The Matter of a Marquess - Jess Michaels Page 0,12

to join our party. She was saying something about it during our walk yesterday. Lady…Lady something or another. What was it?”

Nicholas laughed. “No one is less interested in the upper class than you are.”

“Probably because not so long ago, I was very interested in them for what my husband says are the wrong reasons.” She shook her head.

“Well, why don’t we go see who this person is?” Nicholas said. “I won’t even mention it if you are taking a quiet inventory of the lady’s jewels.”

“Old habits,” Selina said, and took his arm. They made their way up the hall slowly and were met near the foyer by Selina’s husband.

Derrick was tall and held himself like the military man he’d once been. He nodded to Nicholas, his gaze flitting to his leg before he said, “I heard the commotion. This must be our final guest.”

Selina slipped from Nicholas’s side and took her husband’s arm instead. As she stared up at him, Nicholas couldn’t help but flinch. He’d tried to ignore his sister’s observation that some of his troubles might be because he was alone in a house full of people in love. Now he watched his sister and her husband walk in front of him, her fingers all but vibrating on Derrick’s bicep, and the twinge of jealousy ripped through him.

But there was no way to explain that to his family. No way to change it. His life was what it was, and a grand romance like the ones his siblings had lived out, continued to live out, was not in the future for him.

They walked out into the warm summer breeze together, joining Robert and Katherine and their brother Morgan and his wife Lizzie on the top stair. Down below, the carriage door had already been opened, so the crest that might have revealed the identity of their guest was obscured. But it wasn’t a moment before the footman reached inside and an elegantly slippered foot appeared from the darkness. The woman stepped out, her head bent as she paid attention to her footing. Her bonnet obscured her face and Selina laughed back at Nicholas. “I swear, it’s like a game…who is the mystery woman?”

At that moment, before Nicholas could laugh or Katherine could say the name they’d been waiting to hear, the woman tilted her head back to look up the stairs, and everything in Nicholas’s world came to a halt.

“Aurora,” he breathed out loud, because he couldn’t help it.

Derrick pivoted to face him. “What? The Aurora?”

Nicholas couldn’t answer. He couldn’t acknowledge or respond to his family’s questions as they asked him who Aurora was. As Katherine stared at him in shock and dawning horror.

No, all he could do was look down that long set of stairs at the woman who had molded and changed and guided his life since he was hardly more than a boy. The woman who had haunted him every day and every night for almost a decade.

She stared up at him, all the color gone from those cheeks, her full lips parted in just as much as shock as he felt, her hands shaking at her sides. And by God, she was more beautiful than she’d ever been. Tendrils of blonde hair curled from the edge of her bonnet, framing her oval face, drawing attention to those high cheekbones. Her gown was spring green, fresh as the new leaves, and it flowed over her supple curves, hinting at gorgeous breasts and the swell of her hips.

Nicholas she mouthed, silent, and that broke him.

He slowly made his way down the stairs, the pain that usually accompanied that action dulled by the pain of seeing her. The thrill of seeing her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as he stopped a few feet in front of her. He couldn’t go closer. If he went closer, his itching palms might force him to reach for her. If he touched her, all was lost. All had always been lost.

She blinked at him. “Nicholas,” she repeated, this time in a shaky voice.

“What is going on?” Roseford called from above, concern plain in his voice.

They were all coming down now to join them. Nicholas felt it rather than saw it, because he couldn’t tear his gaze away from this woman. This woman he had almost convinced himself couldn’t be real. How could such perfection be real?

She ducked her head, breaking their stare at last, and somehow that broke the spell, too. He was still captivated, yes, but now other emotions