Nicola and the Viscount (10 page)

The study door closed firmly behind the housekeeper, and Nicola, alone again, was able to breathe freely once more. Hastily, she tucked the letters back where she'd found them. Climbing to her feet, she cast a swift glance around the room, wanting to make sure she'd left it as she'd found it. She saw nothing amiss. The only thing Lord Farelly might find different upon his return was his map, which would be missing. That was because Nicola had slipped it up her sleeve. The earl would surely wonder where it had disappeared to, but Nicola doubted she'd ever fall suspect of removing it. That was because she was, after all, a lady.

A lady who had a call to make, and at once, megrim or no.

He was late.

Nicola supposed she couldn't blame him. It wasn't as if, given their last meeting—or next-to-last meeting, as she supposed it had happened to be—he had much of an incentive, or possibly even desire, to see her.

Still, it was rude to leave a lady waiting. Particularly a lady who hadn't any sort of escort, and who was, with every passing moment, running the very grave danger of discovery. For if Lady Honoria—or, Lord forbid, her mother—should happen to arrive home before Nicola made it back, and found her gone, she would have some serious explaining to do. Ladies did not arrange surreptitious assignations with gentlemen in public parks…even with gentlemen to whom they might happen to be related.

“Spare a penny, miss?”

Nicola started. An old woman, wearing a heavy shawl about her head and shoulders—much too heavy, Nicola thought, given the late-afternoon warmth—stood beside the bench Nicola was seated upon, holding out a gnarled hand.

“A ha' penny?” the old woman asked hopefully. “Anything to spare, dearie?”

Nicola, her heart still drumming rapidly—given what had happened the last time she'd ventured into this very park, she thought it not at all unusual that she should feel so nervous—opened her reticule, found a penny, and laid it in the old woman's hand.

“Lord bless you,” the crone—for she
was
one, badly in need of a bit of cleaning up; had Nicola not been staying with the Bartholomews, she might have brought the woman home, and attempted it, for Nicola loved a project—said, and moved on to the couple occupying the next bench—a couple whom Nicola could not help noticing had either done a very good job of escaping their chaperon, or had just recently married, as they seemed unable to keep their hands to themselves, but instead were placing them all over one another. She had carefully chosen this bench because it was out of sight of the carriage path. Unfortunately, she was not alone in being desirous of such solitude. Thank goodness she and the God had a little more self-control than
some
people….

“Nicola?”

Nicola jumped about a mile in the air, then, flattening a hand to her chest, turned and chastised her cousin.

“You're late,” she said. “And you frightened me half to death.”

Looking churlish, and without waiting to ask permission, the Milksop lowered himself upon Nicola's bench, flipping the tails of his sage green coat out from behind him as he did so.

“I was holding a winning hand at whist,” the Milksop said irritably, “at my club when your message came. Did you expect me to just throw down my cards?” He made a face. “Don't answer that. Knowing you, I think I already know the answer to that.”

Nicola was not hurt. Nothing the Milksop could say could hurt her. She was, truth be told, more offended by his person than his attitude toward her. While the coat of sage green might, on anyone else, have looked passable, Harold had chosen to pair it with a tartan—
tartan
—waistcoat, and red—
red
—breeches. Even at Christmastime, Nicola would not have approved of such an outfit. She wondered, not for the first time, if perhaps the Milksop suffered from color-blindness.

“Would you mind telling me,” Harold wanted to know, “what was so all-fired important that you had to drag me from my club to meet you in all this secrecy, and in such a dreadfully out-of-the-way place?”

“Yes,” Nicola said. “I mean, no, I don't mind telling you. I mean…. ”

“Spare a penny, sir?”

The Milksop looked up and, just as Nicola had, started at the sight of the beggarwoman. Only unlike Nicola, he did not reach immediately into his pocket. Instead he said, “Ye gods, woman, what are you about, pawing me like that? Get away with you, or I shall call a Bow Street Runner and have you arrested for vagrancy.”

The old woman hurried away, muttering beneath her breath. Nicola thought—again, not for the first time—how much she despised her cousin Harold. Then, guiltily remembering that her own fiancé had reacted very much the same way to a much more appealing beggar, she reminded herself how vexing it was to constantly be approached with requests to share one's own hard-earned coin.

