like a mound of melting wax. His eyes lowered slightly and he stared at Nicholas’s chest.
Not entirely sure what was going through the man’s mind, Nicholas leaned forward. “Are you feeling unwell, sir?”
When Monsieur Montagne’s eyes lifted, they were gleaming pools of wetness. “I apologize. You are right, and I cannot possibly convey my gratitude and my shame to you. I have been a weak and irresponsible husband and father. I know it. I have known it for a long time, while I watched my family suffer. My wife, especially. I do not wish to continue down that path or repeat my mistakes. I feel that today God has offered me a chance to redeem myself. I do not wish to squander it. I shall not take this gift lightly, sir. I promise you. I love my family dearly, and I regret the pain I have caused them.” Montagne lowered his head into his hands and wept.
Nicholas sat quietly until his future father-in-law recovered, then laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know you are a good man,” he said. “Otherwise, you would not have raised such a lovely daughter, and for that I congratulate you.”
Montagne looked up. “You are a kind and generous soul,” he said. “I am in awe of your charity and your compassion, your integrity as a great man of honor. I feel truly blessed on this day.”
Suddenly speechless, Nicholas sat back. No one had ever praised him in such grand terms before—not since before his mother died. He was always the black sheep, the cad, the scoundrel, the selfish, irresponsible rake who seduced women for his own pleasures without a single care for their hearts or virtues.
Kind and generous soul?
“Perhaps we should return to the parlor now,” Nicholas suggested, “and raise our glasses to celebrate your daughter’s engagement.”
Montagne’s eyes filled with tears again. He pressed a fist to his mouth, as if he could not contain his emotions. “Yes, that sounds like a fine idea.”
As they stood to leave the room, Nicholas clasped his hands behind his back. “Since we are on the topic of marriage,” he said, “I understand your other daughter, Gabrielle, is in love with a viscount’s son who lives nearby?”
“Yes,” Montagne replied. “They have been sweethearts for years, but the boy’s father is uppity. He doesn’t approve of us, for we are merely country bumpkins in his eyes. We don’t move about in Parisian society as he does. I have nothing against Robert, of course. He is a decent young fellow, nothing at all like his father. He prefers country living to all the trappings of Paris.”
“I should like to meet the viscount,” Nicholas said as they crossed the front hall. “Perhaps Véronique and I could pay a call tomorrow to inform them of our good news. They are your neighbors, after all.”
They reached the parlor just then, and when Nicholas set eyes on his future bride, he experienced an unfamiliar mix of pride and desire.
She would soon be his—he could not wait for the moment he would bed her—but he also wondered what he had done to deserve a woman like her. Pure, intelligent, steady as a rock, and beautiful. Then he heard his dead father’s voice in his ears.…
You are a wild, irresponsible, degenerate young buck. I hope you never marry, for you will be a worthless adulterer. I pity the woman who becomes your wife.
With a sharp pang of agitation, Nicholas glanced around at the others in the room, his future family by marriage, and felt suddenly adrift in uncharted territory—with people who actually thought highly of him.
* * *
Véronique tossed and turned for hours in her bed that night, for her body was wide awake.
Before dinner, Nicholas had received her father’s permission to marry her and had informed him of the return of their property. He’d called it a groom’s gift to his future in-laws.
Nicholas had no parents of his own to bestow gifts upon—he mentioned it after the toast was made—and Véronique had fallen a little more in love with him at that moment, for what a hero he had become in all their eyes. Until now, she had been working hard to resist such feelings, and remain practical about this marriage arrangement, but suddenly she felt like a romantic fool, and since climbing into bed, a storm of lust had taken over her body.
By two o’clock in the morning, she gave up the fight. She tossed the covers aside, reached for her dressing gown, lit a candle, and carried it into the dark corridor.
She padded down the hall to the green guest chamber where Nicholas was sleeping, and knocked gently. She waited a moment or two.
Perhaps that knock was not loud enough. Véronique rapped a second time and pressed her ear to the door.
The sound of the mattress creaking and a husky groan from inside were evidence of Nicholas’s awakening, and just the image of him turning over in his bed rekindled the fires of her passions.
