Nicola and the Viscount (3 page)

“Nicola,” the Grouser said somberly, giving her fingers the barest of squeezes before dropping them. “I see you are looking well…except for some freckles along the nose. Shame about that. You should be more careful. Sun damage can permanently ruin a lady's complexion. Still, you should count yourself fortunate that you have not, as I have, succumbed to the ague that is sweeping through this wretched town.”

As if to emphasize his words, the Grouser reached into his waistcoat pocket, withdrew a large linen handkerchief, and blew his nose into it loudly and lengthily, causing Nicola to regret having touched his hands a moment before, as doubtlessly they'd spent plenty of time recently in the vicinity of his nostrils.

While Lord Renshaw was suffering his latest round of ague, Nicola turned her attention toward his son, Harold Blenkenship—or the Milksop, as Nicola preferred to call him, though never to his face, of course. Harold, a dandy of the first order, always took the time to turn himself out in the finest and most up-to-date fashions, however hideous they might look on him, though he seldom seemed to take the time to make similar improvements to his mind, which was of a taciturn, sullen bent. Today the Milksop was wearing a velvet waistcoat and matching breeches in a startling shade of chartreuse. He looked, to Nicola's way of thinking, perfectly hideous. But he didn't seem to know it as he preened before a looking glass at the far end of the room.

“Good morning, Harold,” Nicola called to her cousin. “How are you today?”

The Milksop turned casually from his inspection of himself, then halted as abruptly as if he had been struck as his gaze fell upon Nicola. It took Nicola a moment to realize what had startled him so. He was used to seeing her in braids. It was the first time the Milksop had seen her with her hair dressed as a proper lady's ought to be. He looked as if he might faint from the shock of it. Nicola would not have been surprised if he had. Once, on a visit to Beckwell Abbey, the Milksop had fainted at the sight of a two-headed calf that had been born, and lived briefly, at one of the nearby farms. Though Nicola had been only six at the time, she had found her cousin's behavior low-spirited in the extreme, and had silently christened him the Milksop as he lay in the hay and muck of the barn floor, moaning, until Farmer McGreevey poured a bucket of trough water on his head and thus revived him.

“Ni-Nicola,” the Milksop stammered now, staring at her as if she, too, had grown a second head. “I…I…”

Since it seemed unlikely she was going to get anything sensible out of Harold, Nicola turned toward her guardian and said politely, “Not that I am anything but delighted to see you, Lord Renshaw, but I am due to leave for a garden party shortly.”This was a lie, as the garden party was not to start for several hours, but as Nicola supposed the Grouser had never been invited to a garden party in his life, she doubted he would know what time they usually began. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

Lord Renshaw had put away his handkerchief. He cleared his throat several times before saying, “Oh, yes. Yes. Well, you see, Nicola, something rather wonderful has happened.”

“Really?” Nicola raised her eyebrows and looked from Lord Renshaw to his heir. She could not imagine what sort of event Lord Renshaw would consider wonderful, but considering how dreadfully boring he was, she supposed he was only going to tell her that there was a sale on merino wool at Grafton House. “And what would that be, my lord?”

And then Lord Renshaw did something so out of his normal character that Nicola, in her shock, quite forgot to keep her shoulders thrown back and her head held high. That was because, for the first time in all the years she'd known him, the Grouser actually smiled.

“We've had an offer, my dear,” he said. The smile was not a very good one. It was almost like a puppet smile, as if someone unseen above Lord Renshaw's head were pulling invisible threads connected to the sides of his mouth, causing them to turn upward, instead of down. It was, in fact, a rather frightening smile. Nicola found that she wished the Grouser hadn't attempted it at all.

Still, she asked gamely, “An offer, my lord? Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, for the abbey, of course.” The smile, to Nicola's horror, grew even broader. “An offer to purchase Beckwell Abbey.”

“Beckwell Abbey isn't for sale.”

That was how Nicola had replied to her guardian's extraordinary statement that he had had an offer on her home.
Beckwell Abbey isn't for sale.

