The Matter of a Marquess - Jess Michaels Page 0,28
said, “Selina.”
Something in her shifted at the way he said her name. Nicholas watched the fight bleed out of her and her gaze light up with something much different. It made the exchange between them on the settee look tame. “Very well,” she said. “Come find me after, Derrick.”
“You know I will,” he said, and smiled as she patted Nicholas’s arm and slipped from the room, closing the door behind herself to give them privacy.
“I ruined your fun,” Nicholas said, crossing to the sideboard and pouring himself a drink. “My apologies.”
“We’re married,” Derrick said, his tone concerned. “I can have my fun whenever I want. It’s a bit early for that, isn’t it?”
Nicholas slugged back half the tumbler and shrugged. “Not in the world of the marquess. Don’t they get to do anything they want? I’m just practicing. At any rate, I’m sorry if I upset my sister.”
“Selina isn’t very good with tact,” Derrick said softly, but his gaze glittered with what was obviously love for her.
“No, she never has been,” Nicholas agreed. “When I first met her, I hardly knew what to do with that free-spirited attitude. I tried to protect it out of her, I think, the first six months we knew each other. But eventually I came to accept it.”
Derrick smiled. “She adores you, you know.”
“And you adore her.” Nicholas stared toward the door where she had departed. “You make her happy, which she deserves more than anyone I’ve ever known.”
Derrick stepped closer. “And it is the great pleasure of my life to love and protect her.” He tilted his head. “But that’s not why you came to find me. So stop stalling.”
“You’ll be happy to know you were right,” Nicholas said.
Derrick arched a brow. “I’m probably right about a great many things. What specifically are we talking about?”
“Aurora,” Nicholas said. “You tried to talk to me last night about Aurora, and I told you some damned fool thing about distance and pretending she wasn’t here. You knew I was a fool and I’m telling you that you were correct in that assessment.”
Derrick’s expression softened. “You saw her again?”
“On a walk with Fortescue. You know that dog tries to protect me against everyone. The first time you came to call, he growled at you from the corner for twenty minutes. And he knew you!”
“He’s intimidating as hell, yes. I assume he was…not so vigilant when it comes to Aurora?”
“He rolled over on his back and gave her his belly to rub.” Nicholas clenched his teeth. “And I understand why. When I was watching her rub his stomach and coo at him, I never wanted to be a dog more.”
“It’s understandable.”
Nicholas grimaced. “Well, a dog’s life is fairly charmed.”
“Not because of that,” Derrick said with a shake of his head. “Don’t play games. Lady Lovell is beautiful.”
Nicholas sighed. “She is that. Exquisite. Perhaps even more than she was nine years ago, and that is a feat.”
Derrick was watching him far too closely. “You may have wanted to try to be strangers, but of course you aren’t. It’s natural that old feelings might come back to the fore.”
“She was everything to me. She…still…is,” he whispered, letting his mind ease back to all those years ago. Letting himself feel the love for her that he’d tried to pretend away and hide and crush down. When he let it free, it swelled up in his chest and pushed every other pain and heartbreak away.
It became as large and as powerful as it had ever been. And he knew then that it had never faded. He’d never forced himself to hate her enough to forget it. It was just there, waiting for a moment when she would step into the frame of his life and drag him back to the past.
Derrick let out his breath in a long stream. “I see. Then this goes deeper than desire.”
Nicholas nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Obviously, as a friend, this concerns me. I know she hurt you. When she married for a title, when she walked away, all that ripped you to shreds. But you aren’t the same boy you were then. You’re a man who has endured loss and pain and heartbreak. You’re stronger now.”
“I don’t feel stronger when I look at her,” Nicholas scoffed.
“Well, there’s only one way to deal with this, then, and that is to face it head on. Address it.”
“Yes,” Nicholas agreed. “Only I would say it’s not the only way to deal with it.”
Derrick’s eyes went wide, and Nicholas could understand why.