Nicola and the Viscount (6 page)

Openmouthed with astonishment, Nicola could only stare at the Milksop. Had he—or was it her imagination?—just proposed to her?

“Oh, yes, Nicky,” Harold said much too loudly, so that the people in the carriages passing by theirs—for Harold had already caused a disruption in the flow of traffic around the park by stopping in the middle of the track—looked at them curiously. “You heard me correctly. We're getting married. I've already asked Father, and he's all for it. He intends to post the banns at once.”

Nicola, thoroughly nonplussed, gripped the sides of the phaeton and said to herself,
Whatever you do, don't laugh. Don't laugh, Nicola.

But it was too late. A bubble of throaty laughter came welling up from deep inside and burst from her before she could stop it.

As she'd expected, the Milksop didn't at all appreciate his proposal being laughed at. He said with a forbidding glare, “I'm quite serious, Nicola. And I would be a little more circumspect in my reaction, if I were you. You aren't likely to receive many proposals, you know, a girl in your position.”

“Oh, Harold,” Nicola cried, reaching up to wipe tears of laughter from the corners of her eyes. “I
am
sorry. But you can't mean it. You know we shouldn't suit one another at all.”

“I fail to see why not.” Noticing finally the annoyed stares he was getting from the drivers of other vehicles on the path, Harold at last released his team, and they began again to circle the park. “We have a great deal in common, you and I.”

Nicola was tempted to ask just what, precisely, the Milksop thought they shared in common, but decided against it. She wasn't at all convinced she could keep herself from chortling through his answer.

“Harold, it would never do,” she settled for saying gently instead. For, much as she disliked him, she could not help feeling sorry for him. That he should love her enough to want to marry her…well, that she had never imagined. She was very sorry she'd laughed at him earlier.

“Why not?” Harold wanted to know. “I'm…well, fond of you.”

And with that, Nicola stopped feeling sorry for Harold.
Fond
of her? He was
fond
of her? She hadn't the slightest interest in marrying him, but she couldn't help thinking that if she had been so inclined, he'd have killed any such feeling right there. As a suitor, poor Harold was woefully inadequate. Where were the protestations of undying love, the flowers, the compliments? Why, he had not said so much that he thought her pretty!

Good Lord
. He really was
such
a milksop.

“And Nicola, if you're thinking of saying no, I suggest you think again. You are going to have to face facts,” the Milksop went on. “With an income as small as yours, you really aren't likely to receive any better offers.”

Nicola thought fleetingly of the God, and the way he'd flung his arm around her that day on the
Catch Me Who Can
. She thought of the number of times he'd asked her to dance, and how very well he'd looked each time, how manly and neat in his well-cut coats of muted colors. She recalled how
he
wasn't afraid to swim. After all, he'd been on his college's rowing team. Punts tipped, did they not? Oarsmen, therefore, of necessity learned to swim.

“I have two thousand a year from my mother,” the Milksop informed her matter-off-actly. “And one day, of course, I'll be a baron. I don't think a girl in your position can expect a better offer. It really would behoove you, Nicky, to give my proposal serious consideration. There aren't many men, I assure you, who'd be willing to take on a girl who not only hasn't a cent to her name, but is as…well…
headstrong
as you. Most men don't like a woman who does things like…well, ride behind steam engines in a public square.”

The Milksop was making it more and more difficult for Nicola to feel sorry for him. Soon, in fact, she'd positively hate him.

“Not
all
men would dislike it,” she couldn't help pointing out with some venom. “Lord Sebastian, for instance.”

No sooner were the words out of Nicola's mouth than she wished them unsaid. But there was, of course, no help for it. The Milksop heard, and was immediately struck by not so much what she'd said, but the way she'd said it, if the startled glance he threw her was any indication.

“Lord Sebastian?” he echoed. “You mean the viscount?”

Nicola gave a brief nod—there was nothing, she supposed, that she could do about it now. She only prayed Harold would not figure out the worst of it…her true feelings for the God.

Suddenly it was Harold's turn to laugh. Really. He did so, heartily and much to the apparent shock of the horses, who had clearly never heard their owner make such a noise before, as they'd turned back their ears and were rolling their eyes around in confusion.