He stirred from within and she stepped back, candle in hand, as he walked across the floor. At last the doorknob turned, and she found herself standing before him on the threshold—staring at her gorgeous fiancé in the flesh, his nightshirt open at his chest, his hair tousled from sleep.
“I needed to see you,” she explained.
“Why?” But his gaze simmered with an expert awareness of her desires, like a wolf scenting blood on the wind.
“May I come in?” she asked.
He opened the door wider and stepped aside.
“So it is official now,” she said as she set her candle down on a table and shrugged out of her robe. “We are engaged.”
“Yes, we are,” he replied, moving closer. “Your father gave us his blessing. Now there is only the small matter of a licence and a wedding, and vows spoken before God. Then we will be man and wife.”
“Sharing the same bed,” she boldly added.
He stopped and slid a suspicious look at her. “Is that why you are here, darling? To pull the trigger before the powder has been loaded?”
She smiled. “An interesting metaphor, but I am not the one who will fire the musket. That is man’s work.”
He chuckled. “Now you are being facetious. You and I both know you are quite capable of firing a musket. You are the one, after all, who just charged into my bedchamber uninvited in the dead of night.”
“Perhaps.” She slowly approached him and laid her open palms on his muscular chest. Sliding her hands up to his shoulders, she wet her lips as a passionate infatuation for him sparked in her blood. She wanted him with impossible yearning, and didn’t care that they were not yet married, or that her parents were asleep in their beds—she hoped—a few doors down.
“You shouldn’t have come in here,” he warned, the words sensible and responsible, but contradicting the blatant seduction she saw in his luminous blue eyes. “I should send you back to your room without supper.”
“And with a spanking as well?” she asked, not knowing from where that improper allusion had come.
“Only if you ask nicely.”
Then his mouth covered hers in a forceful kiss that made the room spin in circles. His mouth was hot, wet, and demanding, and she felt completely swept away.
Smoothly, he pushed her toward the bed, eased her down, and settled his heavy muscled body on top of hers. “How else would you like me to punish you tonight,” he asked, “now that you are here?”
It was too much for her innocent mind to comprehend. She was shocked by the intensity of her desires, for putting herself in the position of being ravished by a masterful libertine who was no doubt accustomed to women knocking on his door at all hours of the night, their bodies blazing with need. And he knew just how to satisfy, how to flirt, how to draw a woman into his delicious sensual world, and make her do things she never imagined she would do.
Such as offering her body to him before the marriage certificate was signed.
Nicholas began to slide her nightdress up over her knees, then stroked her thigh. She parted her legs for him and knew that this time, she would not stop him from claiming her as his bride, for she wanted him with an urgency she could not suppress.
He found the damp center of her womanhood, and she arched her back at the pleasure of his touch. He stroked the tingling outer flesh—slick with the moisture of her arousal—and gently fingered the sensitive bud until she gasped with delight and surrendered to the sweet floating sensations that carried her into some sort of fantasy world.
Before long, the pleasure rose to a peak, exploded, and trembled through her in an unexpected climax, which left her panting on the bed. Only when she opened her eyes did she realize that Nicholas was watching her intently in the silvery moonlight streaming in through the windows.
“Are you going to make love to me now?” she asked.
The seduction was gone from his eyes, however. She almost did not recognize him as he shook his head. “No, darling, I am going to do something else—something completely out of character for me.”
“What is that?” She rose up on her elbows while he lowered her nightdress to cover her knees.
“I am going to do the gentlemanly thing,” he replied, “and send you back to your room, because I intend to wait until our wedding night to take your virginity.”
Véronique frowned. “Don’t you want me?” She felt utterly bereft as he stood and offered his hand to her.
“Of course I do,” he assured her. “You are everything to me.”
She recognized the practised delivery of the response—the way he flattered her in order to dodge a bullet, so that he would not have to engage in an honest conversation.
“Why, then, do you want to wait?” she pressed. “I am surprised, Nicholas. I thought you never turned a lady away.”
Now on her feet, she faced him.
