amusing. But then, Nick was a tolerant man whose own sins were legion, at least by the lights of some people, so perhaps Nick was the right person to tell.
“Ethan?” Nick’s tone gentled when he paused by the door.
“Nicholas?”
“Whatever your reasons for guarding your… privacy,” Nick said, “I trust they were important to you at the time, and you were thinking of your sons’ best interests. As their father, that is your prerogative, and your duty. I do think, though, Bellefonte would want to know, if he doesn’t already.”
Ethan nodded, but the ache was back in his throat, so he let Nick leave without another word, then crossed the room to sit down on Nick’s great bed.
The proverbial cat was out of the bag, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Nick had offered condolences, in fact. An upset female clamoring for his attention, another female trying to deny herself his attentions, and Nick himself probably both hurt and bewildered, and yet Nick’s first impulse had been simply to acknowledge his brother’s losses.
Ethan sat on the bed for a long time, waiting for the ache in his throat to ease and recalling the sympathy in Nick’s blue eyes.
***
“What can he be doing?” Leah asked Lady Della, who had joined her in the informal parlor.
“Nicholas Haddonfield is a law unto himself,” Della said, pursing her lips as she joined Leah at the parlor window. “It appears he’s selecting flowers for a bouquet, but why he’d include something with thorns is beyond me.”
“What’s the hyacinth for?” Leah asked, dreading the answer.
“Sorrow,” Della replied, her tone puzzled. “He’s also conveying remorse, which is what the raspberry is about; affection, declarations of love, consolation, and I didn’t see that last little green sprig—the one from the shrubbery tree.”
“Arbutus,” Leah said, thinking back to her blue salvia—I think of you. At least he hadn’t put that in this bouquet. “What does arbutus mean?”
Della continued to visually follow Nick’s progress around the gardens. “I love only thee.”
Damn him. Damn him for being so attentive to a woman he’d loved long before Leah and her stupid difficulties had landed at his feet.
“He has a mistress,” Leah said, the words making her heart ache. “He admitted as much, and he loves her, and yet he thinks to oblige his father by making a white marriage with me.”
“He thinks to protect you by marrying you,” Della said, watching her grandson. “If Nicholas thinks he can sustain a white marriage, he’s deluding himself.”
“Why do you say that?” Leah tried to keep her curiosity out of her tone, but Lady Della was speaking with firm conviction, and her thoughts seem to echo comments Mr. Grey had made to Leah when they’d been out riding.
Comments about marriage being fraught with opportunities for an enterprising wife, regardless of the terms her husband thought he’d struck at the outset.
“Nicholas is as lusty as a billy goat, my dear,” Della said with a smile, “and he comes by that honestly. More to the point, he is not in the habit of denying himself what he desires most, and he desires you.”
Leah marveled at Lady Della’s indelicate speech, even as she resented the notion Nick could be reduced to the motivations and simplicity of a barnyard animal.
Resented that too. “He desires her more.” Much, much more. Enough to promise the woman fidelity for all the rest of his days.
“For now, perhaps, but you’ve known him, what, weeks? And she’s been part of his life probably for years. Still, you would have the advantage, as his wife, since you will be in his life for the rest of his days—and nights.”
“That is not the point,” Leah said, temper fraying as outside in the garden Nick took a moment to arrange his bouquet just so, then trimmed up the end of each stem with a knife. “I do not want to compete with some doxy for my husband’s affections. I do not want Nick to marry me out of pity, or because it’s convenient for his purposes, or it’s the only way I can be free of Wilton.”
Della turned, planted one fist on her hip, and shook an elegant finger. “Listen to yourself, my dear. I can understand resenting a mistress, but as for the other, you are not using your head. Pride will be no comfort when Wilton’s schemes have landed you in Hellerington’s bed, or somewhere worse. Do you know there are men who enjoy—intimately—beating women, hurting them, making them bruise and cry and bleed?”