A Wedding by Dawn (25 page)

Miss Ursula snorted. “’Course ye don’t
hate
’im. Seems more to me like the opposite, what with ye both creeping ’round each other like foxes circling a henhouse.”

“Taggart is going to be sold, Miss Ursula,” India said now.

Miss Ursula made a noise and waved the fact away.

“And even if it weren’t, Nicholas doesn’t want me as his wife.”

“Now ye listen to me,” she said, pointing a weathered finger. “I’ve known ’is lordship these many years—twelve, to be exact—and I know when he’s happy and when he’s not.”

“He doesn’t want me. Once Taggart is gone, he and Emilie will move into a cottage, and he’s already ashamed of me—”

“Ashamed of ye!”

“—and he doesn’t want me to go with them. He never wanted me for anything but the money he thought he would get from marrying me. He’s made that clear enough. And now he knows I can’t read, and you should have seen the look on his face—I don’t think I can ever face him again.” She stood up. “I need to leave Taggart. I need to leave before he returns.”

“Ye’ve gone mad! Leave Miss Emilie?”

No. No, she couldn’t do that. But—

Across the garden, Emilie stood up and pointed toward the drive. “Nicholas!”

India turned. Saw him riding toward them. Her heart leaped and sank all at the same time.

India watched from the garden while Emilie rushed to meet him. Nicholas slid from the saddle and grabbed Emilie around the waist, lifting her into the air and turning in a circle as he hugged her.

She could see his smile from here. Could see him telling her something, and Emilie growing excited and throwing her arms around his neck.

He led his horse toward the stables, holding Emilie by the hand, and India watched them go, wanting more than anything in the world to join them.

But she waited until they came into the house and Emilie ran upstairs to change out of her dirty gardening apron, and she approached him in the entryway.

“How was London?” Seeing him now, everything they’d done the night before he left came rushing back—every last touch, every brush of his skin against hers, every intimate movement.

“It was...surprising.” He tilted his head back, looking up at the ceiling, the windows at the front of the house. “I have good news.”

“What news?” He didn’t look like a man with good news. He looked...sad.

Almost as sad as he’d looked before he’d left.

“I shan’t have to sell Taggart after all.”

The news struck India breathless. “My father’s man of business—”

“Hardly.” His greatcoat swirled around his legs as he turned in a circle, as if seeing Taggart for the first time. “It would seem that my mother set aside something for me, and as yesterday was my thirty-fifth birthday—”

“Yesterday was your birthday?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“It didn’t signify.”

It signified to her.

“In any case,” he went on, “it seems I have come into a considerable fortune through a trust my mother set up for me.”

“Oh, Nicholas, that’s wonderful!”

“Yes.” He stopped looking around the entry and looked at her. “Yes, it is. I have more than enough to pay my debt to Holliswell, keep Taggart and...about anything else I fancy, I suppose.” He paused, looking at her. “Such as a ship.”

A ship—

“I stopped to see a man who manages the London affairs for a friend of my brother who has shipyards in Turkey and London. As luck would have it, they’ve nearly finished construction of a small brig for an investor whose funds fell through at the last minute, and I was able to make an advantageous bargain. I’m told she will be seaworthy in a fortnight.”

“Seaworthy...” He couldn’t possibly mean...

His ridiculous promise, made—she’d thought—in the heat of anger. She’d nearly forgotten. But now...

Blazing pain spread out behind her ribs as her mind grasped what he was telling her.

“And to further compensate you for the upheaval I’ve brought to your life,” he went on before she could think what to say, “I intend to give you five thousand pounds instead of the five hundred you found so insulting.” He looked down at her, his expression carefully blank. “I only regret that I cannot give back the liberty I’ve stolen from you these past weeks. I cannot undo it—nor can I undo the marriage—” there was a pause, a memory of that awful meeting with the bishop in London “—but I can do as you’ve asked.”

He was giving her a
ship.

He had money now, money of his own, and Taggart was secure. And he was sending her away. Of course he was. He knew the truth—knew she could never be a fit mistress for Taggart.

Her plan to insist that she go with them to the cottage crumbled. That was so different from insisting she stthaay here as Lady Taggart. She might have made a fit mistress for the cottage, but now there wouldn’t be any cottage.

Now there would be balls. Soirées. There would likely be a house in London, dinners with his compatriots in the Lords, entertainments to be hosted.

