Tremaine's True Love (36 page)

Outside the library windows, snow came down in pale torrents from the darkening sky. Leah, Countess of Bellefonte, brought her husband a glass of brandy. Nick accepted the glass, then held it to his wife’s lips.

“To take the chill off,” he murmured, though Leah’s offering was doubtless intended to take the edge off his temper—and his worry. Leah obliged by sipping the drink—she was an obliging sort of woman, until she wasn’t—then held the glass for him.

“The nice thing about late storms is they’re soon forgotten, Nicholas. This time next week we’ll be looking for crocuses and checking on the Holland bulbs. When is the new vicar supposed to arrive?”

“I doubt he’ll be in evidence until the snow melts.” Nick set the drink aside. “Lovey, cuddle up. I need the fortification of your kisses.”

How had he managed before his marriage? How had he managed without the constant, generous affection of his spouse? Her patient humoring of his moods? Her wise counsel with both family matters and the problems of the earldom?

“I heard sleigh bells before I joined you here,” Leah said, tucking into her husband’s embrace. “Such a cheerful sound, and you can’t blame Kirsten if she wants a little privacy. Della makes her bow this year, and that has everybody rattled.”

“Lovey, I hate all that folderol—”

Nick’s lament was interrupted by Kirsten barreling into the room. Sisters were constitutionally incapable of knocking, and thus deserved whatever awkwardness they stormed in upon. Nick kissed his wife on the mouth soundly to make that point—again.

“Bellefonte, Countess, we have a visitor.” Kirsten had no need for dramatics in her speech or actions, for tension hummed through her very body. Nick loved her, truly he did, but she was a nocked arrow of emotion and intellect, poised to let fly in unpredictable directions.

“Kirsten, perhaps you’d be good enough to close the door, lest we lose all the heat,” Nick suggested, turning loose of his wife.

Kirsten moved aside, and the fellow behind her came more fully into view.

“Mr. Banks, greetings,” Nick said, extending a hand. “I had thought the storm might delay you.”

“My steed is intrepid,” Banks said, bowing, then accepting Nick’s hand. “I was told the manse in Haddondale was empty.”

“You might have delayed while the weather sorted itself out. It’s not like we’ve been having orgies.” Nick’s observation prompted a snicker from Kirsten. “It’s not like we’d
know how
to have orgies, rather. Shall you have a drink, Banks?”

Nick knew all about orgies, simply as part of an Oxford education in this enlightened age. Kirsten extended him a bit of sororal mercy and didn’t add that fact to the discussion.

“My feet will not thaw out until Beltane,” Banks said. “A drink would be much appreciated.”

Now would be a fine time for Kirsten to announce that she had to change for dinner or discuss the latest recipe for syllabub with her sisters, but of course, Kirsten took a seat on the very sofa where Nick might have cuddled with his countess.

“Was the journey down from Oxfordshire trying?” Nick asked, passing Banks a healthy tot and topping up his own.

“The weather didn’t help, but traveling always gives a man time to think. Has the former pastor been absent long?”

Not long enough.
“Less than a month,” Nick said, and because the Earls of Bellefonte had held the Haddondale living for centuries, Nick blathered on.

While Kirsten sat like a cat on the sofa and lapped up every word.

“Our previous vicar was old-fashioned,” Nick said. “Full of damnation and judgment and the fires of hell, though we grew used to his style.”

“He was also old,” Kirsten volunteered. “He didn’t listen well, and his gout plagued him without mercy.”

Banks managed to look elegant, even in stained riding boots, a wrinkled cravat, and a coat that needed taking in at the seams. His cheekbones conveyed derring-do, his long-fingered hands, sensitivity. What a damned silly waste on a country vicar.

“My predecessor suffered hearing problems?” Banks asked.

“He didn’t
listen
well,” Kirsten clarified, while Nick felt the tension of a conversational bow being drawn back right to the archer’s chin.

When Banks ought to have complimented Nick on the library’s appointments, or the brandy, or the fine collection of books the old earl had gone into debt amassing, Banks instead turned those dark eyes on Kirsten.

“Might you give me an example, Lady Kirsten? One doesn’t want unfortunate history to repeat itself.”

A miracle occurred in the Belle Maison library, while Nick looked on and sipped his brandy. Kirsten Haddonfield, Witch without a Broomstick, engaged a guest in civil conversation. No hidden meanings, no veiled barbs, no slightly outrageous testing of the boundaries of propriety.

“Mr. Clackengeld suffers gout the same as Vicar did,” Kirsten said, “though Clackengeld works in the livery, so he’s out in all weather. When he asked Vicar how the knee was, he got a lecture about suffering giving us an opportunity for humility.”

Banks considered his drink then turned such a smile on Kirsten as would have felled Byron and all his lovelies at once.

“You didn’t allow it to end there, did you, my lady?”

That smile was sweet and invited confidences—not a scintilla of flirtation about it.

“I commented more loudly than I should have that humility is a virtue best learned by example,” Kirsten replied.

Some fairy prince had snatched Kirsten Haddonfield away and, in her place, left a pretty, smiling, shy young woman. The shy part, Nick had long suspected. Kirsten lobbed Latin phrases into her speech, marched about with unladylike purpose, and dispatched her opinions like a gunnery sergeant aiming shot into the enemy’s cavalry charge.

In short, she repelled boarders with the few effective weapons at a lady’s disposal.

Banks had needed nothing more than a smile and a certain relaxed, conspiratorial air to win a morsel of Kirsten’s trust.

Why was it, the first fellow to cut through the thicket of Kirsten Haddonfield’s social thorns was a poor, tired, nearly haggard man of the cloth, and a
married
man of the cloth at that?

And was this a positive development—Nick had begun to despair of Kirsten’s prospects, to dread even sharing meals with her—or was it a harbinger of disaster?

Order Grace Burrowes's next book
in the True Gentlemen series

Daniel's True Desire

On sale November 2015

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New
York
Times
and
USA
Today
bestselling author Grace Burrowes’s bestsellers include
The
Heir
,
The
Soldier
,
Lady
Maggie’s Secret Scandal
,
Lady
Sophie’s Christmas Wish
,
Lady
Eve’s Indiscretion, The Captive
,
The
Laird
, and
The Duke’s Disaster
. Her Regency romances and Scotland-set Victorian romances have received extensive praise, including starred reviews from
Publishers
Weekly
and
Booklist. The Heir
was a
Publishers
Weekly
Best Book of 2010,
The
Soldier
was a
Publishers
Weekly
Best Spring Romance of 2011,
Lady
Sophie’s Christmas Wish
and
Once
Upon
a
Tartan
have both won
RT
Reviewers’ Choice Awards,
Lady
Louisa’s Christmas Knight
was a
Library
Journal
Best Book of 2012,
The
Bridegroom
Wore
Plaid
was a
Publishers
Weekly
Best Book of 2012, and
What
a
Lady
Needs
for
Christmas
was a
Library
Journal
Best Book of 2014. Two of her MacGregor heroes won KISS awards, and
Darius: Lord of Pleasure
was an iBooks Store Best Book of the Year and RITA finalist.

Grace is a practicing family law attorney and lives in rural Maryland. She loves to hear from her readers, and can be reached through her website at
graceburrowes.com
.

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