“Lord Sebastian!” the Milksop cried. “Oh, Nicola! You can't seriously think for a moment that the viscount has the slightest interest in you. Not
honestly
.”

Now Nicola felt even angrier than she had over his remarks concerning her behavior in Euston Square. A surge of rage went through her that was quite as strong as the one she'd experienced the time he tried to prevent her going swimming. Only this time, unfortunately, she could not box his ears, because they were in public, and she was, thanks to a decade of Madame Vieuxvincent's tireless teachings, a lady.

“For your information,” Nicola, perhaps unwisely, but nevertheless quite coldly, said, “the viscount and I are close friends.
Very
close friends.”

“Yes,” the Milksop said, sounding less and less, each time he spoke, like the Milksop, and more and more like a stranger, someone she had never met before, let alone was related to. “I saw how
close
you two have grown that day at Euston Square.”

Nicola, in spite of herself, blushed. She knew she ought not to have allowed the viscount to keep his arm around her the way she had. But he'd done it only out of a desire to protect her, that was all. Fighting her embarrassment, she said stubbornly, “Then you see what I mean, don't you, Harold?”

“Nicola.” Harold looked down at her very seriously. He was not handsome. He was too weak-chinned, and his eyes too small, ever to be called that. But when he looked very serious, as he did just then, it was hard to recognize him as the same person who for so many years Nicola had disparaged. There seemed to be a streak of stubbornness in him that Nicola had never recognized before, a streak that had nothing to do with courage or even spirit, but was nevertheless as indomitable as either of those qualities.

“You had better get it through your head that Lord Sebastian Bartholomew is never going to ask a penniless little-miss-nobody like you to marry him,” Harold said with chilling certainty. “No matter how many times she lets him put his arm around her.”

Nicola, outraged by this, stood up in the phaeton, not caring if she tumbled out and met her death beneath a thousand hooves on the dirt path below.

“That's it,” she declared. “That is
it
. Stop this carriage at once.”

The Milksop, looking more like his usual pale, scared self, hauled on the reins.

“Nicola!” he cried. “Are you mad? Sit down!”

But Nicola didn't sit down. Instead, the minute the phaeton came to a halt, she clambered down from it unaided. The hem of her gown caught on one of the wheel spokes and tore, and she didn't even care. She merely yanked it free, turned around, and dashed across the carriage path, barely saving herself from being crushed by a passing chaise-and-four.

“Nicola!” thundered the Milksop from his driving seat. “Nicola, come back here!”

But Nicola didn't come back. She didn't care if she had to walk the whole of the way home. She would gladly have walked all the way to Newcastle if it meant she'd never again have to be in the company of Harold Blenkenship.

As it was only just past noon, Hyde Park was teeming with visitors. It was no easy task, walking along the edge of the carriage path without getting knocked down. But she could not venture into the trees on either side of the path, as she'd heard footpads haunted them. She didn't care to have her reticule torn from her, for all it contained only fifty pence and a few hairpins.

Still, she was vastly relieved when, from behind her, she heard a voice calling her name. It was not a voice belonging to the Milksop, who could not leave his carriage to chase after her on foot…not if he wanted to find his phaeton where he'd left it, as the park was teeming not just with those with the urge to see and be seen, but some less savory individuals as well—footpads after bigger game than ladies' reticules. No, this voice belonged to a lady.

Nicola turned and was delighted to see Eleanor, her brother Nathaniel, and another man looking down at her in some astonishment from a handsome open-air curricle with seats for four.

“Nicky!” Eleanor cried, prettier than ever in a bonnet decorated with silk rosebuds that Nicola had trimmed for her just the day before. “Whatever are you doing, walking by yourself, and along this dusty path? And was that the Milksop we just passed?”

“It was indeed,” Nicola said with a haughty tilt of her chin. “I was forced to abandon his carriage, as he insulted me quite dreadfully.”

“Insulted you?” Eleanor looked shocked, but the gentleman in the driver's seat beside her only grinned, perhaps observing that Nicola appeared to have suffered no physical harm from her ordeal.

