The Matter of a Marquess - Jess Michaels Page 0,75

her movements.

“My lord, my lady,” Nicholas said with a slight bow.

“Oh, don’t do that,” Bramwell said as he crossed the room and offered a hand. “We were friends too long for that.”

Nicholas shifted as he smiled at his old friend. “Thomas, then,” he said. “Great God, it’s good to see you.”

“You too,” Thomas said.

“And my lady.” Nicholas bowed his head again. “You are radiant, as always.”

The countess blushed and smiled at him. “You do look handsome as ever, young man. I wish we’d reconnected earlier. I was forever asking your father after you when you were injured. Are you well?”

Nicholas flinched slightly. “I am. Thank you for your thoughts. Is my father joining us?”

“In a moment,” Thomas said, giving his mother a quick side look.

The countess inclined her head. “I hope you’ll join us for supper, Nicholas. And now I’ll leave you to my son. Good afternoon.”

She slipped from the room and shut the door softly. Once she was gone, Thomas looked him up and down a little closer. “Aurora isn’t here.”

Nicholas arched a brow. “Did I ask about her?”

Thomas shrugged one shoulder as he came around the desk and sat down. “No. But you had your wondering about Aurora look on your face. So I thought I’d answer the question before you got up the gumption to ask it.”

Nicholas swallowed. “You know we were at Roseford’s together.”

“She wrote and mentioned you,” Thomas said. “All that…longing was still in every word. The thing I never realized existed when I was a boy and couldn’t see it.”

“We tried to hide it,” Nicholas said, and couldn’t help but think about his last encounter with Aurora the day before, when she’d suggested they should do the same now. “Because your father didn’t approve.”

“No, he did not,” Thomas said. “Are you going to ask me if I do?”

“Do you?” Nicholas asked, sitting down in the seat across from him.

“I approve of anything that would make my sister happy,” Thomas said softly. “Do you know what my father did?”

Nicholas’s eyes went wide as he stared in shock at the implication. “Are you talking about what he did all those years ago? The lies he told to part Aurora from me?”

Thomas nodded. “Yes. That’s what I’m talking about.”

“You knew?” Nicholas asked in horror.

“I found out when I took the title a few years ago,” Thomas admitted. “He left such detailed accountings of all the ways he left destruction in his wake.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Nicholas asked. “You could have written me. After I was injured you could have come to call. You could have told your sister, for God’s sake—it was as much a shock to her when we figured it out as it was to me.”

Thomas tilted his head. “Are you finished? Because if you need to shout some more, get it out of your system.”

Nicholas pursed his lips. “Bloody fuck, Thomas.”

His friend sat for a moment and then he drew in a long breath. “You walked away from my sister and her heart was broken. She changed, she folded into herself. I hated you for that. And for the fact that you wrote me off with the same brush that you used to write her off.”

Nicholas clenched his jaw. He and this man had been best friends their entire lives, and then it had just…ended. Because he couldn’t bear to talk to Thomas and know that he couldn’t ever be near Aurora again.

“That was a bad mistake on my part.” He bent his head. “On both accounts.”

Thomas gave a ghost of a smile. “I appreciate that. At any rate, by the time I realized how you’d both been manipulated, she was long married. What good would it have done to tell either of you the truth? Would you have come riding home from war to break up whatever life she had made for herself?”

“I don’t know,” Nicholas admitted. “I can’t even picture what I would have done if I discovered the truth and she wasn’t…free. Perhaps created more of a scandal than she’s dealing with now.”

“Yes.” Thomas’s face was lined with troubles. “Her scandal. If I had any bloody money at all, I could fix some of that. But if my father destroyed your lives in one day, he decided to decimate mine in tiny strokes. I’ve been digging out of his messes for years. And I’m…helpless.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicholas said, and meant it.

Thomas shrugged. “Nothing you can do. I must work it out myself. But I am left with a question because I