This is my wife—you remember, Cantwell’s daughter, the young woman I agreed to marry in my desperation,
she imagined him saying.
I had to drag her away from her stolen ship, you know. She was in a tavern when I found her, dressed like a man. Tried to gut-shoot me with her pistol. Oh, yes—and she won’t be reading us any poetry tonight. She can’t.

Of course he’d bought her a ship. It was the one thing he thought she wanted more than anything. The one thing guaranteed to have her packing her things and setting out from London posthaste, never to return.

Except...

She didn’t want to sail away on a ship, never to return.

“Are you feeling all right?”

No. She was breaking inside. But, “Yes. Yes, of course. I...” She couldn’t tell him that she loved him. That she wanted to stay at Taggart. “I’m just surprised. After all that’s happened, I despaired of ever returning to the sea.”

Despair of an entirely different kind keened inside her. But she couldn’t refuse the ship, the living, without telling him her heart.

And if she did that, he would laugh, or perhaps pity her, or worse.

There was a sound from outside. The unmistakable clatter and clop of an approaching carriage. Nicholas went to the windows.

“Are you expecting visitors?” India asked.

“No.” And then a muttered curse. “It’s Cantwell.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

F
ATHER
.

But— “I thought he’d gone to the colonies,” India said, hearing the edge of panic in her own voice.

“I saw him in London,” Nicholas said grimly. “Go into the library— I shall deal with him.”

India hesitated. Through the windows, she saw Father approaching the door.

“India, go.”

So she did. She hurried past the staircase to the library and ducked inside the door, just as she heard Nicholas admit Father.

“You’re not giving my daughter a goddamned ship.”

“The gifts I choose to bestow on my wife are between her and me,” Nicholas said flatly.

What if Nicholas decided to send her back with Father instead? Hiding in the library, she felt nine years old instead of nineteen.

Stop being a ninny and face him.

Her feet wouldn’t move.

“When you propose to give my daughter the means to her own death, Taggart, it bloody well
is
my business. I asked you to marry her and return her to England—
safely.
Implicit in that arrangement was the idea that you would not then send her back out to perish on the seas.”

“Forgive me,” Nick said coolly, “but we no longer have any arrangement at all.”

“Is it the money? Are you trying to blackmail me, Taggart? Because it’s worked. I’ll give you the bloody money.”

“Perhaps you ought to offer it to India instead. She was making her way splendidly when I found her, and I expect she’ll do so again.”

That wasn’t exactly true.

“My daughter belongs in a drawing room, not on the deck of a sixteen-gun brig!”

“Then you’ll be happy to know the ship she’ll be sailing has a mere ten.”

“She’s a girl—and not a very intelligent one at that. She can’t command a ship.”

“The fact that I had to pursue her all the way to Malta proves otherwise.”

“You do realize that India can’t even read—”

“Most likely thanks to you.”

“Me,”
Father thundered. “I did every bloody thing I could think of to take her education seriously. Only imagine how easily such a foolish girl will be taken advantage of. Does she imagine anyone will deign to transact
business
with her? Good
God.
Tell me what it will take to change your mind.”

“I’m not going to change my mind. India will have her ship, it will be hers to do with as she pleases, and that’s the end of it.”

It was too much. India rushed out of the library and into the entry. “What did you expect, when you decided to find me a husband this way?”

“India,” Father said sharply.

“He only agreed to your horrible arrangement because of the money, and now that he doesn’t need your money anymore, you’re surprised that he doesn’t want me? And you call
me
foolish.”

“India!”

But she was already halfway up the stairs. Devil take Father and Nicholas both.

* * *

N
ICK
WATCHED
I
NDIA
hurry up the stairs.

He doesn’t want me.
What the devil—

“India!” Cantwell shouted, starting past him, but Nick stepped in front of him.

“Your business here is finished.”

“It won’t be as easy as you imagine,” Cantwell said. His eyes hardened—blue eyes the same color as India’s. “Do not expect that ship to be ready anytime soon.”

Suddenly Nick wasn’t sure it mattered.
He doesn’t
want
me?
Above, his eye caught Emilie’s aghast face peeking over the rail, watching India hurry out of sight. He made a motion for her to return to her rooms as he ushered Cantwell to the door. “I shall see you to your carriage.”

Cantwell spun on his heel. Nick followed him outside—just in time to see a second carriage coming down the drive.

“Looks like Croston,” Cantwell said, just as Nick himself spotted the crest on the door.

Bloody hell. It was James.

