her and keeping her at a safe distance. It had already been five years since he started his path of vengeance. How long could he wait before taking something for himself?
He gritted his teeth. The matter wasn’t taking what her eyes so sweetly offered, it was what to do after.
He could not keep her or publicly woo her. Anything they did would be in secret and shadows. He’d had discreet lovers over the years who had understood they must never speak of their connection. But those women had been experienced widows or a songbird.
None had been an innocent or lady of quality with Lady Maryann’s breeding and connections.
None had peered at him in such a manner—filled with longing and tender regard.
None had touched his mouth with trembling fingers.
None had made his heart quake from a smile.
None had roused the dark protectiveness surging violently in his veins.
Nicolas rubbed a soothing thumb over her racing pulse. “Please, tell me what happened. Or if you are unable to, at least tell me you’ve informed your father and brother.”
“I…I did not.”
“Why?”
The memories flashed in her gaze, and the fear he saw had icy fingers slinking down his spine. Unexpectedly, she lowered her forehead to his shoulder. An odd tenderness uncoiled inside him. For her.
He led her over to the chair by the dying fire and when he sat, he tugged her down onto his lap in the single most tender motion he had ever made in his life.
“How scandalous,” she murmured, her eyes searching his face as she tried to decipher his intention.
He was damn glad she hadn’t jumped away from him and chased him from her room. Nicolas didn’t understand it, but he wanted…no, needed to be gentle with her. There was a vulnerability around her trembling mouth that gutted him to see. She was the most striking human being he had ever met. Fear wasn’t something she should ever feel, not while he was in her life.
But she is not in your life…only on the edges of it.
With a sense of confusion, he realized she filled spaces he had not known were empty, and she did it so effortlessly. “Tell me,” he softly coaxed.
“Why?”
“I will educate him on the error of his ways.”
Her eyes flared briefly. “I think…I think he is dangerous; he is not a man with whom one trifles.”
He suspected the identity of the bounder but wanted her trust. It mattered to him. Nicolas lifted her fingers to his mouth and nipped. She flushed, and her chest lifted on a sharp breath. “Am I only a feckless baboon in your sights?” he asked.
Tension crackled in the space between them.
Her cheeks turned a bit pink, and she looked away for a moment before answering. “I do not think you are a feckless baboon…but a great pretender. Sometimes I see the danger lurking in your gaze, but then it vanishes so quickly, I wonder if it was my overwrought imagination.”
He was not the same boy who had loved Arianna and had lingered for years in his hapless guilt. The reputation of ruthlessness he garnered had not been lightly gained but had been another calculated and very deliberate move on his part. Some of the sins laid at his feet were well-placed rumors, but some he had committed. Only those close to him might know the truth, and with a fierce jolt Nicolas recognized he had no one close to him, yet he had never thought himself lonely.
Vengeance, and guilt, and pain had been fine company indeed.
“If not a baboon, what do you see?” he asked teasingly, hoping to get her to relax. He sensed acting the demanding brute would not work with her.
“Sometimes you remind me a bit of a hawk…or an eagle. Something in your stare. Maybe you are a more dangerous predator just to my sensibilities,” she said with a teasing half smile.
He faltered into stillness. The eagle soars indifferently while the wolf betrays…
Nicolas studied her face carefully. “Do you trust me?”
“You are in my chamber, aren’t you? I have twice now been sitting on your very muscular thigh,” she said with clear disgruntlement.
He smiled. “My muscular thighs appreciate your trust. When did this happen?”
“Today,” she admitted softly.
“Why do I hear shame in your voice?”
“I was afraid.”
“A reaction that many of us feel. It warns us of the threat in the room, not that we are cowards.” He gave a sigh. “As a lad of twelve, I found myself on the iced-over lake by our country estate when I was