Tremaine's True Love (29 page)

“I’ll await your return, then.” He bowed smartly and Nita had no choice but to lead George from the room.

“What in the hell are you doing, Nita Haddonfield?” George asked as he held her cloak for her. “Your absence will be remarked, and Elsie Nash was near tears when she accosted me.”

“I’m near tears too, George, but nobody will remark my absence as long as Mr. St. Michael is standing up with the wallflowers. Take me to Stonebridge, please.”

George cursed colorfully—he was a Haddonfield, through and through—then shrugged into his greatcoat.

“It’s the boy, isn’t it? He’s worsened, and Nash has denied him medical care.”

Nita wrapped a scarf around her neck. “If Edward has denied Digby the tender ministrations of Dr. Horton, then we may hold out hope of the child’s eventual recovery.”

If only Nita could be as sanguine about her own marital prospects.

“Dance with me, Mrs. Nash?” George held out a hand to Elsie, willing her to accept his invitation. Before dropping George back at the assembly rooms, Nita had tasked him to convey news to a worried mother, and George would not fail either woman.

Elsie didn’t immediately take his hand, though George did not withdraw his offer. “You don’t want to be seen dancing with me, Elsie. Dance with me anyway. I promise I’ll not inflict any unwanted kisses on you.”

He’d surprised her—also himself. She placed the tips of her gloved fingers on his palm.

“I’d be honored, Mr. Haddonfield.” Then, as George led her out onto the dance floor, she added softly, “It isn’t want you think.”

The orchestra lumbered through the triple meter introduction to the evening’s second and final waltz.

“What do I think?”

George
thought
Elsie was too sweet to live in fear of Edward Nash’s next bout of temper, too good to endure the situation she’d been thrust into.

“You think a few wild oats on your part would give me a permanent dislike of a man I’ve known to be nothing but honorable,” Elsie said softly. “You’re very wrong. Edward’s petty tyranny is all that limits my association with you.”

The music began and George moved off with Elsie in his arms. She was smaller than his sisters, more easily led, and entirely feminine.

His goddamned idiot cock took note of that last, his personal sexual weather vane, cheerfully aligning itself with any available breeze. He’d sowed acres of wild oats in places both predictable and unlikely, and had little harvest to show for it.

“Digby is flirting with lung fever,” George said. “Nita isn’t worried, but she mixed up mustard plasters for his chest, ordered willow bark tea to the keep the fever down, and beef tea to ease his throat. I’ve had a word with Vicar. Edward will receive a note tomorrow canceling Digby’s lessons for the week because of Vicar’s gout.”

The choir fund was five pounds richer for Digby’s holiday, affirming once again that Vicar’s view of Christian charity did not match George’s.

“Thank you,” Elsie said. “Please thank Lady Nita for me as well. If I lose Digby, you should fear for Edward’s life.”

They twirled around the room, not with the vigorous pace of the London ballrooms, but in a slower, more lilting tempo suited to ending an evening. George resisted the urge to tuck his partner closer, for Edward was regarding them owlishly from his post by the men’s punch bowl.

“I know what desperation feels like, Elsie, and you cannot give in to despair. You are all Digby has, all that stands between him and Edward’s worst impulses. Digby needs you, and you aren’t without friends. Call on me before you do anything rash, and I’ll not fail you.”

Those words were rash, for George had some personal wealth, but where Elsie and Digby were concerned, he had no authority.

“You must not involve yourself,” Elsie said. “Edward would take it amiss. I thank you for the dance, Mr. Haddonfield.”

The music came to a final cadence. George bowed, Elsie curtsied, and he had no damned choice but to escort the lady to Edward Nash’s side. Nicholas rescued George from having to make small talk with a man who deserved to be horsewhipped.

“George, our ladies are pleading fatigue,” Nicholas said. “Unless you want to walk home, I suggest you accompany me to the livery. Nash, your sister-in-law looks somewhat fatigued as well.”

Nicholas beamed at Elsie, for charming the ladies came as easily to Nicholas as dancing did to George.

“Perhaps we might offer Mrs. Nash a ride home,” George said. “We brought both the carriage and the sleigh, didn’t we?”

George had brought the sleigh, there being no room in the carriage, and by now the sleigh had returned from taking Nita home to Belle Maison.

“We do have two conveyances,” Nicholas replied. “Come along, Mrs. Nash. My countess has missed your company, and your brother-in-law is likely joining the gentlemen removing to the common for a final pint or two.”

Well
done, Nicholas
.

