suggested gently. “Rather defeats the purpose of coming.”
“I wish there were another way to do this.” Nick looked out at the street on a sigh. “Why can’t a man simply take an ad in the newspaper: prospective earl looking for a duty-countess who will forget he ever married her?”
In the first hour of dancing, Nick stood up with three wallflowers, each chosen for her height and lack of partners, before he ducked out onto the well-lit terraces for a breath of fresh air. The weather was moderate, which meant the ballroom was quickly heating up, and the well-spaced urns of hothouse flowers were losing their battle with the scent of overheated, overperfumed, underwashed humans.
“We seem destined to hide in the same places.” Leah’s voice drifted out of the gloom to Nick’s left, and he felt a lightening of both body and mood.
“My lady.” He bowed over her hand, covertly assessing her appearance in the subdued light. “At least we both hide in pleasant, well-ventilated places. How fare you?”
“Honestly?” Leah peered up at him. “I was getting slightly nauseated in there. I lost Darius after the first set and thought perhaps to find him out here.”
Darius being one of her two brothers whom Nick was quietly having investigated. “Darius should not have lost you. Shall I search the gentlemen’s rooms for you?”
“Not yet,” she said as he led her to a bench several dark yards off the well-lit terrace. “Dare lets me slip the leash on purpose. I see no evidence of Hellerington tonight, so Darius has relaxed his guard. You should not have sent flowers, by the way.”
“You must not say such things, for I will send twice as many tomorrow.”
“What do they mean?” she asked after a time. “The flowers you sent?”
“The snowdrop is for hope,” Nick said, pleased she would ask. He’d chosen the bouquet carefully and visited more than one shop in the process. “The little sprig of wood sorrel is for joy, the wallflowers are for fidelity in adversity, and the lilies of the valley, as you know, are for a return to happiness.”
“There was a very pretty blue flower as well.” Beside him, she took a deep breath of the night air. “It reminded me of your eyes.”
That was a compliment. He was sure of it, and equally sure his eyes had never received a lady’s compliment before.
“Salvia,” Nick said, finding himself fascinated by the rise and fall of her chest.
“It has no meaning?”
“I cannot recall at the moment.” Nick shifted his gaze to the dark foliage around them. What on earth had he been thinking, sending blue salvia?
“You met with Hellerington earlier in the week?” Leah asked, leaning more closely against his side.
“I most assuredly did.” Nick forced himself to attend the sense of her words rather than her scent, the pure pleasure of her voice in the darkness, or the warmth of her body next to his. “We had a delicate little exchange, with me giving him to understand I’d appreciate it if those fellows whose vowels I hold would behave in a gentlemanly fashion toward their creditors, particularly before they take on additional familial obligations.”
“Did he respond to that?”
“I wish I could tell you he caught a packet for France, lovey,” Nick said, “but I was firing an opening salvo, and he understood it as such. I’ll next make a few pointed remarks at the club, maybe suggest something ought to be put in the betting book at your father’s club, call upon the baron again, and loudly hope I need not reduce my demands to writing or perhaps seek satisfaction through other means.”
Leah leaned closer still, maybe hunching in on herself but also dropping her voice to a near whisper. “What other means?”
“Typically, one offers a challenge in such a circumstance or simply beats the stuffing out of the party who’s refusing to pay a debt of honor,” Nick said, letting her scent come to him on the soft night air.
“Would you go that far?”
“If I say yes, you will think me a brute beast. If I say no, you will think me a bully who threatens those weaker but backs down at the first hint of risk.”
She said nothing for a moment then surprised him.
“I wish I knew how to use a gun, or that I was as big and powerful as you are.” Her voice was low and bitter, a tone no lady should ever have cause to adopt. Nick slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her