A Kiss to Remember (14 page)

“You and I.”

Thane’s soft-spoken words stung her. For eleven years, the two of them had been linked only in the minds of the most persistent gossips who had never forgotten the night their engagement—and her heart—had been irrevocably broken. Gazing at him without her spectacles made her feel as if her eyes were as unguarded as her memories.

She slipped them back on with a brisk motion and began to scribble notes on a fresh sheet of stationery. “Then you and I must be the ones to find him. I shall hire a detective while you question all of Sterling’s acquaintances.
It might be best to keep our inquiries discreet until we have some leads. We wouldn’t wish to cause a panic.” She glanced up at him. “Does that plan meet with your agreement?”

“I’m simply flattered that you bothered to consult me at all. It’s not been a habit of yours in the past.”

Although his stinging challenge whipped heat into her cheeks, she refused to be drawn into a duel of words she could not hope to win. “If we are to work together for Sterling’s good, it might be best if we forget the past and concentrate on the future—
his
future, to be exact.”

“As you wish, my lady.” Thane rose, taking up his hat. “I shall call on you tomorrow afternoon so we can discuss our progress.” As he started for the door, one of the mastiffs let out a plaintive whine.

Diana grimaced as the animal drooled on one of her father’s priceless Turkish rugs. “Aren’t you forgetting something, my lord?”

“Hm? Oh, of course.” His expression utterly innocent, Thane returned to the chair to tuck the walking stick beneath his arm.

“I meant the dogs,” she said icily.

His mocking grin was just as infuriating as she remembered it to be. “Ah, but they’re
your
dogs now, my lady. If you require the services of a competent valet, I’d be happy to recommend one.” Sketching her a crisp bow, he left her the way he had found her.

Alone.

Laura Fairleigh
was a woman of her word.

Nicholas hadn’t guessed he would come to rue that particular virtue, but as the days passed and she made good on her vow never to be alone with him, he began to wish she would suffer another lapse in moral judgment. Although his headaches were fading nearly as fast as the lump on his skull, he considered feigning a setback purely in the hope that she might attempt to kiss him back to life.

She had obviously enlisted others to assist her in her mission. If he was so fortunate as to enter the drawing room and find her alone, they would barely have time to exchange the most impersonal of pleasantries before Cookie would come bustling in, trailing a length of white crepe for her young missie’s approval or an experimental batch of almond icing for the bride cake that she would beg them both to taste. If they happened to meet on the landing outside their bedchambers, Lottie would materialize like a puckish sprite, waving a short
story or poem she’d just written. And he always managed to find Laura sipping her tea alone at the kitchen table at the precise moment George would come banging through the door with an armload of firewood, his cheery whistle making Nicholas want to choke the lad.

If this kept up, he would soon be reduced to brushing past his fiancée on the stairs, trying to steal a whiff of her hair.

She’d done nothing to stir his suspicions since the day she’d rushed off to meet with Dower in the barn. Since he was reasonably certain she wasn’t cuckolding him with the grizzled old man, Nicholas had almost succeeded in convincing himself that he simply possessed a mistrustful and jealous nature he’d do well to curb.

He managed to do just that until Thursday afternoon when he saw her start down the lane on foot with a mysterious burden tucked beneath her cloak.

Nicholas watched her go through the lace of the drawing room curtains, torn between instinct and honor.

Dower had set off at dawn with his flocks and Cookie was puttering about in the kitchen, humming beneath her breath. Lottie and George were in the study, quarreling over a noisy game of spillikins.

While George accused Lottie of blowing his jack-straws into a most unmanageable pile when he wasn’t looking, Nicholas slipped out the front door of the manor and started after Laura, walking just fast enough to keep the slender, bonneted figure in sight without overtaking her. The day was overcast with a northerly wind and a snap in the air that made it feel more like autumn than summer.

Laura set a brisk pace, which didn’t surprise him. In the past few days, he had learned that his betrothed was no delicate flower of womanhood content to dabble in needlework and watercolor. She was just as likely to be found perched on a rickety ladder dusting the crown molding as she was practicing a new piece on the pianoforte. While Cookie reigned over the kitchen with a flour-dusted rolling pin as her scepter, Laura tended both the flower and the herb gardens with an enthusiasm that frequently left her cheeks flushed with exertion and a charming dab of dirt on the tip of her nose.

She had nearly reached the outskirts of the village when she made an abrupt turn toward the church. Nicholas hung back, watching her every move from behind the trunk of a stately old oak. Although he felt like the worst sort of scoundrel, he couldn’t make himself turn back. Not when he might discover what secret had cast the shadow of fear in those sparkling brown eyes of hers.

He could only hope he wasn’t about to realize his own worst fear. Had some man supplanted him in her affections? And if so, would she be so bold as to rendezvous with him in the village church?

But she ignored the stone steps of the church, passing instead beneath the gabled lych-gate that led into the churchyard. Nicholas followed, but hesitated just outside the gate. Despite Laura’s assurances of his devout nature, he still didn’t feel quite welcome on hallowed ground.

As Laura disappeared over a grassy knoll, he slipped into the churchyard. A burst of chill wind sent dead leaves whipping around the gravestones in a crackling frenzy. Some of the stones were so old they sat at awkward
angles in the ground, their inscriptions half-buried or worn away completely by wind, rain, and time.

He found Laura kneeling between two well-weathered stones on the far side of the cemetery. He halted, watching in silence as she drew her mysterious burden out from beneath her cloak.

It was a great armful of flowers—larkspurs, chrysanthemums, marigolds, irises, lilies—all freshly cut from the garden she tended with her own hands.