“What is the name of the man who wished to buy the abbey?” she demanded without further preamble, in an effort to put a quick end to their interview.

Harold turned to stare at her as if she were as demented as the poor creature whom he had just sent scurrying away. “You brought me all the way down here to ask me
that
?”

“Yes,” Nicola said. “Who was it?”

“Edward somebody. Oh, that's right. Pease. Edward Pease.”The Milksop's gaze roved toward the couple on the bench beside theirs. “Good Lord,” he said. “What's going on
here
?”

“Never mind that,” Nicola said. Her heart had seemed to give a spasm at his words—his first words, not the part about the kissing couple—as if an unseen hand had reached inside her chest and took hold of that organ and squeezed. Edward Pease. Edward Pease was the man who'd made the offer for her home. Edward Pease, who seemed to want to put a railroad between Killingworth and Stockton. The only thing standing in his way, it seemed, was Beckwell Abbey, and her unwillingness to sell it.

“Why all this interest in Pease all of a sudden?” Harold asked. Then his piggy eyes lit up. “Did you change your mind, then, about selling? Is that it? Want Father to contact the man, and go ahead with the sale? Because you've only to say the word, Nicola, and he'll do it for you. Father doesn't hold a grudge for the shabby way you've treated me. Though that's partly due to me, since I, of course, refrained from telling him the whole of your disgraceful behavior.”

Nicola, feeling the map in her sleeve, where she'd left it, said nothing. So it was true. That was all she could think. Everything Nathaniel had said was true. Harold, too, now that she thought of it. He'd said a fellow like the Viscount Farnsworth could never love a girl like Nicola. And it appeared he'd been right. Clearly the God was marrying her only out of some design of his father's, a friend of Edward Pease's, in order to help him get his hands on the abbey.

But no. It couldn't be. Nicola thought back to all the happy times she and Lord Sebastian had shared. No, it wasn't possible. It couldn't have all been feigned. The God had to like her a little. Even the most controlling parent couldn't force his son to propose to a girl he didn't like. Sebastian
had
to like her. He just
had
to. That part about Beckwell Abbey and Edward Pease…well, surely that was only a coincidence. Surely that was all it was.

Hardly knowing what she was doing, Nicola stood up and, without another word, began walking away. She was going, she supposed, back to the Bartholomews', but she did not consciously think of this until the Milksop reached out and seized her by the wrist.

“Nicola,” he said. “Where are you going? What's wrong with you? You send me running all the way down here to ask me some stupid fellow's name, and then that's it? You just leave me here?”

“I'm sorry, Harold,” Nicola said dazedly. “I—I suppose I'm not feeling very well just now. I…I think I had better go home.”

The Milksop looked torn between indignation and concern. He was still put out with her for what he considered her ill-treatment of him, but even he had to admit that, with her face suddenly drained of all color, she did not seem, just then, in her usual fighting form.

“Nicola,” he said. “Let me see you home, at least.”

Nicola didn't want him to—knowing the Milksop, he would probably invite himself for supper—-but as she really did feel very strange indeed, she allowed him to tuck her into his carriage and drive her back to the Bartholomews'…where she found, much to her consternation, both Lady Farelly and her daughter had preceded her home. They looked quite surprised that Nicola, who'd been in bed with a megrim when last they'd seen her, should have ventured outside, and with none other than the Milksop, whom she'd made no secret of detesting.

Nicola, even ill as she felt over her dreadful—and very confusing—discovery, was able to rally her spirits enough to think up a really capital lie to cover for her seemingly odd behavior. She told the ladies of the house that, having recovered from her headache, she'd remembered that she had something most pressing to discuss with her cousin, and that he'd very kindly met her in the park…where her megrim had unfortunately returned with a vengeance.

Both ladies seemed to find this monstrous lie quite believable. They urged Nicola to return to bed, which she did gladly, leaving the Milksop to the ministrations of the ladies Farelly. Things had gotten entirely too complicated too quickly for Nicola, and she honestly did feel ill. Madame Vieuxvincent, for all her careful teachings, had never said anything about how her pupils were to proceed in a situation such as this one.

Once safely ensconced in her room, Nicola allowed Martine to fuss over her, until, satisfied her mistress was comfortable, the maid withdrew to her own room, with the admonition that this time, Nicola stay abed.