Nash’s scowl vanished like hoarfrost before the rising sun. “A pint or two? Don’t mind if I do,” he said. “Dancing works up a man’s thirst. Elsie, you’ll accept his lordship’s hospitality. Bellefonte, Mr. Haddonfield, I bid you good evening.”

Nash sauntered off a bit unsteadily, while George offered his arm to Elsie. “Come along, madam. I’ll take you home in the sleigh, and you’ll be spared his lordship’s dubious attempts at flirtation.”

“I take offense at that,” Nick said. “Holy matrimony has only honed a natural talent where my flirtations are concerned. Ask my countess, if you don’t believe me.”

Nick was on his good behavior because the ladies were present. Doubtless George would get a verbal birching for abetting Nita’s early departure.

“Where did Mr. St. Michael get off to?” Elsie asked.

“He declared a need to walk back to Belle Maison,” Nick said. “Something about inferior spirits and a salubrious dose of fresh air. I’d expect a former Scottish shepherd boy to have a harder head, though I well understand an appreciation for fresh air.”

“Mrs. Nash and I are away to the livery,” George said, parting from Nicholas at the cloakroom, where various Haddonfield females were sorting capes, scarves, boots, and muffs. Susannah in particular looked ready to leave.

When George reached the street, Elsie walked along beside him, not hurrying him as a sister might have, but as if she genuinely enjoyed his company.

“Will you soon be traveling again, Mr. Haddonfield?”

“Might you call me George?” And, yes, he was soon to depart for Germany, of all the cold and distant places, and from thence to Poland and possibly Russia.

“If I call you George now, I might slip when Edward’s underfoot. He claims you’re an unwholesome fellow who ought not to be allowed onto the Stonebridge premises.”

“Unless, of course, my escort will free Edward for additional pints of grog. I may be unwholesome on occasion, but I’d never strike a woman. How do you stand him, Elsie?”

A light snow fell, muffling the merriment coming from above the inn and lending the fading ring of sleigh bells and coach harnesses a fairy-tale quality.

“I hate Edward, if you must know,” Elsie said. “He has squandered Penny’s funds. He’s Digby’s guardian though, so I’ve nowhere else to go. I was honestly hoping Lady Susannah’s settlements would put Edward’s finances to rights, even if that will do nothing to restore Digby’s funds.”

Elsie was hanging on then, out of sheer determination, and that realization tore at George.

“I could kill him for you,” George said. “I’m heading off to the Continent this spring. I could simply depart ahead of schedule.”

He was only half joking.

“I’ve considered poisoning him,” Elsie said, and she wasn’t even one-quarter joking. They rounded the corner of the livery, and abruptly the noise and bustle of the assembly’s end was behind them. “Sometimes, I think I’m in a nightmare that will have no end. I have a little money I’ve hidden from Edward, and I think about running away with Digby, taking ship even, but Edward has the law on his side. At least now, I share a roof with my son.”

George didn’t think, he simply took Elsie in his arms. “You are a good mother, Elsie Nash, and I have funds enough to see you safely to Italy or even America. No child should grow up in fear for his health, his future squandered by an uncle with too few scruples and too much pride.”

Worse yet, the bastard was too free with his fists, which also boded ill for Digby’s future.

Elsie leaned against George, let him for one moment have all of her weariness and fear, all of her anger and despair. To hold her felt good, though holding her wasn’t nearly as much comfort as she deserved.

And then she kissed him.

George’s mind manufactured a single thought—kissing Elsie felt good too!—before he began kissing her back.

* * *

When last Tremaine had been intimate with his intended, she’d chided him for not pursuing her to her room, for inflicting on her an occasion of
cold
feet
.

Tremaine’s feet were cold, his nose was an icicle affixed to the front of his face, his ears were no warmer, and his toes were nodding cordially to frostbite. He trudged on, as he’d trudged through many early Highland storms, past the sagging fences of Stonebridge, past Belle Maison’s sheep pastures. In another mile, he’d warm up, and the temptation to walk right past the Belle Maison drive dogged his steps.

Nita had disappeared on George’s arm and not returned, suggesting she’d gone off on one of her medical calls. Elsie Nash’s boy, most likely.

Something contagious, for late winter was contagion’s social season, summer offering a reprise for cholera and typhus.

The Haddonfield carriage team trotted past, though Tremaine doubted the inhabitants had seen him. They’d be tucked up in their cloaks and mufflers, dissecting who had made sheep’s eyes at whom, and whether certain couples were quarreling.