As she placed a colorful bouquet at the foot of each stone, arranging the stems with tender care, Nicholas collapsed against a crumbling tomb, feeling like the most contemptible of villains. Laura had come to this place to pay tribute to her parents and he had stalked her as if she were a common criminal. If he had even a shred of decency in his soul, he would creep back to the manor and leave her to grieve in solitude.

But his desire to be near her was stronger than his shame. So he lingered, watching as she turned away from her parents’ graves and carried the remaining flowers to a nearby pair of stones. She didn’t spare the first marker so much as a glance, but she knelt reverently beside the second. The stone was new, without even a hint of lichen to mar its rough-hewn surface. Although the summer grass hadn’t had time to blanket the raw earth, a small alabaster angel kept vigil over the grave, its chubby little hands folded in prayer.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t the fresh grave but the angel that sent a shiver through Nicholas’s soul. He found himself moving forward without realizing it, inexorably drawn toward that forlorn guardian.

Laura had removed her gloves and begun to tug at the weeds around the edges of the grave. She was so
focused upon her task that she didn’t even hear him approach.

He didn’t stop until he was near enough to read the inscription carved into the stone—an inscription that was both stark and elegant in its simplicity.

Eleanor Harlow, Beloved Mother.

“Who was she?”

As Laura dropped her handful of weeds and turned her head, she was surprised to see Nicholas standing over her, his handsome face closed and still.

She pressed a hand to her thudding heart, despising the guilty conscience that made her so jumpy. “You gave me a terrible fright! I thought you were a ghost.”

“Were you expecting one?” he asked, nodding at the grave.

It took Laura a second to divine his meaning, but when she did, she shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone less likely to go about haunting someone than Lady Eleanor.”

Nicholas reached down and drew her to her feet. Her knees had grown stiff from kneeling and she stumbled against him for a fraction of a moment, leaving no doubt in her mind that he was no ghost, but flesh and blood. Hot blood surging beneath warm, masculine flesh.

“Who was she?” he repeated, gazing down into her eyes.

Dragging both her hand and her look away from him, Laura bent to gather up the remaining flowers. “Most people would call her our guardian. I prefer to think of her as our guardian angel. She was the one
who offered my father his living as the rector of Arden.” Laying a white lily atop the stone, Laura smiled wistfully. “After our parents died, she took us in and gave the children and me a home.”

Nicholas squatted to trace a finger over the dates carved into the granite. “October 14, 1768-February 2, 1815,” he read, then frowned up at her. “The things in my room, they belonged to her, didn’t they—the sewing box? The Bible? The hairbrush?” He seemed about to say something else, but stopped, his lips pressed tightly together.

Laura touched a hand to his shoulder. “I hope you’re not superstitious. I put you in her bedchamber because I wanted you to have the most comfortable accommodations for your recovery. You shouldn’t have to worry about any wailing and rattling of chains in the middle of the night. Lady Eleanor wouldn’t have been able to bear the thought of disturbing your sleep, much less your peace of mind.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, glancing at the weathered stone that would have been a twin to Lady Eleanor’s had the grave it marked not been untended and choked with weeds. There was no sign of any flowers having been left on it, either recently or in the past.

“Lady Eleanor’s husband,” Laura said dryly, answering his unspoken question. “She always said he should have been buried in unconsecrated ground.”

“He was a suicide?”

“Of a sort. He drank himself to death. But not before breaking his wife’s heart,” Laura added softly.

Nicholas’s frown deepened. “Did I know her?”

Laura took her time rearranging the flowers—tucking delicate sprigs of sweet william among the hardy
marigolds and chrysanthemums. As Cookie had reminded her, one of Lady Eleanor’s fondest dreams had been to see Laura wed to a kind and handsome gentleman. She stole a look at the rugged purity of Nicholas’s profile. Despite her resolution to lie no more than was necessary, there didn’t seem to be any harm in elaborating on what might have been.

“Of course you knew her,” she told him firmly. “She doted upon you and took great delight in your visits. She often said that you were like a son to her.”

To her dismay, Nicholas’s countenance failed to brighten. “The stone reads ‘Beloved Mother,’ ” he pointed out. “What of her own children? Why aren’t they here leaving flowers on her grave?”

Laura felt her smile curdle. Fearing that she would reveal more than she meant to, she knelt beside him and began to fan the flowers around the foot of the stone, her motions brisk. “She only had one son, I’m afraid—a repugnant toad of a man who cares nothing for anyone but himself.”

His sharp look shifted to her face. “Why, Miss Fairleigh, you’re rather
passionate
in your dislike of him, are you not?”

Her fingers tightened, snapping a bloom right off its stem. “On the contrary. I don’t dislike him. I loathe him.”

Nicholas rescued a handful of the delicate lilies from her murderous grip before she could behead them all. “So tell me—what has this unfortunate fellow done to earn the enmity of such a gentle soul? Kicked a kitten? Made a regular habit of missing Sunday services? Threatened to give Lottie the spanking she so richly deserves?”

“Oh, we’ve never met. Which is just as well. Because
if we did, I just might give him a tongue-lashing he’d never forget.”

“Heaven help him,” Nicholas murmured, his gaze lingering on her mouth.

She was too incensed to notice. “It’s not just his debauched habits I detest but his colossal indifference toward the woman who gave him life. Lady Eleanor wrote him faithfully every week for years and never once did he bother to send her so much as a perfunctory note. She had to read about his exploits in the scandal sheets, just as we did.” Laura yanked up a fat gobbet of weeds and hurled it aside. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s a heartless, vile, petty, vindictive wretch.”

“Does this mean you won’t be inviting him to our wedding?”

“I should say not! Why, I’d just as soon invite Beelzebub himself!”