Royal Regard (29 page)

Her mouth twisted. “You are no toper, are
you?”

He waved the glass at her. “I am not. Can you
warrant there will be no need?”

Charlotte sighed, “Pray, continue.”

He took a seat in a
Bergère
chair
across the tea table from his guest. “Thank you for allowing me to
indulge in spirits in my own bookroom.”

“At one o’clock in the afternoon,” she
sniffed, clasping her hands tightly in her lap.

“Half past,” he argued, taking a long
draught. “Now, in what way might I help you?”

Her knees shifted from side to side, the
cabinets on the left-hand wall placed under strict scrutiny, her
face intermittently tilting, hoping not to miss something important
on the right. Like a girl uncomfortable in court dress, trying to
rein in nervous energy before being presented in the Queen’s
Drawing Room.

“It is difficult to know where to begin.”

She had invited herself, so he made no
argument, only sat back, sipped his drink and listened to the
snapping of the coal fire and the windy bluster in the chimney, the
ticking of the long-case clock. His mind wandered as he waited,
resolving to start using apple and cherry wood instead of coal in
his house fires, as Bella did, making her home smell like forests
and orchards and magical meadows, not miner’s dust and the
bitterness of broken men.

Finally, Charlotte began, “While I know you
have offered for my cousin, I am not quite convinced of you. You
may, in truth, prefer a more sophisticated wife, or no wife at all,
should you remain true to form, and you have many times proven
yourself dishonorable where holy matrimony is concerned. I would
have you know, if you toy with Bella—pursue her as your mistress,
then leave when you are finished, or marry her assuming she will
turn a blind eye—I will destroy you in any locale where aristocrats
gather. You may be a duke, Wellbridge, but I am a marchioness, and
unlike you, my reputation is above reproach.”

Now fully grasping the direction of the
conversation, he sat forward, elbows on his knees. At least, he
thought, this hadn’t started as shrilly as their previous meeting.
That could hardly be called a conversation, Charlotte screeching
like a madwoman, berating him for a quarter-hour about irreparably
insulting Bella. By honorably proposing marriage.

While his immediate inclination was to remind
her she had already once treated him to the dulcet tones of a
fishwife, he recalled her motivations for threatening him, so
replied, “My intentions are so honorable they terrify me,
Lady—Charlotte.”

“Good,” she harrumphed. “A man like you can
do with some terror.”

He declined to mention his sister had said
much the same thing not two nights past over supper. “After the
prodigious number of women you have discarded in your lifetime,”
Allie had snapped, “you deserve nothing more than to pace the
floors now. I hope she leads you about on a string until Lord
Huntleigh dies, and then afterward for two full years of
mourning.”

This had all but given Nick heart
palpitations, but when he looked to his brother-in-law for
assistance, Thad had merely raised his glass and shook his head as
if to say, “You wish me to speak against my own wife when she is
right?” After supper, Thad had belabored the point as if Nick’s
sister had provided a script, though interspersed with considerably
more sympathy.

Charlotte continued, “I will take your word
as a gentleman you’ve not told me a falsehood.”

“I am honored by your faith,” he said, adding
an ironic twist to his voice. “You might have noticed I negotiated
a marriage contract, not the purchase of a house, carriage, staff,
and wardrobe.”

“Given your supposedly honorable intent,”
Charlotte said, her lips pursed against any comment on his
mistresses, “if you are to persist, you will need information only
I can supply.”

Just as Nick was finally going to get a bit
of information on how to make Bella start speaking to him again, he
heard Blakeley clearing his throat outside the door, then a sharp
knock.

Nick rubbed the bridge of his nose between
his fingers as he called out, “Yes?”

When the door opened, Blakeley entered with
Nick’s samovar filled with hot water, coals already glowing. Behind
him, a footman was pushing a rolling tea cart with a silver tea
service encrusted with enough fruit and flowers it took Blakeley
two full hours weekly to polish, as well as an assortment of cakes
and biscuits.

“Your timing is perfect, Blakeley. I believe
we are about to run out of tea.” Blakeley’s sharp eye on Nick’s
full cup and empty glass spoke volumes.

