observed conversationally. “My sisters are all fair, save the youngest, and so many of the blushing little debutantes aspire to that pale-English-rose sort of beauty. On most of them, it’s insipid and childish. You have color and substance. Your hair is full of fiery highlights, and it always smells lovely.”
“You notice too much,” Leah murmured, eyes still closed.
“Dunk.” Nick’s voice held a smile. To Leah’s pleasure, he repeated the shampoo and finished it off with several thorough rinses with warm water.
“My thanks.” Leah sat up, blinking water out of her eyes. “I’ll ring for you when I’m through.”
“Not so fast.” Nick rose from his stool and retrieved a bath sheet from the wardrobe. “We have things to discuss.”
“We can discuss them when I am dry and decently covered,” Leah replied. If the bath water weren’t cooling, though, she would have been just as happy to drift off and discuss things in the morning—or never. Once Nick was assured they’d be marrying, she doubted there would be any more cozy baths.
Which might be for the best, drat the man.
“Out you go, lovey.” Nick averted his face and held the sheet wide. “I won’t peek, if you’ll recall.”
He wasn’t going to be nagged into leaving, and Leah was too tired to argue with him. Then too, she was hardly a blushing virgin, and he was no callow youth.
She wanted him to peek, though, which made the sadness a little harder to ignore. “Close your eyes, Nicholas.”
He did, and she rose, stepping carefully from the tub, and backing into the bath sheet to wrap it around her. Nick’s arms finished the task, enfolding her in clean, soft toweling and his fleeting embrace.
That had been nice, that simple hug. Also heart wrenching.
“Your robe?” Nick held it out then smiled as he saw that holding the bath sheet closed required both of Leah’s hands. “I’ll hang it behind the screen. When you’re decent, I’ll start on your hair.”
“There’s no need for that.”
“Can’t have you taking a chill,” Nick replied, the soul of equanimity. He probably bathed women regularly, the wretch. When Leah had retreated to the screen, Nick bellowed for the footmen to remove the bath, and by the time Leah emerged, it was gone.
And Nick was sitting on her bed.
Maybe her husband-to-be had a cruel streak? “Why are you still here, Nicholas?”
“Because we need to talk, lovey.” Nick’s tone had lost its teasing quality, and Leah knew a sinking dread in the pit of her stomach.
“I’m too tired for this,” she said, crossing to the bureau and retrieving a brush.
Nick rose and prowled across the room to her. “And yet we do need to have a very personal conversation, Leah, and sooner rather than later. I would spare you this if I could, but soon Della will arrive, and until such time as you are my countess, she will afford us little real privacy.”
“You are going to bully me into marrying you,” Leah said, lowering herself to the thick rug on the floor before the hearth. She arranged her robe so she could sit cross-legged, and started on her hair with the brush.
“I will not bully,” Nick said, folding his long frame down behind her, “but I will attempt to persuade. No matter what scheme we concoct, Leah, you will not be safe as long as your father is the male in authority over you.”
“He won’t live forever,” Leah said, giving up the brush without a fight. Nick put it aside and took a towel to her hair, twisting lengths of hair with toweling to wring moisture in his strong grasp.
“You shouldn’t brush it when it’s sopping wet,” Nick chided. “And while your father will not live forever, he is in good health and not that old. He could live for a long time. Rather than coming up with schemes to buy you time, Leah, I think we need to discuss what about marriage to me makes the idea so objectionable.” He wrung the rest of her hair to dampness with the towel, then added, “I want you to be honest.”
Leah drew her knees up and rested her forehead against them. The honest truth was that she was likely to desire this man, to harbor an attraction to him until she was older than Lady Warne. “This topic is hard to even consider.”
“All the more reason to broach it now, when we have peace and quiet, and privacy.”
Leah’s throat constricted, and a wave of homesickness washed through her—but homesickness for where? Not Wilton, though