Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (22 page)

“Not at all. I have heard that she is out and about quite a great deal. And we shall see her very soon, I am sure. We must be careful, and approach her when she is away from that horrid stepbrother of hers. I do not want to cause her any more trouble. In point of fact, I have often wondered if I did her more harm than good when I took her in two years ago.” Georgina set her cup aside and lowered the veil of her fashionable hat. “But that is all past. I am taking tea this afternoon with a woman named Haversham, and I am quite hoping Elizabeth will be there. Care to escort me?”

Nicholas shuddered. “Tea with someone named Haversham? No, I thank you. Besides, I am not at all certain Elizabeth has forgiven me, or even begun to think of me in a more kindly fashion. She might very well flee in horror if she saw me at the tea table with no warning whatsoever.”

“Hmm, yes, quite right. But you
will
attend the assembly tomorrow evening with me?”

“I shall certainly try. I have no previous engagements, I believe.”

“Ha ha.”

“In the meantime, Georgina, do behave yourself. We are meant to be inconspicuous, remember?”

“Of course!” Then she stood, shook out her purple-and-gold-striped walking dress, unfurled her ruffled purple parasol, and swept out amid the stares of every person in the room. “I shall see you this afternoon, Nicholas!”

“Inconspicuous, indeed,” Nicholas murmured. The thought of having that woman as a de facto sister-in-law for the rest of his days was indeed a daunting one—but not enough to keep him from begging Elizabeth on hands and knees to marry him.

Daisy hummed as she tidied Elizabeth’s bedroom, even sang a bit as she hung freshly pressed gowns in the wardrobe and laid bonnets away in their boxes. It was a lovely spring day, and Clifton Manor seemed quite bright and fragrant since Elizabeth had emerged from her cocoon and taken an interest in the housekeeping—and in painting.

All the servants, even the tweenie, had sat for sketches, which Daisy now gathered up and put away in a portfolio. Work seemed easier, somehow, when artistic endeavors broke up the monotony of dusting and polishing.

Even the earl smiled, laughed sometimes even, and went walking with his sister in the gardens after supper. There was talk of a grand ball to be held at Clifton Manor, of a trip to London.

Daisy sang out again as she opened one of the dressing table drawers and started to straighten the tangle of stockings there. A sealed letter fell from a knot of pale pink silk.

“Oh, no!” Daisy picked up the square of vellum and squinted down at the scrawled direction. “Lady Elizabeth must have forgotten to post this.”

She considered taking it up to the studio where Elizabeth was working, but then shrugged and slipped it into her apron pocket. She was going into the village to buy some ribbon, anyway; she would simply post it while she was there.

Nicholas stood for a very long time outside the Dog and Duck, attracting many a curious stare from the passersby, who were not accustomed to gentlemen dressed in quite that height of fashion standing about on the streets. He heard the whispered speculations on the style of his cravat, his scar, and his walking stick and most of all from young ladies, his “romantic” air of “melancholy.”

One brave soul even asked him outright if he was Lord Byron “in disguise.”

Nicholas simply observed. He watched the people who passed him, shopkeepers and farmers and nannies with their charges, even one grand lady in her carriage. He had never lived in the country; he was very much a product of London, with its soot and its excesses. And the sun-baked hamlets he had seen in Spain in no way resembled this place, full of Tudor architecture and muddy streets.

Somehow he could not envision Elizabeth ensconced here, amid all this Englishness. He could not see her gossiping over bolts of muslin at the draper’s, or taking tea with these silly young girls who giggled at him from the tiny tea shop across the way.

His love belonged under sunnier skies than these, with paint under her nails, plenty of champagne to drink, and lots of artists to chatter with at parties.

“Oh, Elizabeth,” he murmured. “I should have snatched you up and run very far away with you when I had the opportunity. I should have taken you off and made you marry me, despite what you said.”

Too late, his conscience chided.
You were a complete fool and now you are paying the price.

So deep in his own thoughts was Nicholas that he did not even see the cloaked young woman scurrying along the walkway until she had collided with him and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Papers and ribbons flew from the woman’s basket.

Nicholas immediately sprang to his feet and held out a hand to assist her, brushing ineffectually at the dirt on her dark-colored cloak. “I do beg your pardon, miss! So very clumsy of me.”

“Oh, no, not at all, sir!” she answered breathlessly. “It was my fault. I was in such a hurry to catch the post.” She stuffed the papers back into the basket, gave him a merry smile, and hurried on her way. “Thank you, sir! Good day to you!” she called back over her shoulder.

“Good day,” Nicholas said to her retreating back.

That was the most excitement he could expect of the day.

As he bent to retrieve his hat, he glimpsed one of the girl’s letters, stepped on and half covered with mud. He started to shout after her, but she was out of his sight. Then he held the letter up and read the direction: “Sir Nicholas Hollingsworth.”

“Oh, where can it be!” Elizabeth overturned the drawer onto the carpet, tossing stockings every which way in her frantic search.

The letter was nowhere to be found, even after she had turned every sheer bit of silk inside out.

“My lady? Are you lookin’ for somethin’?”

Elizabeth glanced up to see Ellie, one of the junior housemaids, watching her curiously from the doorway.

“Yes,” she answered, and brushed a stray stocking from her head. “A letter. I seem to have misplaced it.”

“Oh, Daisy must have it, my lady. She went to the village not half an hour ago to post the letters and fetch some ribbon.”

“Post them!” Elizabeth wailed. “Oh, no! She can’t!”

She was utterly aghast that everything that was in that blighted letter, all the love and longing she had poured out from her pen, was now floating free in the world. She was especially aghast that Nicholas might actually receive the letter and read it.

