An Improper Holiday (11 page)
Read An Improper Holiday Online
Authors: K.A. Mitchell
Nicky shifted beneath Ian’s weight until the mattress bore its fair share and then stroked a hand down Ian’s sweaty spine. For once, Ian knew words were superfluous and he allowed himself to be soothed into sleep with the caress.
~ * ~
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When Nicky woke, it was nearly the blue of night, the sky giving a hint of warning that dawn was not
far off. Sometime during the night, Ian must have gotten up to drag the quilt over them. Nicky luxuriated in their warm nest, stretching his limbs, feeling a twinge of hard use in his arse and thighs. He smiled and teased Ian’s side whiskers with a finger, slipping his hand out of reach when Ian swatted at it. A light touch on his nose brought a frown, but Ian still did not wake. A kiss on his neck wrought a sigh and Ian rolling away.
With his own lips pursed in a frown, Nicky slid off the bed and pulled on his breeches and shirt then
walked around the bed to face Ian.
“What?” Ian opened his eyes.
Nicky smiled. “Ha. Caught you faking.”
Ian tugged the counterpane over his head. Nicky shoved it back.
“I say again, what?”
“You’re rather testy. Didn’t you sleep well?”
“I was enjoying a blissful rest. Until now.” Ian’s usual stuffy tone held a chill instead of the trace of humor Nicky often found in it.
A kernel of apprehension took root in his gut. “It’s almost morning.” He brazened it out. “I just
wanted to wish you good morning and a Happy New Year.”
“Which could not be done at breakfast.”
“Well, not with a kiss.”
As he suited deed to words, he found Ian’s lips hard and unresponsive.
“I see. You have had your use of my body and now it’s fare-thee-well. I suppose this is what one can
expect of soldiers. What a libertine you are.”
“I’m a libertine?” Ian sat up, face dark and hard in the dim glow from the fire. The kernel of
apprehension in Nicky’s belly sowed a full field of dread. He stepped back.
Ian swung his feet to the floor. “I told you how I felt about that. And yet you insisted.”
A smarter man might have left his lover to boil himself in his own ill humor, but Nicky’s wits were
losing ground to his temper.
“And you were so very unwilling your cock could not even rise to its duty, is that it?”
“It was under orders, King of Misrule.”
Ian’s rigidity could be frustrating. It could and did make Nicky need to vent his feelings with a quick bout of exercise before he could manage to keep a civil tongue in his head. But this. It was as if Ian was so very bound to his own cross that he sought to blame Nicky for nailing him there.
“That was play.” The heat of Nicky’s anger froze under an emotion too powerful to name. “If you
wish to cry rape, make your accusation plain. Say it and damn yourself.”
Ian looked away.
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An Improper Holiday
Nicky stepped to the fire and took a deep breath, but nothing could warm the cold that ate away
inside. If he stayed, if they kept this course, the emotion would have its name, the worst in the world: hate.
He turned back. “It was play,” he said again. “I thought if you had the excuse, it would make it easier, just as I claimed Simmons was ill each night.”
Ian pulled the quilt across his lap.
Nicky turned his lips in, but his feelings would have their bent. “God knows I’ve done everything I
can. And I have embraced all that you are, because I would not have you any other way, but this is more than a saint could bear.”
Without a single blink, Ian’s dark eyes met his. Even then Nicky’s heart wanted to drive him to his
knees and beg Ian to understand what he was so eager to cast off like old linens. If he would only offer the smallest sign… But he merely accepted Nicky’s words as if they had no meaning.
“I will not allow you to twist this thing between us into something ugly and obscene to salve your
misguided conscience. If you cannot accept it, so be it. I had rather none, than to let you make me loathe myself too.”
Ian’s hand gripped the counterpane tight across his lap, but he offered nothing.
“A Happy New Year to you then, Mr. Stanton. I hope it brings you all you desire.”
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Chapter Eight
New Year’s Day brought Ian more solitary freedom than the most devout of hermits could wish.