“Then you had better get in with us,” he said, “where it's safe. Hadn't she, Sheridan?”

Nathaniel, in the backseat, said only, “Indeed.” But he leaned forward, opened the door, and alighted in order to help Nicola in.

“Thank you,” she said most gratefully, as she sank onto the padded seat. “I hadn't the slightest idea what I was going to do. But I knew I couldn't stay in that phaeton with him a second longer.”

“It's dangerous,” the gentleman said, still grinning as Nathaniel took the seat beside Nicola's, “for young ladies to go driving without an escort. Fortunately Miss Sheridan has her brother here to protect her. And now you, I suppose.”

Nicola, looking from the gentleman to Eleanor to her brother and then back again, realized that she had stumbled into an outing between Eleanor and one of her suitors. Lady Sheridan, who always did what was proper, had undoubtedly insisted upon Nathaniel going driving with his sister and her newest beau. Certainly Nathaniel wore an air of brotherly concern usually reserved for dances or other such gatherings.

“Miss Sparks,” he said to her with unaccustomed formality. “May I present Sir Hugh Parker? Sir Hugh, my sister's particular friend, Miss Sparks.”

Sir Hugh released the reins and turned around to shake Nicola's hand. She noted with approval that, though blond and with a mustache—so dangerous, if one hadn't the God's excellent bone structure to carry it off—he seemed nice enough, being both affable and tall. More important, he dressed neatly, and without affectation. His jabot was spotlessly white, something Nicola always liked to see in a man.

She wondered how much he had a year, and if Eleanor especially liked him. She couldn't tell by Eleanor's behavior, which wasn't at all what it usually was. Not a giggle escaped her. Eleanor was trying to act like the lady Madame had attempted to train her to be.

“What a good thing we happened along,” Eleanor said as Sir Hugh urged his team of grays forward, once Nicola and Nathaniel had settled into their seats. “What, precisely, did your cousin do to insult you, Nicky? He wasn't bothering you about selling the abbey again, was he?”

“Oh, no,” Nicola said. “This time all he wanted was for me to marry him.”

Eleanor let out a polite scream of disbelief, and Sir Hugh chuckled some more, as if he found Nicola highly amusing. Only Nathaniel took the information calmly, shooting Nicola a penetrating look, and saying, “I take it all the answer the poor fellow received was no.”

Nicola, starting to feel a bit ashamed over her earlier behavior toward the Milksop, said defensively, “He isn't a poor fellow at all, Nathaniel Sheridan, and don't go trying to garner sympathy for him. It wasn't only that he had the impertinence to ask when, clearly, he's the last man in the world anyone would want to marry. It was the
way
he asked.” She was not about to share with another living soul what the Milksop had said about the God—well, possibly she'd share it with Eleanor when they were alone again together, but certainly not now, in front of Nathaniel and Sir Hugh. Instead she said, “Why, all he said was that he was
fond
of me.”

Sir Hugh laughed outright at that, while Eleanor quite rightly looked angry on her friend's behalf. Only Nathaniel, folding his arms across his chest and leaning deep into his corner of the curricle, regarded Nicola with would have to be called skepticism.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You'd have preferred to have heard something more along the lines of ‘Would that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek'?”

Nicola threw him a narrow-eyed glance, aware he was making light of her predicament…and of her love for beautiful language. Still, she was not about to pick a fight with her rescuers, so her retort was mild compared with how she would have liked to reply.

“A little Shakespeare,” she said primly, “never hurt anybody. But if you think that my cousin Harold could have proposed to me in any manner that might have induced me to accept him, you are deluded. Still…well, a
few
compliments might have helped.”

“I am very glad you said no, Nicky,” Eleanor said, the bright sunshine bringing the russet highlights out in the chestnut curls that slipped from her bonnet. “I should quite hate to see you married to a man who was your inferior, both intellectually and morally.”As she said this last, Eleanor threw a glance over her shoulder at her brother, who was still slumped in the corner of the carriage. “Wouldn't you, Nathaniel?”