Nicola and the Viscount (12 page)

But then Lord Renshaw lifted his handkerchief once more to his thin nose and blew violently into it.

“You,” he said, through the once-white linen, “are the most contrary girl I have ever had the misfortune to meet, Nicola Sparks. Your absurd attachment for that dilapidated dung heap you call your home will, I am convinced, spell your doom. But if you choose to ruin your life, that is, of course, your prerogative.”

Before Nicola, still blinking over the “dilapidated dung heap” comment, could reply, the Grouser added, “Frankly, Nicola, I wash my hands of you. For an orphan, you were always impossibly spoiled, and I am sorry to see that all of that expensive schooling upon which you squandered your father's money did not improve you in the least.”

As Nicola stood and stared, her mouth slightly ajar—Madame would have been horrified: an open mouth was an abomination before the Lord—Lord Renshaw gave his nose a final, violent honk, then added, “What your idiot father was thinking, leaving his estate to you and not to me, I cannot imagine.”

That did it. No one—no one—called Nicola's father names, and got away with it.

Nicola cried, with flashing eyes, “I'll tell you what he was thinking. He was thinking he'd better not trust the thing he loved best in all the world to a man completely lacking in any sort of moral fiber or feeling!”

But Lord Renshaw, rather than being wounded to the quick, as she'd hoped, only rolled his eyes, tugged on his hat, and said, in a voice thick not only with phlegm, but venom, too, “I want you to know, you ignorant girl, that whatever happens next, you have only yourself to blame.”

With that, the Grouser left the room.

And Nicola sank down amid the dozens of roses Lord Sebastian had left for her, her knees—but even more alarmingly, her spirit—seeming to give out beneath her.

“Nicky?”

Nicola, curled onto a divan in the Sheridans' front parlor, looked up, startled.

“It's only me,” Nathaniel said, and sat down beside her. “I heard the shouting. Are you all right?”

Nicola nodded wordlessly, not trusting herself to speak. She was trying to regain her composure after the very disturbing interview she'd just had with her guardian, but she feared she was not doing a very good job of it. Tears were pricking the corners of her eyes, and her nose felt a bit tingly. It seemed amazing to her that she could have any tears left, after the buckets she'd wept over losing Lord Sebastian. But apparently tears were one thing—unlike money and her guardian's patience with her—that could never run out.

She did not, however, relish the idea of weeping in front of Nathaniel Sheridan. Why could she not, as Madame had always urged, maintain at all times an air of cool disdain around this particular young man? She managed so admirably with others. Why not with Nathaniel?

Using the lace trim of one of her sleeves, she attempted to dab surreptitiously at her eyes, hoping he would not notice their dampness. But she apparently wasn't surreptitious enough, since a moment later a clean white handkerchief dangled in front of her face.

“Go ahead,” Nathaniel said when she glanced at him. “It's clean.”

Nicola had not expected anything else. Nathaniel, despite his love for mathematics and science, was not one of those untidy professorial types, but always maintained a neat and pleasing appearance. It had been one of the things that had irritated Nicola most about him—that he should look always so presentable, even handsome, while possessing such an infuriating personality. It made it entirely too hard to hate him, or even, as she had many of the other men in her life, to think up a suitable nickname for him. The Professor wasn't apt, and Abacus didn't fit, either. He remained simply, stubbornly Nathaniel in her mind.

“Thank you,” she said hesitantly. Then, taking the handkerchief, she attempted to erase whatever damage had been done to her face…though, even as she accepted his help and mopped herself up, she could not help but wonder just what, precisely, Nathaniel was doing, being so nice to her. It wasn't a bit like him.

Then she remembered that actually, of late he'd done any number of kind things for her. He'd saved her from having to dance the Sir Roger with the Milksop, for one, and warned her of Edward Pease—how had he known about him, anyway?—for another. Ever since Nicola had come to stay with the Sheridans, though she'd seen little of him, having kept mostly to her bed, Nathaniel had been performing little services for her, such as keeping Lord Sebastian out of the parts of the house she might likely venture into. Really, but he was being quite as conscientious as if she were, as she and Eleanor had often joked, his sister in truth. It was an oddly comforting feeling.

And Nicola needed a little comfort just then.

“I suppose,” Nathaniel said, when it appeared that Nicola had pulled herself together for conversation, “that Lord Renshaw isn't too happy with you just now.”

“Not very,” Nicola said with a slight, humorless laugh. “Not only won't I marry anyone he's picked out for me, but I won't make proper business decisions, either. He said he's quite washed his hands of me.”