“You are not just any lady,” he told her, as he took her chin in his hand. “You are my future wife, and if I had any sense in my head, I would have rejected you at the door when you first arrived.”
She was hurt by the sudden chill in his voice. “Why?”
“Because you do not appreciate the concessions I am making for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
He looked away coldly. “If we were back in my own world, I would have deprived you of your innocence tonight without a second thought. But I do not want to be that man. Not with you.”
She saw the torment in his eyes and laid a hand on his cheek, but he removed it.
“Do you know what my father used to call me?” he asked.
Shaking her head, she waited apprehensively for him to explain.
“I am not sure where to begin, actually, for there was always an endless string of nasty words put together. Wastrel. Sinner. Worthless degenerate. Future adulterer. I could go on.”
The mood in the room turned suddenly dark and somber.
“I do not believe any of those things,” she firmly told him. “For even after what I did to you, and how I deceived you, you have behaved honorably and kindly toward me and my family.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed in defeat. “Ah, I fear you are mistaken in your opinions of me, Véronique. You don’t know me at all. And you have done nothing but wreak havoc on my existence since the first moment we met. On that night you took away my freedom, yet for some reason I have agreed to a lifetime of it. I should hate you for all this. So count your blessings that I am choosing a path of restraint tonight. Go now, before I change my mind and throw you back on the bed.”
She had come here wanting just that, to be ravished by her future husband who had been her hero tonight, but the harsh tone of his voice and the anger in his eyes forced her to take a step back, away from him. “You haven’t forgiven me,” she said.
His chest heaved while he seemed to weigh his emotions. “Perhaps I should be grateful to you for lifting the veil on my true heritage, but I believe, in the process, you have snapped me in two. I now feel like a broken bone that must be wrenched back into place, and I need something to bite on to keep from screaming my lungs out.”
He was referring to his parentage. Before now he had revealed very little angst about that revelation. He seemed almost indifferent to it, but clearly it had affected him more than he let on.
“It will take some time to adjust to everything,” she said, “and understand who you really are.”
“Yes,” he replied, though he said it through clenched teeth.
She decided it would be best to respect his wishes and leave. She started for the door. “I won’t come to you again until we are married,” she told him, “for I do not wish to cause any further … havoc.”
She wrapped her hand around the doorknob and opened it a crack, only to be startled by his sudden rush to push it closed.
He had done this when he proposed, and she reveled in the familiar sensation of his tall, hard body brushing up against the back of hers, preventing her from leavin
g his bedchamber.
She felt his breath on her neck. “Thank you,” he whispered.
For what? For leaving? For promising not to return any time soon?
Or for disagreeing with your father’s cruel words?
She closed her eyes and knew in that moment that this man needed her, that no one else in the world could understand what he’d been through, or give him what she could.
He stepped back and she felt the cool air on her shoulder blades as he withdrew. Then she pulled the door open and returned to her own bedchamber.
Chapter Seventeen
The following day dawned with an idyllic pink sunrise over the mist-shrouded forest to the east, and sparkling drops of dew that gleamed on the southern meadows. By noon, the sun had risen high in the sky and a steady breeze was blowing over the treetops.
“It is so good of you to pay a call to our neighbors,” Gabrielle said as they sat together in the coach, traveling through the thick forest and crossing the border onto Richelieu land. “They will be thrilled to meet you. Don’t you agree, Véronique?”
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “I am sure they will be very pleased to meet Nicholas.” For they were shameless social climbers, and he was a shiny royal prince.
It galled her to think that Lord Richelieu and his wife deserved such a boon when they had treated Gabrielle so deplorably all these years. She had never been good enough for their beloved eldest son.
Véronique would not bother with any of this if it were not for Robert, who was nothing like his father. He was friendly and forthcoming, and he paid calls often when he was out riding, simply to ask after her parents, or to help her father with estate errands and chores. He had even chopped wood once, for the mere pleasure of it.
He loved Gabrielle. Véronique was certain of it. Unfortunately, recent events had sparked some doubt in her, for what if he had never intended to marry Gabby, but wanted only to sow his youthful wild oats until it was time to choose a “real” wife?
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