Tremaine considered the matter for a frigid half mile and concluded that, just perhaps, he and Nita were quarreling. Something he’d said in his exchange with Nash hadn’t set well with her ladyship.

Perhaps he ought to have officially acknowledged their engagement rather than danced around it? Surely an announcement was Bellefonte’s to make?

Perhaps Nash deserved a more pointed scolding? Tremaine had certainly wanted to scold Nash more soundly. Thirty paces at dawn would convey Tremaine’s sentiments handily.

Tremaine was still debating what he would have or should have done differently when he let himself into Lady Nita’s room. They were to be married in a very few days, and knocking seemed a bit silly.

Also perilous, for a fellow who knocked was a fellow who could be told to go away.

“Good evening, my lady.” God help him, Nita’s hair was unbound, a shimmering river of golden fire streaming over her shoulders as she sat before the hearth, one bare foot up on a hassock, the other tucked beneath her.

“Hello. You didn’t think to take off your coat?”

Nita wore her blue night robe while Tremaine—foolish of him—still wore his greatcoat, scarf, and gloves.

“I needed assurances that you are well,” Tremaine said, unraveling the scarf from his neck. “You left with George, and he returned without you. I was concerned.”

Worried, angry, sick with an orphaned boy’s unreasonable fear for her welfare.

“I’m sorry. As you can see, I’m yet in excellent health.”

Excellent
health.
Tremaine loathed that phrase. Unless he missed his guess, Nita was in an excellent temper—or something. He stuffed his gloves in his pocket and hung his greatcoat on one of the bedposts.

“What are you reading?” he asked, taking the poker to the fire, then adding more coals.

“Paracelsus in the original Latin.”

Tremaine had hated Latin, though it had made learning Italian and Spanish easier. After grafting Scots and Gaelic, then English onto his French, Latin had been the outside of too much.

“What does Paracelsus have to say?” Tremaine asked.

As long as Nita wasn’t telling Tremaine to leave, he’d continue to cast lures. A cheering thought befell him: perhaps her monthly had arrived midway through the assembly. That would explain much, despite protestations of excellent health.

“Paracelsus says that washing surgical instruments between each use results in fewer cases of infection and fewer deaths from infection. He said this hundreds of years ago, and yet English medicine still fails to heed his wisdom.”

The sooner Nita gave up her medical pastime, the happier their pillow talk would be.

“Somebody should tell that to the army surgeons,” Tremaine said, taking a seat on Nita’s hassock. “Those who die on the battlefields are often envied by those who are wounded.”

“I have written to Wellington’s personal surgeon,” Nita said, drawing her second foot under her. “He did not favor me with a reply.”

Smart fellow, or Nita would have bombarded him with learned correspondence. Of course, if the smart fellow had paid attention to Nita, fewer lives would be lost in the hospital tents.

The thought of all those miserable, needless deaths only added to Tremaine’s sense of disquiet.

“How’s the lad?” Tremaine asked, gently untucking a slender female foot from under the lady’s fundament.

“Digby? How did you guess?”

“I was once a lad too, and winter was not my favorite season to mind the sheep. Your feet are not cold tonight.”

Tremaine needed to touch some part of Nita, because she’d gone elsewhere, returned to the remote, polite woman he’d first met in a chilly stable at this same hour days ago.

“Digby’s circumstances are poor,” Nita said. “Edward might wish the boy dead.”

While half the shire probably wished Edward would find his eternal reward. “Nash is an idiot, but surely, even Nash wouldn’t wish harm to a mere boy?”

Tremaine’s mother had turned her back on two mere boys, though for the first time, he admitted that in so doing, she’d assured those boys physical safety and a childhood in the care of a loving, if gruff, relative.

“Edward would not admit even to himself a wish to harm Digby,” Nita said, “but the Nash men have always been competitive with each other. Penny Nash married and produced a son while his brothers did not or have not. Why are you here, Tremaine?”

He was there to make love with his intended, to assure himself that all was well between them.

He kissed Nita’s ankle, which bore a slight scent of honeysuckle. “I wanted to waltz with you this evening, but your sister dissuaded me. Did you want our engagement announced after all?”

“No. Shall you come to bed, Tremaine?”

Nita regarded her foot, cradled in his hands. Her brows were knitted, her expression puzzled, as if symptoms would not add up to a diagnosis.

Being married to Nita Haddonfield would involve work, though unraveling the mysteries of her moods and mental processes was work Tremaine would enjoy. She was a challenge—his challenge.