Worse, he discovered moments later as Cantwell’s carriage pulled away and James’s pulled up, it was James and Honoria. Both.

“La, Nicholas,” Honoria said as Nick helped her out of the carriage, “what is this I hear about Lady India sailing away on a ship?”

* * *

T
HEIR
EVENING
MEAL
was a sorry affair prepared by Miss Ursula, the only servant he had.

Nick dipped his spoon into a quick soup Miss Ursula had thrown together—thin and brothy, but full of meat and vegetables, and tasting better than it looked. He thought of Emilie, alone in her rooms with her dinner tray. He’d managed to excuse himself for a few moments earlier to go up and explain what had happened, but he’d bungled the whole thing because how could he explain without telling Emilie the whole sordid mess? It was hardly appropriate subject matter for the thoughts of an eleven-year-old.

To his left, Honoria set her spoon on the edge of her plate. The sound was deafening.

To his right, James ate silently.

And at the other end of the table...

India seemed to shimmer in the candlelight. She lifted her spoon to her lips, a perfect lady in one of her aunt’s reworked gowns from Paris.

He watched those full pink lips close around the edge of the spoon and had to look away.

There’d been no opportunity to speak with her privately since her father’s visit.

“Where do you plan to go?” James asked India now.

“Athens,” she said, carefully tilting her spoon to let a swirl of soup pool inside of it, keeping her eyes carefully lowered. “Perhaps Constantinople.”

“Katherine said to remind you of a merchant in Constantinople named Ashkan.”

India thought for a moment. “Oh—yes. Thank you.”

Honoria put down her spoon. “Staying with Nicholas would be an excellent plan, as well,” she said crossly.

“Ree...” James said.

“Well, it would be. Certainly Taggart is grander than any ship, even if it does need a bit of repairing. Nicholas will have an army of servants in short order, and it will be as comfortable as anywhere. La, India, I simply cannot understand you.”

“Honoria,” Nick said, “she doesn’t
want
to live in England.”

“But the two of you are married.”

Now India put down her spoon. “That may be true, Lady Ramsey, but this was never a love match.”

The hell it wasn’t.

The thought shot through Nick’s mind, and his hand stilled with his spoon halfway to his mouth.

Slowly, deliberately, he lifted it the rest of the way. Tasted his soup. Put the spoon down.

Love.

He stared at India, sitting across from him looking at once vulnerable and defiant, and suddenly he saw her again perched on the table aboard William’s ship with her toes on his chair, taunting him about loving her to distraction.

And damnation if it wasn’t the truth.

He loved her.

And he didn’t notice Miss Ursula approaching until she came up behind him and whispered in his ear.

He tossed his napkin aside and stood abruptly.

“What is it?” India asked.

“Emilie’s gone.”

* * *

I
NDIA
REFUSED
TO
stay behind and let Nicholas and Captain Warre conduct the search. Emilie was nowhere to be found in the garden or even at Miss Ursula’s cottage.

The cold grip of fear was the specter of what they might find as they made their way down the wooded path to the pond. They hurried so fast that caution was impossible—India felt her skirts snag on a bush and heard the fabric rip.

Nicholas held a lantern, calling Emilie’s name. Ahead of them, a rippling slash of moonlight cut through the inky pond.

India heard a splash. “She’s there!” India shouldered past Nicholas and Captain Warre, hiked her skirts and ran. “Emilie!”

They burst from the woods onto the pond’s grassy banks. And there was Emilie, crouched by the water with a great mass of soggy fabric in her hands...

Scrubbing.

She looked over her shoulder, seeing them, but she only scrubbed all the more frantically. India rushed toward her with Nicholas on her heels.

“Emilie, we’ve been so worried,” India said.

“Qu’est-ce que tu fais?”
Nicholas asked sharply, but it was only too obvious what Emilie was doing.

And now Emilie shot to her feet, recoiling, trying to drag the soaking fabric—the embroidered cover from her bed, India now saw—from the pond. The light from Nicholas’s lantern reflected on Emilie’s wet cheeks and illuminated her horrified eyes.

“C’est rien—c’est rien!”
Emilie babbled.
It’s nothing.
“I spilled my soup, but I’ve washed it. It’s clean now.”

Nicholas pulled her into his arms, and India pried the wet bedcover from her hand. Captain Warre joined them, taking the lantern from Nicholas.