“Well, I can't see how that's a bad thing,” Nathaniel said. “He doesn't strike me as the type of fellow anyone would want mucking about in their personal business. And it wasn't as if he was ever very attentive to you in the first place, was he?”

“No, thank goodness,” Nicola said. “I can only hope he's telling the truth when he says he shan't bother about me anymore. The way my luck's been going lately, I hardly dare believe it.”

Nathaniel, not looking at her, but at the vase of yellow roses on the table beside his end of the couch, said, “I wouldn't say that. I think your luck's been extraordinarily good lately.”

This time the laugh Nicola let out had some humor in it—but also a good deal of disbelief.

“Me?” she cried. “Good luck? Are you mad? I get engaged to a horrid fellow who was apparently only marrying me so his father could run a railroad through my parlor”—for, since Nathaniel apparently knew the truth about Mr. Pease already, there was no point in trying to hide it from
him
—“and you say my luck's been good?”

Nathaniel removed one of the half-blown roses from the nearby vase and, breaking the bloom off neatly, examined it.

“I'd say so.” He did not take his eyes off the flower. “After all, you found out the truth in time, didn't you?”

“Thanks to you,” Nicola said. She could not keep a little sourness from entering her voice.

He looked up then, and that hazel-eyed gaze seemed to her a good deal brighter than she'd ever noticed before.

“It would have been better for you to find out
after
you'd married him that the bloke's a cheat and a scoundrel?” Nathaniel asked, with one dark eyebrow raised questioningly.

Nicola—whether due to the question or the penetrating look, she did not know—felt herself begin to blush.

“Well,” she said uncomfortably. “No, of course not. But—”

“It would have been better if he hadn't been trying to use you at all,” Nathaniel finished for her. “Yes, I agree. Still, you must admit, Nicky, as far as luck goes, if you're counting good friends, and people who care for you, you're flush with it.”

And he handed, as he spoke, the half-blown rose to her.

Nicola, who had never before been given a rose—or anything, really, except for fairly merciless teasing—by Nathaniel Sheridan, took it with a gaze turned downcast, as she could not, for the life of her, think where to look. Was this the same Nat who'd used to tie her braids to chair backs when she wasn't looking? The same Nat who was forever correcting her French pronunciation? The same Nat who'd laughed so heartily at her recitation of
Lochinvar
(which she hadn't meant to be amusing)? It seemed exceedingly odd to her that that Nat and this one, handing her handkerchiefs and roses, should be one and the same.

If Nathaniel noticed her embarrassment, he did not comment on it. Instead he said lightly, “So I suppose your heart is broken.”

Nicola, keeping her gaze on the rose, admiring the fine-veined delicacy of each leaf, the silky texture of every deeply golden petal, said, “Of course. Wouldn't yours be? Imagine even considering such a horrid thing as laying railroad tracks over those lovely meadows—not to mention through Nana's herb garden and my little nursery. What kind of wicked mind would even contemplate doing something so horrid? Clearly the Grouser has never heard that ‘Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.'”

Nathaniel winced. “Wordsworth, again?”

Nicola looked offended. “
Tintern Abbey
,” she said, defensively.

“Appropriate, under the circumstances, I suppose,” Nathaniel said. “But I confess I wasn't talking about the Grouser. I meant Sebastian Bartholomew.”

Nicola dropped her gaze to the rose again. “Oh,” she said.

Had
Lord Sebastian broken her heart? she wondered. She wasn't sure. What did a broken heart feel like? Certainly a good many of her hopes and dreams were dashed. But she had found, over the past few days, as she recovered from the blow she'd received, that she was perfectly capable of coming up with new hopes and dreams. Did that mean her heart—unlike her pride, which she felt had taken a near-fatal blow—had escaped unscathed? Or only that the full enormity of what had happened hadn't quite hit her yet?

“I don't know,” Nicola said thoughtfully. “Not irreparably broken, I imagine. They are supposed to be rather resilient, and mine oughtn't be any different from anyone else's.” Then she remembered the lily maid of Astolat, who'd died of a broken heart, and added, “I suppose I shall have to wait and see.”

Stealing a glance at Nathaniel's profile—he was staring at another vase of roses, on a nearby sideboard—Nicola saw him nod. As he did so, that familiar lock of dark hair fell forward into his eyes. He made no move to push it away. He'd probably, Nicola thought, grown so used to it being there that he hardly noticed it anymore.

Strange. Strange that Nicola had never before looked at Nathaniel Sheridan—
really
looked at him, as she was doing now—and noticed that his face bore planes and curves every bit as finely chiseled as Lord Sebastian's. Indeed, Nathaniel was quite as handsome as the young man to whom Nicola had once referred as the God. Would Nathaniel, she wondered, have been more godlike to her if she had not known him so long, and so well? If she were to have met him at Almack's, rather than that recitation day all those years earlier, to which he'd been dragged by his parents to watch his little sister perform, would she have thought differently of him? Would she have considered him a very great catch?

