sofa by the hearth and surveyed the selections on the tea cart. Tea, she was up to; food was too much of an effort.
“Eat something.” Nick lowered himself beside her. “Share a buttered scone with me, at least.” It seemed important to him that she eat, so Leah accepted the food from his hand after he’d slathered her portion with butter. Nick took his to the window and parted the curtain to eye the weather.
“Quite cool,” he said, “but sunny and breezy. The roads will dry easily.”
“And you will go,” Leah added, forcing herself to take a small bite.
“I will go.” Nick said, still staring out the window. “But not far, and I will come back if you sense any mischief afoot whatsoever. I’ll also let Darius know you are in residence here, and Trenton as well.”
He turned to face her again, and there was an intensity to his blue-eyed gaze Leah could not decipher, as if he were trying to discern her internal workings by visual inspection of her outer attributes. “I’ll also call on Lady Della. The funeral distracted me from asking her about something that’s been plaguing me.”
“Burying one’s father is distracting,” Leah agreed, taking another bite of scone, though it tasted like so much buttered sawdust.
“I want to know who the seconds were at the duel where Frommer lost his life. It’s a detail, but I can’t shake the sense it’s an important detail.”
“You still think it matters?” Leah asked, putting down the rest of her scone.
“I think you are absolutely safe here,” Nick said. “I also think there are questions to which you still deserve an answer. You assume your father killed Frommer in a fair fight, but I’m not so sure. And if it’s not the case, then somebody can bring your father to justice.”
Leah didn’t argue that the matter should drop, largely because Nick seemed intent on pursuing it regardless of its seeming irrelevance. He would not be deterred, and it gave her a sense that his caring about her was genuine and not just a function of guilt.
So she capitulated—something she’d long since grown adept at.
“You’re not going to eat,” Nick said, eyeing her half-eaten scone.
“Not much appetite, I’m afraid.”
“Of course not,” Nick said in commiseration, but to Leah’s relief he kept his one thousand and seventeenth apology behind his teeth. “May I help you dress?”
She nodded and rose, and again they fell into the intimate, casual ritual of spouses attending each other’s mundane needs. To Leah, though, it seemed Nick’s touch on her hair and skin lingered, and he stood rather nearer than he needed to. And instead of letting her assist him, he brushed out and repinned her hair first, taking extraordinary care with the task, until Leah wanted to weep with frustration at the tenderness he showed her.
When they were both dressed and presentable, Leah could not manage to sashay through their bedroom door.
“I don’t want to leave this room,” she said, the dread she’d held at bay congealing in her chest.
“There’s nothing out there I’d allow to hurt you,” Nick said, obliquely admitting he was the cause of her pain. “And I cannot depart until after luncheon. Let’s find your farmers and your steward, Lady Bellefonte, and stroll in your garden.”
That feeling of dread inside Leah’s body sank down to her vitals and spread, like an illness taking over, until Nick’s proffered arm was not merely a courtesy but a real support.
The morning went, as Nick intended, with them trotting briskly from one farmstead to the next and spending more than an hour with the steward, reviewing the progress of the newly planted crops, the livestock, and the upcoming harvest of hay.
Luncheon arrived, and Nick suggested they take their meal in the garden. They dined sheltered from the breeze by the high walls near the house, if pushing food around and nibbling the occasional bite could be called dining.
Nick called for his horse when the lunch cart was wheeled back into the house, and remained sitting beside Leah on her stone bench, his hand linked with hers.
“I don’t want you to go,” Leah said finally. She wasn’t crying—yet—but her chest ached terribly, and she had the feeling she was burying her marriage and any hope for her long-term happiness with it.
“But I leave because I care about you,” Nick said, “at least in part, and I can only urge you to be as happy as you can, Leah. That is what I want for you, though it might