When he made his excuses to their majesties, claiming he felt unable to draw a sleigh given his injury, Nicky responded with a curt nod that offered no insight into his feelings. Charlotte was more forthcoming with a roll of her eyes, but no one in the party demonstrated any particular distress at his absence. The game went on with no abatement of joy. Even the Dowager Duchess of Coventry was taking a pass, the
four-in-hand on her sleigh made up of the company’s most handsome bachelors.
It appeared all the ladies were going to get a turn, as Nicky hopped down after his first ride and acted as whip to the slower teams.
Ian turned away from the windows in the study to find Mrs. Collingswood beside him.
He bowed. “I had thought you would be enjoying the sleighing party.”
“Oh, I cannot. I suffered a…fall several years ago and the cold weather endangers my breath. I can
only enjoy the briefest moments outdoors in the winter.” Her expression grew wistful.
“I am sorry for your injury, madam.”
“I am too.” She smiled, but her gaze seemed distant, fixed on remembered pains.
His own chest exceedingly heavy this morning, he forgot himself enough to ask. “Do you miss him?”
Mrs. Collingswood started from her reverie. “My husband?”
“I beg your pardon for presuming on our brief acquaintance. It is certainly not my place to inquire.”
But he thought he would rather like to know. Did the weight ever ease? Could you draw deeply of the air in a month? A year?
For all the pain his words brought, Nicky had the right of it. What they had shared would have run its course in a matter of days. There would be no logical reason for Ian to remain at Carleigh, or for Nicky to visit Ian in Oxfordshire. Indeed, an attempt to rekindle something best left behind in youth had been
doomed from the start. The sooner desire was reconciled with reason the better off they would both be.
Mrs. Collingswood searched Ian’s face and appeared to come to a decision. “Would it distress you
very much to hear that I do not?”
It did not, and he said so. He had heard nothing but ill of Captain Collingswood, and he was pleased
to know that this good woman did not grieve unnecessarily.
“It is curious, though,” she said. “Sometimes the memory is fresh and other times it is as dead as last autumn’s leaves.”
An Improper Holiday
As it was with Badajoz. Sometimes he could recall every second, and other times he could not even
remember whether the day had been cloudy or fair. Could no longer call to mind Lieutenant Archer’s
features or the slippery feel of blood on the escalade.
“I believe I have some experience with that,” he said.
They both watched as the dowager’s four floundered in a drift, Nicky railing over them and slashing a
buggy whip that fell nowhere near their backs.
“Is there nothing that can be done for your complaint?” Ian asked.
She gazed at him directly, blue eyes serene. “I was told my rib pierced my lung. I consider myself
fortunate to have any breath not tainted by grave dirt.”
Taken aback by her frank pronouncement, Ian struggled for words. None seemed to come.
“But then I imagine we both know how precious life is.” She offered him another smile, but her intent
tone was at odds with her placid expression. “I for one intend to seize the second chance I have been
given.”
Although the lady clearly spoke from her heart, Ian felt her words like a rebuke.
But what if you cannot? What if the act of seizing your chance requires you to set aside honor and
duty?
He could not ask, even if she could answer.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Stanton. Lady Anna is abed with the headache and as I am cousin to the
family, Lord Carleigh asked me to stand in her stead to be certain the riders and horses were offered proper warming when they returned.”
Ian looked back through the glass. The four “horses” had overpowered the “groom”, tackling him to
the snow while the duchess gesticulated from her sleigh. Ian knew that no matter how cold the snow, with Nicky in the thick of it, the whole party was laughing.
~ * ~
Nicky cursed the leather strap that was supposed to be holding his ice skate on his boot and pushed
unevenly against the ice to find an out-of-the-way spot to adjust it. Charlotte was presiding over races, the losers threatened with elaborately humiliating forfeits to be meted out following dinner. A large section of the pond—which bore the generous title of Green Lake—had been swept free of snow by servants and
some enthusiastic guests to permit a skating party. Nicky was about to rejoin it when the strap slipped off his heel again.
“Pig-swiving shit.”