The surprising answer was yes. Nathaniel Sheridan, for all his criticism and teasing of her, was an extremely good-looking, thoroughly well-groomed young man, with shoulders every bit as imposing as Lord Sebastian's, and legs just as long. If his eye color didn't happen to match a cloudless summer sky, it was at least a very mercurial hazel that at times reminded Nicola of the stream that ran the length of the property of Beckwell Abbey, which, especially in the autumn, was a sun-dappled green quite similar in shade to Nathaniel Sheridan's eyes.

Those eyes, as Nicola was thinking these nice thoughts about them, blinked at her, and Nicola realized with another blush that Nathaniel had caught her staring at him, and was staring right back.

Good heavens
, Nicola thought with some alarm as she looked quickly away. She had felt quite as if, when their gazes met, something had passed between them. Just what it was, she could not for the life of her say. But it made her feel quite shy…and Nicola was not a shy girl.

“How did you know, anyway?” she asked, because she was genuinely curious, but also to keep the conversation flowing, as she was beginning to feel these long pauses were dangerous…a girl could get to thinking any manner of unsettling things during them.

“Know what?” Nathaniel asked in a voice that was kinder than any she'd ever heard him use before.

“About Mr. Pease,” Nicola said. “And his connection to Lord Farelly.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel said in a much flatter tone, as if he'd thought she'd been referring to something else. “That. Yes. Well, I read about it in the newspaper. The Blutcher, I mean. I knew Killingworth was near Beckwell Abbey, and that there was some desire to connect the colliery with the larger towns surrounding it, and…well, I did think that offer for the abbey came somewhat out of the blue. No offense, but Northumberland is not exactly a part of the country that people are eager to move to these days, except perhaps to find labor. It seemed unlikely to me that whoever had made the offer on the abbey wanted it for residential or farming purposes. And the article mentioned Pease had been buying up a good deal of land in the area. It was only a guess, but a reasonable one.”

“You always did have a very sound and deductive mind,” Nicola said, grudgingly admiring. “My compliments, Mr. Sheridan.”

To her surprise, Nathaniel turned toward her, and laid a hand over the one resting in her lap, still holding on to the rose he'd given her. Nicola, shocked by this unexpected contact, looked up at him speechlessly, half-prepared for him to give some sort of joking pinch to her fingers, and make a flippant remark.

Only when Nathaniel spoke, there was nothing flippant in his tone…and he did not release, much less pinch, her hand.

“I hope you don't think, Nicky,” Nathaniel said, with far more seriousness than she'd ever before heard him speak with, “that I
wanted
to be right. About Bartholomew, I mean. I hope you know I'd have given anything—
anything
—to have been wrong, if it would have meant sparing you any kind of pain.”

As this was by far the most chivalrous and…well,
kind
thing that Nathaniel Sheridan had ever said to her, Nicola was struck quite dumb, and could only look up at him with wide and astonished eyes. Nathaniel looked back, his own gaze steady and filled with something Nicola could not quite put a name to. It was certainly something she had never seen in his gaze before. Again, that curious current passed between them—Nicola could not have described exactly how it felt, much less what it might have been, if her life had depended upon it—and suddenly her heart…her poor, sorely abused heart…began to speed up, like the wheels of the
Catch Me Who Can
as the red-hot iron had been thrust into its waterworks….

Who knew what might have happened next had the door to the drawing room not been thrown open at that very moment, and Eleanor, followed by the jocular Sir Hugh, had not come tripping in.

“Oh, there you are,” she cried upon seeing Nicola on the couch. “We saw that the Grouser had left, but couldn't find you anywhere. Are you all right? He wasn't beastly to you, was he?”

“Only middling,” Nicola replied with a shaky laugh. She was terribly pleased that her friend had come bursting in at just that moment. Not only had Nathaniel, upon his sister's interruption, removed his hand from Nicola's, but he'd also looked away from her, breaking the almost hypnotic hold his gaze had seemed to have on her. Nicola had a very bad feeling that if Eleanor had not happened to appear right then, she might have gone completely off her head, and done any number of ridiculous numbers, such as let Nathaniel Sheridan kiss her.

Which she had to admit had become an extremely tempting thought.

And her broken engagement not even a week old! How perfectly scandalous, to be thinking so soon of kissing another! And her hostess's own brother, of all people. As if she hadn't gotten into enough trouble doing exactly that the last time.