It was a simple statement, but a true one. Thinking back on it, as she danced with the God that evening at Almack's, Nicola couldn't imagine how she could have put it plainer.
Beckwell Abbey isn't for sale.
End of conversation.

Except of course it hadn't been. Because the Grouser had gone on and on, explaining that Nicola was mad not even to consider the offer. For the abbey was a rambling, somewhat dilapidated structure that looked its age, which was considerable, and had the misfortune of being located only ten miles from Killingworth, a town near which coal had been discovered, and which now hosted a colliery, a coal mine over which a gray haze could be seen to hang on days when the sky was otherwise clear. She would never get a better offer for the abbey, and this one, at twelve thousand pounds, was really very generous.

Still, its state of disrepair and unfortunate proximity to a coal mine notwithstanding, Beckwell Abbey was home, and not just to Nicola, but to Nana and Puddy, and a half dozen tenant farmers, as well.

“But the offer is for twelve thousand pounds, Nicola,” the Grouser had explained excitedly—or as excitedly as the Grouser was capable of saying anything, which wasn't very. “Twelve thousand pounds!”

Twelve thousand pounds was, of course, a staggering sum of money, considering that Nicola had barely a hundred pounds a year upon which to live. She might, as the Grouser was quick to point out, live comfortably for the rest of her life on the interest alone of that twelve thousand pounds, if it was invested wisely.

Except that Lord Renshaw was missing the point: Beckwell Abbey was not for sale. Nor, Nicola added, as she repeated this, was any of the land upon which it sat. The tenant farmers depended on Nicola's renting them her land for their sheep. Where were the poor things to graze if they hadn't access to the abbey's fields?

“Sheep?” the Grouser had burst out when Nicola had put this question to him. “Who cares about
sheep
? You foolish girl, we're talking about
twelve thousand pounds
.”

Nicola, who did not appreciate being called a foolish girl to her face, could not quite understand what her decision to sell or not to sell had to do with the Grouser. It wasn't as if he would be enjoying any of the profits, since the abbey was hers. In any case, she had politely—Madame had instructed her girls very sternly that politeness was essential in all conversations, particularly ones with unpleasant relations—informed the Grouser that she hadn't the slightest intention of selling, and that he might give this prospective buyer her sincerest regrets.

To say that the rage this simple statement threw the Grouser into was extreme was as much an understatement as to say that the crowd here at Almack's tonight was packed in as tightly as fish in a barrel. Nicola had quite thought her guardian would bite her head off. She listened to his ranting for a little while, then eventually stopped, and thought instead about Lord Sebastian, and his robin's egg–blue eyes. How much more pleasant to think of the God than of the Grouser!

“You seem far away, Miss Sparks.”

The deep voice, drifting across the dance floor, roused Nicola from her thoughts. She looked up and found herself looking into the very same eyes she'd been trying so hard to picture that morning during her unpleasant interview.
Good heavens!
This morning, all she'd been able to think about while talking with the Grouser had been the God, and here she was, dancing with the God, and all she could think of was the Grouser! How perfectly morbid.

“I
am
sorry,” Nicola apologized, as they waited their turn to make their way down the line of dancers on either side of them. “I was only thinking about my guardian. He told me this morning that someone wants to buy Beckwell Abbey.”

“Well, that's a good thing,” the God replied. He was gazing about the room, his earlier protests that he longed for some fresh air evidently forgotten, since he looked to be enjoying himself immensely, despite the closeness of the room. “Isn't it?”

Nicola didn't shrug, because that, of course, wouldn't be ladylike. Instead she said, “I can't see how.”

“Oh, well.”The God held out his arm, as it was their turn to promenade. “If the offer wasn't good enough, by all means, you've got to turn it down. Like this fellow at Tatt's today. Tried to sell me a horse he claimed was all right, but even a blind man could tell it was swaybacked.”