“Is that still your favorite appellation?” Julian Lewes skated up next to him, offering the brace of his arm as Nicky wrestled with the strap once more.
Julian skated the way he did everything, with the grace and beauty that had left a younger Nicky
breathless with hunger. Now he was only grateful for a sympathetic ear.
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Julian’s voice was dry. “What has the poor piece of leather done to suffer such calumny?”
“If you’re not going to be helpful, Julian, you can take your wit elsewhere.”
“Oh. It’s that way, is it?” Julian looked across the ice to where Ian hovered like a petulant crow at his sister’s side. “The irreproachable Mr. Stanton has remained true to form. The whole family has ever been a sanctimonious lot, dear Lady Charlotte excepted, of course.”
“Of course,” Nicky gritted out. The trouble was not with the heel after all. The cross straps had
shifted. Nicky tugged them down hard enough to nearly cut through his boot.
“Now do you see the value inherent in being an uncaring bastard?”
“Because you are a bastion of joy?”
“At least I’m not savaging my foot with a piece of leather.”
“I’m not. Shit.” Nicky gave up on trying to balance on one foot and dropped to his knee to work at the straps.
Julian chuckled. “Deeply conscious of the honor, Amherst, but I have sworn never to marry.”
“Bugger off.”
“Ahh. I should very much like to. Do you think Lord Anthony could be persuaded to sample richer
tastes? I’m afraid I’ve run through all the qualifying members of your groomsmen.”
Nicky was never sure whether he could believe everything Julian said. “You are incorrigible.”
“And why not? I possess the three things guaranteed to make life pleasant: wealth, power and a big
cock.”
In spite of himself, Nicky laughed. Certain at last his skate would not part company with the boot and send him sprawling, he rose to his feet. They skated slowly back to the rest of the group. “There are other things to enjoy.”
“Name one.”
“Companionship.”
“Love, you mean.”
Nicky shrugged.
“If love possesses all the power with which the poets endow it, why has it not solved your dilemma
with the erstwhile Captain Stanton?”
There was no answer, so Nicky offered none.
“You see? You will never witness me chase after some imagined bond that men use to justify their
most ridiculous behaviors.”
“And what of women?”
“As I am not one of those delicate creatures I cannot speak to their motivations, though I suspect were they permitted honesty, they would be just as guided by pleasure as men.”
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Nicky knew one in particular who would let nothing stand in her way. “Charlotte, damn it.” Nicky
had been putting off telling her.
“Insulting his sister now?”
“No. May I beg a favor?”
“Are you going to your knees again?” Julian arched a brow.
“Would you take over the races? I need to speak with Lady Charlotte.”
“An appointment as Prince Regent? Is this some sort of insinuation about the fit of my waistcoat?”
“You are slender as a rail, as always. Will you?”
“I suppose. If you give thought to what I said.”
“I will. And you give thought to this. Someday you’re going to be twice as wretched as I and I will
laugh to watch you fall headlong into the abyss.”
“I shall look to see Lucifer buying his own pair of ice skates on the self-same day.”
Nicky had scarcely expected Ian to crawl into his bed and beg for forgiveness, but rather hoped for
something besides a blank look as they joined Charlotte near the start of the races.
Feel something, damn you. Argue. Create a scandal to keep the gossips buzzing for a year.
Ian lowered his gaze.
Nicky glared a hole right through the top of that bowed head. Ian could make love to his blasted honor and duty and much good would it do him on a cold lonely night. Nicky would take Julian’s advice.
Maintain a pretense of sangfroid until his blood cooled in truth. And when the cold bothered him, he’d fuck it into another man’s body, slam it down someone’s waiting throat, and at the moment when his body
flooded with ecstasy, he’d still hate Ian for destroying what could have been perfect between them.
He led Charlotte over to the far side of the pond, where a spot of shade might shield them from the
blinding sunlight reflecting off ice and snow.
She tilted her chin at him, heart-shaped face nothing like the lean one belonging to her brother, but
they shared the same expressive brown eyes.