“You scared me to death,” Nicholas was saying to Emilie, holding her tight even though she herself was soaked. “You must never come to the pond at night—
c’est trop dangereux.
”

“Mais le couvre—”

“You’re not here to wash bedding.” He pulled back and took her chin gently in his hand. “
Comprends?
You’re not a laundress anymore. You’re—”

“You’re here to stay,” India interrupted quickly, putting a hand on Emilie’s shoulder. “Not to do washing.” She turned to Captain Warre. “Aboard the ship, of course, she had a job to do, but here—”

“India,” Nicholas said tiredly. “That won’t be necessary.”

She looked at him, looked at the dark wet blotches on the front of his jacket and waistcoat where he’d held Emilie against him. Looked into his eyes, and realized what he meant to do.

“Forgive me,” Captain Warre said, “but am I missing something?”

* * *

N
ICK
SENT
E
MILIE
upstairs with India and asked Honoria and James to join him in the library. He poured three glasses of port, trying to formulate the words he would need.

He was so, so tired of living a lie.

“La, what an awful scare,” Honoria was saying. “One never likes to think of children outside alone at night, especially not in the country, where any kind of nocturnal beast could be lurking.”

James just sipped his port, studying Nick over the top of his glass.

“What on earth could have possessed the child to go to the pond now?” Honoria went on. “Although heaven knows, with orphans, how they’re raised. One can hardly blame them for having no sense of civility, poor dears. I’m sure she’ll grow into a fine servant for you, though, with a bit of proper training—”

“Emilie is not my servant.”

Honoria’s brows lifted. “She isn’t.” And then comprehension filled her eyes. “Oh. Oh, Nicholas...” Her gaze shifted to James, whose expression didn’t budge.

And Nick knew exactly what they were thinking. “Emilie is not my child.” He drew in a breath. “She is my sister.”

Now one of James’s brows shot up. “Your
sister.
”

“La, Nicholas, that isn’t possible, unless Father— James, could Father have—”

“It wasn’t Father,” Nicholas said on a sigh, rubbing his forehead. “It was Mother.”

“But Mother’s been—” James cut off as Nick saw him putting the pieces together.

“Emilie is the daughter of a Parisian laundress, or so I assume—her mother is dead. She was fathered by a priest who is not averse to enjoying the delights of his city.” Nick looked at them. “And according to Mother, so was I.” There it was. The truth, out in the open after fourteen years.

Honoria stared at him with confused, disbelieving eyes. James only sipped his port.

Nick narrowed his eyes at him. “You knew?”

“No.”

“When did Mother tell you this, Nicholas?” Honoria asked softly.

“The afternoon she died.”

“And you’ve carried it all this time?” She reached for him, but he was too on edge to accept her touch—too afraid of what would happen when they really considered what this meant.

“I don’t expect things to be the same between us,” he said, looking at James.

“Christ’s sake, Nick. Don’t be an ass.” James drained his glass and went for the bottle.

“Things aren’t the same. And they never will be—it’s a simple fact. But I thought you both deserved to know the truth.”

“And you think you already know the effect it will have,” James said, looking over with the bottle in his hand.

“La, Nicholas...what a terrible, awful thing. I hardly know what to say.”

“You don’t know what to say?” India echoed, walking into the room, and bloody hell, Nick knew that tone and that expression.

“India—”

“Let me offer a suggestion,” India said coldly. “Perhaps, ‘How wonderful that you have a sister,’ or, ‘You’re still my brother, Nicholas.’ If you reject him now—reject both of them—it would be because of something that isn’t even their fault.”

“India—” Nick tried again.

“And it will be your loss,” India went on, moving directly in front of him as if defending him from attack, “because Emilie is the sweetest, gentlest girl ever born, and Nicholas is the most deserving of men.” He was? “Even had he never received that money, even if he had to sell Taggart and live in the dirtiest hovel, I would be proud to call him my husband.”

She would?

“How much more should
you
be proud to call him your brother?”

There was dead silence except for the thunder of Nick’s pulse in his ears.

He looked at India.

Then at James and Honoria, and said, “Excuse us a moment.”

* * *

I
NDIA
’
S
HEART
RACED
as Nicholas steered her from the room.

He was furious. She’d seen that expression before. That day at the dressmaker’s when she’d worn no fichu. That night at Madame Gravelle’s. A short while ago, at the edge of the pond when they’d first spotted Emilie.

He stopped outside the room and turned her to face him.

“Please forgive me. I spoke without thinking—”