Nicola tried telling him that it wasn't that the offer hadn't been good enough; it was the
principle
of the thing. But apparently the God was not capable of deep conversation while also concentrating on a quadrille, since he looked a bit baffled. It was only later, having spied Eleanor entering the assembly rooms with her family, that Nicola was able to share her concerns with someone who was able to offer a sympathetic ear and heart.

“Oh, Nicky, how odious,” Eleanor cried. “The Milksop, too? What was he wearing?”

“Chartreuse velvet,” Nicola said, and had to wait patiently for her friend's laughter to die down before going on, “I just don't understand it.”

“Oh,” Eleanor said. “I know. Chartreuse never looks good on anyone.”

“No,” Nicola corrected her friend. “Not about that. About the abbey. Why would anyone want Beckwell Abbey? It makes no sense.”

“Still, twelve thousand pounds.” Eleanor shook her head. “It's an awful lot of money, Nicky.”

Nicola turned a stricken gaze upon her friend.
“Et tu, Brute?”
she asked. But Eleanor only looked confused.

“Oh, Eleanor,” Nicola cried. “From
Julius Caesar
. Don't you remember? We studied it only last term!”

Eleanor shook her head. “How can you talk about Roman emperors at a time like this? Twelve thousand pounds could keep you in new lace mittens for years and years, Nicky.”

It was at that moment that the God walked up with two cups of punch, one of which he gave to Nicola.

“Here you are, Miss Sparks,” he said. “Beastly stuff, but it does the trick.”

Nicola, catching Eleanor's congratulatory look, merely smiled and sipped her punch. She supposed she oughtn't feel so wretched. After all, here she was, having punch with the handsomest man in the room.

Still, it was a little unsettling that no one—
no one
—understood how she felt. She was thinking to herself,
I suppose I
am
being childish. I mean, it's true that I need the money more than the sheep need the grass. And I could always use a portion of that twelve thousand pounds to set Nana and Puddy up comfortably somewhere else, after all,
when Eleanor inhaled sharply and dug her elbow into Nicola's ribs, causing her almost to spill the contents of her punch glass down the front of the God's godly white shirt.

“Look,” Eleanor said in a hiss, gazing across the room with a shocked expression on her face. “He's here!”

Nicola, assuming
he
meant the Prince of Wales, since it couldn't possibly mean the God, as he was standing there beside them, lifted a hand to her hair to assure herself that her ribbons were still in place. It would not do, she knew, to meet the Prince of Wales with her hair ribbons hanging down. Oh, if only she'd been able to get her hands on some face powder! Those freckles would be the end of her.

But then she saw that it wasn't a prince at all elbowing his way toward them through the crowd.

“Stuff and bother,” she said irritably. Because the Milksop was bearing down upon them at full speed.

Unbidden, her mind flew back to earlier that day, when the Grouser, having taken his leave of Nicola—in a thick cloud of disapproval—stalked from the room, leaving her alone with his odious son.

The Milksop, seeming to have recovered the use of speech, which he'd lost at the sight of Nicola without her braids, had asked her unctuously, “You'll be at Almack's tonight?”

“Of course,” she had replied, in some surprise. The Milksop had rarely, if ever, deigned to speak to her after that incident in the cowshed. In fact, this was the first time in nine years Nicola could remember him having said anything to her other than hello and good-bye.

But her astonishment was only to increase a hundredfold when the Milksop went on to ask, with a smile she supposed he'd been told was charming, but which she thought perfectly suspect, “Then will you save the first dance for your cousin?”

Nicola only barely managed to keep herself from asking curiously, “Which cousin?” before realizing he meant
himself
. The Milksop! The Milksop, who had never looked at Nicola with anything but contempt and disapproval for what he'd called her hoydenish ways—Nicola having had, in her childhood, an extreme love of mud tossing and tree climbing—had actually asked her to save a dance for him! What kind of ague had consumed him that he could, even for a moment, consider dancing with Nicola, whom he'd never made a secret of despising, especially after her having witnessed that famous faint?

“Oh. Er. Um,” Nicola stammered, perfectly unable to think how to reply. She was not accustomed to odious young men asking for her hand in a dance hours and hours before the actual event.

