two have been sneaking around, whispering in corners. It hasn’t gone too far—that is the only reason I haven’t stopped it before today.”
“Sir!” Nicholas gasped as he realized the earl was talking about sex. A subject he pondered a great deal every time he was around Aurora, but certainly he would not disrespect her by ruining her! “I would never—”
“If you wanted to secure her and her fortune, perhaps you should have,” Bramwell interrupted. “If it were any girl but my daughter, I might even congratulate you. You are reaching above your station and trying to make something of yourself through marrying a better.”
“No,” Nicholas said, taking a long step forward. “It isn’t for a mercenary purpose. I love Aurora!”
“Love.” Bramwell pursed his lips and sniffed. “Love is for fools and the poor. Men of my ilk cannot afford such silly notions. My daughter will marry someone who will further my desires, that is the end of it. In fact, the marriage contracts have been signed just today. She will be Viscountess Lovell within a month.”
Nicholas stared. If his blood had rushed like a roaring river in his ears before, now everything in the room had gone curiously silent. Like he’d been shoved under the water and now he had to fight to swim to the surface. Difficult with this man’s boot on his neck.
“Marry…marry Lord Lovell,” he repeated. “No. N-No.”
“Oh yes,” Bramwell said with a tiny smile. “Indeed, it is true.”
Nicholas glared at the man. He’d always feared Bramwell. His entire life he’d known this man held his family’s fortunes on the blade of a knife. One mercurial decision and they would be ruined. But in that moment, he hated the earl more than he feared him.
“She loves me. I will stop this marriage.”
Nicholas expected an outburst at his words. Bramwell was well known for those. His father had been at the receiving end of them many a time. But to his surprise, Bramwell only nodded. “She told you she wanted you, did she? The girl is more like me than I ever thought. She lied, boy. Understand that. She has known about the arrangement with Lovell for months. And she is looking forward to the life she was always meant to have. You were never good enough for her.”
“No,” Nicholas said, but there was a kernel of doubt in the back of his mind that he hated.
How many times had he pondered himself that their positions were so disparate? How many times had he wondered if he would be able to keep Aurora happy when she was without her pin money and her gowns and jewels and parties?
Now Bramwell was drawing those doubts to the surface, picking them open and exposing them to the light.
“You still believe she loves you?” Bramwell said with a sniff. “Then I suppose I must be cruel to be kind. Who wrote that?”
“The Bard,” Nicholas choked. “Hamlet. Act three.”
“You’re educated, at least.” Bramwell shrugged. “Come along.”
He crooked his finger, and Nicholas followed because he felt he had no choice. He was too numb to fight against a man with such power. They wound through the halls of this home he knew so well and out a parlor onto the wide terrace that stretched across the expanse of the back of the manor. It overlooked the garden. The place he’d first dared to kiss Aurora. In the orange and pink colors of sunset, he looked down over the green and found a woman not so far down the path from the house.
Aurora. Even from a distance, he could make her out. He knew her gait, he knew her posture, her knew the way she tilted her head as she paused at what she always called her favorite rosebush. She was the kind of woman with a favorite rosebush and he loved her for it.
Only today, she wasn’t with him as she strolled those lovely paths. But she wasn’t alone, either. No, in the romantic glow of the sunset, she was with a gentleman. Nicholas’s heart sank.
“Lovell,” Bramwell said, with a pleasure to his voice that said he enjoyed being cruel. “They look well together, don’t they?”
Nicholas couldn’t respond to the jab. He was too busy staring at the couple. Aurora’s hand was in the crook of this man’s elbow. He was speaking to her and she turned her face toward him. Even from the distance, Nicholas recognized she was smiling. When she smiled, she did so with her entire body. He’d made a study