“Shall I pour, Sir?”

Charlotte answered, “Thank you, no. I will
manage.”

“Very good. Your Grace?” Blakeley’s nostrils
flared. “Shall I bring more brandy?”

“No.” Nick nodded a curt dismissal then
crossed the room to shut the door completely. He would prefer to
fight Firthley to the death over his wife’s honor than have the
servants, even Blakeley, listening to what might be said about the
future duchess. Or rather, the potential future duchess, who might
or might not ever speak to the duke again.

On his way back to his seat, he said, “You
opposed my suit not so many days ago. Might I ask why the
change?”

Her lips tightened and her fingernails tapped
on the arm of the loveseat, face screwed up. Because he wanted to
test the theory that Charlotte would speak to fill silence whenever
it was offered, he said nothing. His hypothesis was borne out.

“You are preferable to Lord Malbourne, the
only other suitor in contention.”

“Malbourne!” he barked, standing before he
could stop himself, lurching as though he might throw a muzzler at
the invisible man. “That insufferable louse. I will commit murder
before he sets one finger on her.”

“Good,” Charlotte said, filling the teapot
with hot water and setting it to steep as Nick slowly reseated
himself. “For her husband is perfectly correct in every respect,
which means that to a lesser extent, you are, too. Bella is in love
with you, and you with her. You are an excellent match, and I
believe this marriage best. Provided you reform your wicked
ways.”

He sat up straight and choked down a mouthful
of cognac. Even after he swallowed, his throat kept working. “I
thank you, but am not entirely certain I would say,” he coughed,
“
in love
.”

“Perhaps not,” Charlotte said, “but you and
Bella would be the only two in London to argue, and only because
you are both as stubborn as Scotsmen.”

He stood then to tie back the wine-colored
curtains over the bow window, staring out over the garden his
grandmother had planned and executed, a labyrinth of sorts, but the
box hedges too symmetrical and trimmed too low to make it a game or
a trysting spot.

This garden really was too small for such an
installation, he thought, but a hedge maze might be a very nice
addition at Wellstone. He could see himself chasing after Bella,
the hidden prize, following the sound of her laughter, her lilac
scent, the taste of her in the wind, to a magical, blind alley
where they might lose themselves in the manner of the Ancients.

He stared at the brandy, then set it aside.
Charlotte tipped her head to acknowledge the concession, but Nick
was lost imagining Bella digging in this garden, planting the
dead-looking bulbs he had once helped his grandmother bury every
autumn until he turned seven, when his brother contracted a fever
and Nick was sent away to school.

“Can you explain how she ended up with
Huntleigh?”

Charlotte’s color rose and her fingernails
looked like they would pierce the horsehair upholstery. Her voice
gained pitch even as she whispered, “You do not want to hear
it.”

“I have little doubt,” he said, crossing the
room to sit, bringing his drink and the decanter, ignoring
Charlotte’s pointed looks. “Indulge me?”

Charlotte consciously relaxed her hands and
silenced the tumult crossing her face, but her back remained so
stiff, he was afraid with one sharp word, impassivity might turn to
tears.

Instead, she regained her ladylike poise,
forcing her face to utter stillness. “Uncle Jasper and her
brothers—John and Jeremy—sold her to Myron for ten thousand pounds.
They beat her and said they would give her to a brothel if she
refused to comply.”

Nick’s face felt like granite, back molars
chewing on his most natural response. He set his almost-empty glass
down on the table before it shattered in his hand, then removed the
stopper on the decanter to refill it.

Charlotte murmured, as though she hoped he
wouldn’t hear, “The episode was not unlike the rest of her
life.”

With more delicacy than he thought he could
manage, after he poured, he replaced the crystal teardrop in the
narrow neck of the bottle. If he weren’t in the company of a lady,
he would hurl the entire thing against the wall.

To further distract from the homicidal
thoughts overwhelming his good sense, he poured Charlotte’s tea,
adding milk because he could see it in the bottom of her used cup.
“Do you take sugar?” he asked, a rote pleasantry he didn’t remember
from a quarter-hour ago.

