as if concluding her interest in the topic of marrying him. “Mustn’t be petulant, my lord. I can, however, see your father’s situation makes you impatient, and understandably so. I expect if we do become engaged, you will want to marry by special license.”
“You’re willing to forgo St. George’s and the whole…?” Nick waved his hand in upward spirals.
“My past is scandalous,” Leah reminded him, “and my father unwilling or unable to foot much of the bill for a wedding and the attendant nonsense. You promised your father not a fiancée, but a wife. Then too, should something befall me while we’re engaged, you’d be obliged to start hunting all over again, and there’s no need for that.”
“Suppose not.” Watching Leah move around the kitchen in her nightclothes, Nick abruptly wanted to get the actual wedding over and done with. She was right: the expedient course was the only sensible one.
“Good night.” Leah bent and placed a lingering kiss on Nick’s cheek. “My thanks for your company, Nicholas. You’ll talk Lord Val into playing us some lullabies?”
Lily of the valley, roses, and female warmth wafted momentarily to Nick’s nose.
“I will,” Nick managed, utterly stunned by that innocent little kiss on the cheek. Good heavens, did she have to go and smell so delicious when they were all alone in the damned deserted kitchen?
He watched her disappear up the back steps, let out a gusty breath, and forcibly shifted his thoughts from the view of her retreating derriere.
***
Nick saw his brother off to Belle Maison, and though Ethan’s errand was sad, the idea that Nick would join him at the family seat in a few days was comforting. Those logistics, however, meant that Darius Lindsey would have to be pressed into service to escort the ladies back to Town. Nick proposed that he and Leah call on her brother in person to request his aid.
“If you were my countess, you would acquire a passel of family,” Nick said as he boosted Leah into the saddle. “I have four sisters and three more brothers besides Ethan. They are placing bets on what kind of woman I will marry.”
“Bets?” Leah asked, frowning as Nick swung up onto his mare.
“Mostly the betting is divided between will she be short, or will she be tall,” Nick said, “but the sisters are more concerned about will she be mature or a simpering little twit from the schoolroom. Della, the youngest, is voting for the twit. She claims any woman of sense would not have me.”
Their talk moved forward on the same lines, with Nick describing each sibling in detail, along with stories of that brother or sister’s childhood, or recent antics. He spoke lovingly of all of them, as well as about his late stepmother, hoping the picture painted with words would increase the attractiveness of his proposal to Leah.
But gradually the talk slowed, until they were ambling along in silence.
“Penny for them?” Nick asked as they approached the gate to Darius Lindsey’s drive.
“Nicholas, I am not at all sure I have the fortitude to be your countess.”
“Fortitude?” Nick’s brow shot up. “I’m not going to pester you for your favors, Leah.”
“And that’s part of the problem,” she said gently. “I will want a kind of intimacy I can never have with you, and I know from experience what it’s like to yearn that way.”
Nick cocked his head in puzzlement, because this was female logic, and thus, a contradiction in terms. “You miss Frommer that much?”
“I miss Aaron, but mostly I feel crushing guilt for his death. I don’t refer to him, though, so much as I do to being raised by a man who cannot abide me. I wanted my papa to love me, Nick, to approve of me. As far back as I can recall, I was consumed with being as good as I could be, as smart, as demure, as clean, as quiet—whatever I could imagine him wanting me to be. I tried to excel at that. And he has never, not once, suggested he’s proud of me or pleased with me or anything but burdened by the fact that I draw breath.”
“I see,” Nick said, bringing his horse to a halt. To keep her safe, he was going to have to break her heart. This was not fair to him, and it was grossly unjust to her.
“I don’t know if you can see.” Leah’s gaze traveled over her brother’s dwelling, a modest edifice some would say was too humble for an earl’s