Then, with a rush of relief, she remembered the God, and was thrilled to be able to reply, demurely as well as truthfully, “Oh, I
am
sorry, Harold. But my first dance for tonight is already taken.”

Harold began to look a little unsure of himself. Clearly he had thought Nicola would leap at the chance to dance with a young man as well turned out and stylish as he was. What woman wouldn't?

But he rallied enough to ask, “The last dance, then?”

Lord bless the viscount. He really
was
a god.

“Oh, bad luck, Harold,” Nicola said with a kind smile. “That one's taken, as well.”

An expression grew across the Milksop's ferretlike face that Nicola didn't recognize. That was because it was the first time she'd ever seen that particular emotion on her cousin's face. It turned out to be determination.

She ought to have known what his next question would be, but still, when it actually came, she was surprised. For a fainter, the Milksop was terribly persistent.

“The Sir Roger, then?” Harold asked in a deceptively light tone.

She couldn't believe it. He'd foiled her! Because if she claimed to be engaged for the Sir Roger de Coverley—a rowdy country dance that was
de rigueur
at balls all over England, and even, Nicola supposed, the Continent—and then she ended up, as occasionally happened, without a partner for it, he would know that she'd lied. She had no choice but to say, “That would be delightful, Harold.”

And now here he was, coming to claim her hand for the Sir Roger, the first strains of which she could hear the orchestra playing. And though he had changed out of the chartreuse velvet and into finely cut evening clothes, they were still of a shocking shade of aubergine that only brought out the paleness of the Milksop's…well, milky white skin.

“Oh, you poor thing,” Nicola heard Eleanor breathe, and then Harold was upon them, exuding milksoppiness.

“Nicola,” he said, bowing too low before her, so that his face almost brushed the knees of his purple breeches. “You look exceptionally lovely tonight.”

Nicola felt her cheeks begin to burn, and not from the closeness of the room, either.

“Good evening, Harold,” she said, wishing that this morning, just this once, she'd worn her braids down instead of up. She was convinced this would have made all the difference in Harold's new attitude toward her.

The God, much to her chagrin, was regarding the Milksop with faintly raised eyebrows and a disbelieving expression, as if he could not quite decide what to make of the young man in the purple suit. Nicola could not blame him. She had never been certain what to make of Harold herself.

“Shall we?” Harold asked, holding out a hand that was almost as pale and slender as her own.

A lady, Madame Vieuxvincent had instructed her pupils, always accepted the inevitable with graciousness. Closing her eyes because she did not think she could bear it any other way, Nicola raised her hand to lay it in the Milksop's…

…and felt her fingers grasped by what seemed far too warm and sure a grip to be Harold's.

Her eyelids fluttering open, Nicola found herself looking up into Nathaniel Sheridan's clear, hazel-eyed gaze.

“Nicky,” Eleanor's brother said in a chiding voice. “I can't leave you alone for two minutes without your giving away my dances to someone else, can I?”

Nicola was entirely too taken aback to reply. Whatever was Nathaniel talking about, her giving away his dances? He hadn't asked her to save any dances for him.

The Milksop seemed as confused as Nicola felt.

“Miss Sparks promised
me
the Sir Roger this morning, sir,” he bleated indignantly up at Nathaniel, who stood a good head and a half taller than Harold.

“Well, Miss Sparks promised it to
me
last week,” Nathaniel said.

And without another word, he pulled Nicola out to the dance floor, where they joined a group of other couples.

It took Nicola a moment or two before she was able to collect herself enough to ask Nathaniel just what he supposed he'd been doing, cutting in on her cousin in such a manner. The hostesses at Almack's were far stricter than Madame Vieuxvincent had ever been, and would brook no sort of disagreeableness from their guests, especially difficulties over dances and dancing partners. Woe be it to a girl who agreed to a waltz, the daring new dance from the Continent, without the direct permission of one of the hostesses. And woe be it to a girl about whom a gentleman complained of having been cut. If the Milksop said anything to anyone, Nicola would be in no end of trouble.