“No, thank you. Milk is sufficient.”

She focused her attention on the cup and
saucer, seeming to understand he was not at all considering
beverages. While he continued to try to bring his unaccountable
rage under control, she stirred the hot tea to cool it, warming her
free hand on the china. Because he could not work out his wrath
remaining motionless, he stood and began pacing the floor.

He had known Bella was insecure, had even
guessed at the reasons. He had assumed the most central was that
Charlotte had been a celebrated beauty when she was younger. But
this was much, much worse than anything he had imagined.

He had more experience than he wanted with
women whose sense of themselves had been beaten out by a man’s
fists and foul words. He had seen thousands in his travels and in
the working classes of England, and dozens in the British
aristocracy. He had just never fallen in—
infatuation—
with
one before.

His own mother had never buckled under his
father’s chastisement, but not for lack of trying on the part of
the old duke. In her case, the attacks were only verbal; rare
physical altercations were saved for his younger son. Unlike David,
Nick had always been healthy, had never been the heir apparent, and
was perpetually disinclined to blind obedience.

But once he had begun at Eton, Nick visited
Wellstone no more than a few days each year at Yuletide, instead
spending school breaks with friends whose familial connections
might prove advantageous to the Northopes. As long as his friends’
parents remained valuable to his, financially, politically, or
socially, Nick’s bruises had been minimal.

Charlotte chanced filling the silence. “Many
women of the gentry are forced to marry for their families’
financial gain.”

Nick snapped, “‘Many women of the gentry’ are
not sent to near-certain death on a boat filled with sailors under
threat of carnal servitude.”

Charlotte just agreed quietly, “No,”
apparently now content to let the silence fill itself.

Nick cleared his throat and finished the
brandy in two swallows. He said nothing as he walked back to his
seat to pour another, then loosened his cravat. He couldn’t seem to
fill his lungs; his breath had gone dangerously shallow.

The thought of Bella brutalized was sour in
his mouth, bringing up emotions he hadn’t felt since his last
“punishment” by his father. Nick had just finished at Eton and
would soon remove to Oxford. During the brutal caning, Nick had
finally taken a swing and connected—hard. His father had never
touched or spoken to him again, except to provide Nick funds to buy
his own townhouse in London and travel anywhere he wanted outside
England.

Adding bitter bile to the mixture of fear,
sorrow, and anger once again roiling in his gut, he envisioned
Huntleigh, the foul cur, taking Bella’s maidenhead while she was
covered in bruises. If Huntleigh weren’t her husband and entitled
to treat her anyway he liked, and if Nick hadn’t seen the care he
took with her now, he would call the man out just for that, no
matter his age and infirmity.

After a long sip, then a long silence, then
another sip, he resolved to remain friendly with Huntleigh,
especially since he couldn’t prove such brutality, but he now had
no compunction about stealing his wife as soon as possible. If Nick
could escape London with her today and place her under his
protection at Wellstone Grange, he would do so, but Bella would
never allow it while Huntleigh lay dying. Besides, it would ruin
any chance of her being accepted as his duchess. Prinny would most
certainly never approve.

“Are you listening to me, Wellbridge?”

Apparently, he had been too busy plotting to
gather the information he needed to accomplish his plot. He shook
his head to set new cogs turning.

“Yes. Well, no, but my apologies. Pray,
continue.” He sat forward in his chair, clutching his glass like a
rope saving him from a stormy sea.

She began, “As I was saying, and not for my
own edification, Bella has always acted the part of baroness
commendably. Now she acts the countess. If she commits to you, she
will act the duchess. But her confidence is only an act, no matter
how many heathen stories she tells, no matter how many times Prinny
kisses her hand. Underneath the facade, she is a bookish girl who
wants only to live in a country cottage and raise vegetables in her
garden. You must understand that if nothing else.”

He straightened, placing the brandy on a side
table. “She trades witticisms with the king like she was born to
it.”

“You have approached her as a woman of the
world, but she is not one, nor ever will be. For all his faults,
His Majesty understands that, which is why they get on so
well.”