“This is a dilemma,” Leah said, closing her fingers around Nick’s hand. “How long do you think we can endure it, Nicholas, before we begin to hate each other?”
“I cannot hate you.” The words held relief, topped with a dollop of sadness. “I can hate the part of me that has no conscience and wants to pleasure itself in your body regardless of consequences, but I cannot hate the lady who consented to spend the rest of her life with me, knowing how little I can offer her.”
Heat flooded Leah’s face.
“That is impressively blunt,” she allowed, eyes straight ahead. “But, Nick, where do we go from here? We’re tied together at the ankle by this marriage and will have to spend some time together at least for the short term. I do not like feeling I’m mooning after a man who doesn’t want me, and you cannot enjoy my longing glances and girlish sighs.”
He did not smile. “Of course I can. I am a man, Leah, and all the practical considerations in the world won’t change that. Glance and sigh, and I’ll strut and paw. It’s the way the animal is made.”
Leah heard herself ask, “Do you think we would be better off apart, Nicholas?”
Panic or something like it flared in his blue eyes. Whatever it was, Leah assured herself it wasn’t relief.
“Leah, I haven’t been with another woman since I met you.”
***
In the biblical sense, Nick could tell his wife he’d not strayed. Marriage was turning him into a barrister, though, because he’d spent the entire afternoon in company with a female he never intended for Leah to meet.
And maybe Leah sensed the prevarication, because she would not meet Nick’s gaze.
He wasn’t ready to let her go. Worse, he could not envision the day when he would be ready.
Booted steps sounded swiftly above, and then on the kitchen stairs. Nick exchanged a puzzled look with his wife—his sad, cranky wife—but admitted relief that the conversation had been interrupted. Leah’s courage had towed their discussion out to deep, dangerous waters, and shoals lay all around them.
“Nick?” Ethan’s voice rang with anxiety. “Where the hell are you?”
“Down here,” Nick bellowed, rising from Leah’s side, “and I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head when in the presence of my lady wife.” Nick kept his tone teasing and his face arranged in a glad smile until Ethan gained the bottom of the stairs. One look at Ethan’s expression, and Nick’s good cheer evaporated.
“Papa’s gone?”
Ethan gave one tight nod, and for a long moment, Nick stood there in the kitchen, the reality of the moment imprinting itself on his mind: the ticking clock, the low song of the simmering kettle, the lovely spring sunshine pouring in the open kitchen windows, the breeze bringing with it the scent of garden flowers, turned earth, and the stables.
This is the moment when I become an orphan. When my brother and all my siblings and I become orphans. A chasm opened up in his chest, bottomless and yet filled with pain, sorrow, and bewilderment. Wordlessly he held out an arm to his wife, who was beside him in an instant. The other arm went out to Ethan, who joined them in an odd, strangely comforting three-way embrace.
“Let’s sit,” Leah suggested a few minutes later. “Ethan, your horse?”
“The lads are walking him out,” Ethan said as he led Nick to the table and slid onto the bench next to him.
“You probably haven’t eaten today,” Leah said, frowning at Ethan. “You will eat, Ethan Grey, and no sass. Nicholas?”
He turned to her, trying to fathom her meaning, as though plain English had suddenly become a foreign language at which he had little proficiency.
“I’m going to feed your brother and have some provisions packed for us.” Leah spoke slowly. “I’m also going to have some clothes packed and send word to my brother I’ll be leaving with you today for Belle Maison.”
Nick nodded, unable to get his voice to work. If he said something, anything, he’d… lose his composure, and he could not allow Leah to see that.
Leah knelt beside his chair. “I’m coming with you to Belle Maison—if that’s what you want?”
He managed a terse nod and barely resisted the compulsion to drag her against his chest. Leah rose and moved off. Nick was aware of her bustling around the kitchen, aware of his brother looking haggard and road weary, and aware that Papa—the earl, his lordship, the only person standing between Nick and