Nicola was only too happy to oblige. She lay for nearly an hour beneath the bedcovers, staring unseeingly up at the filmy white canopy above her head. It couldn't be true, was all she could think. It simply couldn't. The God
had
to love her. He
had
to!

But supposing he didn't? Supposing Nathaniel was right? And Eleanor. What was it Eleanor had said? “What is the viscount like as a person?”

Nicola had to confess that, given this new, startling information, she couldn't, in all honesty, say. Or rather, she could: the viscount was the kind of man who wouldn't hesitate to strike an orphan in the head with his cane…or rob her of her only birthright.

No. No, she simply couldn't believe that. Not of Lord Sebastian. Not of the God!

All Nicola was sure of was that she couldn't possibly marry a man who didn't love her. No, not even the God. Some girls, she knew, might go ahead with the wedding, even suspecting what Nicola was beginning to. Some girls, Nicola supposed, would convince themselves they could
make
their husbands love them.

But what kind of marriage was that? That was not what Romeo and Juliet had had, or Tristan and Isolde, or Lochinvar and his beloved Ellen. Guenevere had been quite sure of the love of both Arthur
and
Lancelot. Although Nicola had never liked Guenevere, who had always seemed a bit feckless, she had, at least, identified with her much more than she'd ever identified with the lily maid of Astolat, who had died of unrequited love of Lancelot.

Now, suddenly, Nicola found she had a good deal more in common with that poor creature than she'd ever had with the queen of Camelot.

It was ridiculous. It was unconscionable. That
this
was what came of being a thistle, blown about by life…well, Nicola wouldn't stand for it. She was no lily maid of Astolat meekly to perish in the face of rejection. And she was no fickle-minded Guenevere, either. She was, she decided, much more like Joan of Arc, who unfortunately hadn't lived long enough to have a love affair…at least, not one that had been recorded.

But she had, of course, fought in a war. Which was precisely, Nicola decided, what this was. War.

And so, an hour after she'd been tucked into bed by her maid, Nicola threw back the bedclothes and leaped from it, prepared to gird for battle. It was no joke dressing by herself, as she dared not ring for Martine, whom she knew would only rebuke her for getting up. But Nicola managed all the stays and hooks and hairpins on her own, and when she inspected the result in the mirror, she found it adequate, if not particularly glamorous.

Then, striding across the room, she threw open her bedchamber door, stepped across the hallway, and started down the stairs.

She found him, as she'd known she would, at the bagatelle table in the library. He glanced up as she walked in, and said, “Oh, there you are. Mama said you were feeling a bit under the weather. Better now? Are you going to the opera tonight with us? I hope you will; you know how deadly dull I find it. I'll need you to nudge me awake, you know, if I nod off during the boring bits.”

Nicola did not reply to any of this. Instead she stood there with her hands at her sides—though really, in her mind's eye, she was holding both lance and staff—and said, “Lord Sebastian. I need to know. Do you love me?”

The God, who'd been leaning across the bagatelle table to make a difficult shot, looked up at her from beneath those long, golden eyelashes. “What?” he asked in a tone that was part amusement and part incredulity.

“It's a simple enough question,” Nicola said. “Do…you…love…me?”

The God straightened and, reaching for a piece of chalk, applied it to the tip of his bagatelle cue. The whole of the time, he did not take his blue-eyed gaze off Nicola.

“I'm marrying you, aren't I?” he asked, a distinct upward tilt to the corners of his lips.

“That's not an answer,” Nicola said.

The tilt disappeared. The God laid down the chalk and said, “Say, what
is
this? Prewedding jitters? Don't tell me you're thinking of backing out, Nicola. I'd look a right great chump in front of the other fellows if you did.”

“I asked you a simple question,” Nicola said unsmilingly. “And you still haven't given me an answer. Do you love me, Lord Sebastian, or don't you?”

“Why, of course I love you,” the God said in a wounded tone. “Though I must say, I've liked you better than I do just now. Whatever is the matter with you?”

“Why?”

“Well, because you're normally such a happy sort, and just now you seem rather out of sorts.”

“No,” Nicola said, with a glance at the ceiling as if for strength. “I mean, why do you love me?”