She did love him, yes. She was even rather close to understanding what he had done. But that did not mean that she was ready for
him
to know that!

“This is terrible.”

Ellie watched in bewilderment as her mistress ran past her, down the staircase, and out the front door, slamming it loudly behind her.

Elizabeth hurried across the damp lawn and down the road that led to the village, clad only in an old yellow muslin round gown she wore for painting and thin kid slippers, her hair falling from the ribbon she had tried to catch it up in.

She was almost halfway to the village, a cramp forming in her side, when she saw him. Standing by a hedgerow, watching her run toward him.

“No,” she gasped. “You are just a dream.”

Nicholas knew that he had never seen anything more beautiful in all his pitiful life than Elizabeth Everdean running across a country lane.

She was hardly a graceful runner, moving at a painful, gasping gait. Her black hair had half tumbled from its ribbon, and her hem was muddied.

Yet no Incomparable, no Diamond of the First Water, could compare. He had tried to forget her in his wild ways since they had parted so painfully in Venice. Now he knew that he could never have possibly forgotten her, if he had caroused for a century.

“No,” he said. “I am not a dream.”

She moved slowly closer, so close that he could smell her lilies-of-the-valley perfume. “Then why are you here, Nicholas? Rusticating?”

He smiled at her crookedly. “My dear, you know me better than that. I am only here in this wilderness because of
you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. I have been a week at the Dog and Duck, all because of you.”

“An entire week?” She looked up at him, her eyes wide and astonished. “In the village? Why did you not come to Clifton Manor, to call on me?”

“I was afraid you would have thrown me out on my ear.”

Her lips thinned. “And so I would have, you rogue!”

He held out her crumpled and stained letter. “Would you truly, Elizabeth?”

She sat down on a fallen log, her face buried in her hands. “Oh, Nicholas. I have been quite desperate these past weeks.”

“Oh, my dear, I ...”

“Sh,” she interrupted. “I do love you. The time we had together in Venice was everything I wanted in life. But I am not certain that we can have that again. That we can come to trust again.”

Nicholas sat beside her, his knee barely brushing her skirts, but not daring to touch her in any other way. “I cannot blame you, Elizabeth. You have been through so very much already, and what I did was unforgivable.”

“You lived a lie with me for weeks, Nicholas.”

“Yes. I felt I had no other choice. Your letter says that Peter told you of what happened in Spain, so you do know what I owe him. And finding you was all he asked of me, even if I could not fulfill my promise to him.”

“You could have told me! I might have railed at you at first, but I would have come to understand. You know that I am far from being a saint. I have made mistakes in my life, too, horrible ones. We could have helped each other.”

“I know that, my love. Now I can do everything just as I should have done it. But then I was too scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“Of you, of course.”

Elizabeth snorted in disbelief. “Me?”

“That is a very bad habit you have gotten into, Elizabeth, and yes. I was scared of you, of what you would do. I was in love with you almost from the first moment I saw you, and I could not give that up. I did not want you to look at me with anger and disappointment, as you did that last day. I kept putting off the inevitable—because being with you made me happier than I ever thought anyone could be. Because I love you, Elizabeth.”

She turned her face from him, and his heart sank. He thought she was disgusted with him, with his professions of love. Then he saw her shoulders trembling. Slowly, still wary of rejection, he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her back to him.

She was crying, perfect, precious, diamondlike tears that glistened in her eyelashes and on her cheeks. She grabbed him by the collar of his coat and pulled him down to her.

“You utter idiot,” she whispered. “I love you, too.”

Then, much to Nicholas’s shock and delight, she kissed him.

Elizabeth was a bit shocked herself at her hoydenish behavior. The shock was quite buried, however, beneath her delight at having her lips on Nicholas’s again.

It was every bit as wondrous as she remembered.

Finally, so dizzy she feared she might swoon, she drew back and gently touched his cheek. “You never wrote to me.”

“You told me not to,” he answered, his voice deeper than usual, his eyelids slumberous.

“And you believed me?” She laid her cheek against his shoulder, and breathed deeply of his evergreen soap scent. “I have been aching to know what you were doing all these weeks.”

Nicholas almost blushed. “Pining for you, my love, of course. What were you doing?”

“Oh, ever so many fascinating things.” Elizabeth thought of whist at the Havershams’, where she was meant to be taking tea right that moment, carriage rides with the Misses Allan—and Stephen’s proposal.

“Well, you must tell me of all of them across our breakfast table when we are married.”

Elizabeth sat straight up. “Married!”

“Yes. I want you to be my wife, Elizabeth.”

“I never said I would
marry
you, Old Nick Hollingsworth.”

“Madam! Are you offering me carte blanche? I am shocked.”

“Oh! You ... you popinjay!” Elizabeth stood and turned her back to him. “How can I marry you? You have not even asked me yet. Properly, on your knees.”

She glanced back over her shoulder to find him kneeling at her feet. She laughed aloud at the comic sight he made, mud covering his fine trousers and polished boots. “Whatever are you doing, Nicholas?”

“Kneeling, of course. Or is this better?” He fell face forward into the mud. “I am completely prostrate before you, Lady Elizabeth. Please marry me. I am quite desperately in love with you.”

Elizabeth laughed even harder, so hard that she fell over beside him in the mud and muck. “How could I say no to such a gallant proposal? Yes. I will marry you.”

“Dearest!” Nicholas attempted to plant a muddy kiss on her lips, but she held him off.

“I am still angry with you, you know,” she said. “I feel I must tell you that right now. You hurt me terribly, and it will take many years for you to make amends to me. Perhaps even an entire lifetime.”

“What if I were to begin making the amends right this moment?” He began softly kissing her neck.

“I would say—you are doing an excellent job of it thus far.”