Marrying Mischief Read online

  He saw her through a haze of red. “Do you know how frantic I—we’ve been? We nursed you throughout the night, terrified you would not live to see morning!”

  “Oh, Nick, I regret that you assumed—”

  “You—” He threw up a hand and shook his finger at her. “You—” What could he say? He could hardly berate her for not being ill when he’d prayed half the night she wouldn’t die.

  Surely she had not pretended… Without finishing the thought, he stormed out of the room. Relief was too overpowering to describe, and the fear had not quite let go of him. He wished to God he could saddle a horse and ride out, let the storm rage around him and beat the emotions that racked him down to a manageable level.

  Unfortunately Wrecker chose the moment he exited the house to accost him with a question. “How’d the weddin’ night go, sar? Ye ain’t lookin’ too pleased wif her.”

  Nick punched him right in the mouth, cutting his own knuckles on the wretch’s teeth. He shook his injured fist and glared down at the brute. “Get out of my sight. And stay there!”

  Wrecker scrambled away on all fours. Nick stalked off through the pelting rain to the stables. His temper rarely got the better of him and it troubled him that it did so now. A man who allowed his emotions to rule him was no man at all in his opinion.

  Soaking wet and somewhat cooler, he entered the place where he had used to come to escape his father’s wrath. The smell of hay, leather and horse brought remembered comfort.

  There were only three mares and a carriage team now. The hunters, including his favorite gelding, had either been sold off or had died since he’d left for India. He regretted their loss.

  “I’ll buy more,” he promised himself as he ran his palm over the velvety muzzle of a curious roan who stuck her head out to see who was there.

  Too much had changed here, he thought with a sigh. Some of it good. The old man was gone.

  “How many years did I waste as a boy, looking for things to love about that man?” he asked as he stroked the mare’s neck. He had wanted to honor his father as he had his mother, but there had not been much to admire about the man or the public figure.

  Nick’s actions this morning reminded him all too vividly of the preceding Earl Kendale’s behavior. That he had inherited his father’s ways was Nick’s worst nightmare. He fought it daily, hourly, but knew now that he must redouble his efforts. He must strive to show kindness toward his wife and his servants, and to also use the power of his title to England’s best advantage. Above everything, he wanted to be a good and honest man and a truly noble earl, as unlike his father as he could possibly be.

  He felt a soft pat on his back and swiftly turned.

  Confused, he scanned the low-lit interior of the stables. “Who’s there?”

  No one answered. For some reason, he thought of his mother and the values and gentle encouragement she had given him when she was alive. Desperately, he wanted to believe she had imbued him with those qualities that might save him.

  “I miss you,” he muttered to the cold, dark air that surrounded him. Again he felt a touch on his back and whirled.

  It was only the mare, seeking more attention. Nick smiled at her and at himself. “Daft,” he said to the animal, raking her forelock with his fingers. “Em’s made me daft. I’d best go see what damage I’ve done and whether I can repair it.”

  Slowly he closed the stable doors and trudged through the downpour to the main house. He did not look forward to the task of asking her forgiveness yet again—especially when it might not be forthcoming this time, either—but he could scarcely wait to see if she felt even better after her breakfast.

  As it happened, she was sitting up in bed holding court. Dr. Evans and Lofton were cackling like hens at something she had said.

  She wore a smile that gleamed as white as the lacy nightrail she wore. Emily’s bright golden mass of hair was piled atop her head, but a few curls had escaped to form long question marks over each ear. She looked adorable. And the picture of health. He felt like weeping with relief and crushing her to him as if she were a long-lost child. Or lover.

  Even as he looked at her, however, she sneezed.

  He frowned. She’d caught cold. “We should have delayed the wedding,” he announced. “The dampness yesterday has made you ill after all.”

  “Don’t be a goose,” she argued with a sniff, sounding more like the girl he’d once known than she had at any time since their illfated reunion.

  Deliberately shoving his guilt aside, he forced a smile. “All the same, I hope you will remain abed and take good care. Have you eaten?”

  She grinned at the seaman. “Lofty brought me an egg, toast and that wonderful tea that shipped with you. It was wickedly delicious. I hope you have chests full of it.”

  “We are certainly blessed in that respect,” Nick assured her, trying for a conversational tone. “We’ve a ship nearly full of it.”

  Emily nodded, fixing him with a curious look. “I must say, you’ve improved yourself since you were here last.”

  He had. After his sojourn to the stables, he had taken the time to shave, bathe and dress. Not much choice about it, since he’d been dripping wet and his face prickly as a hedgehog.

  Nick rubbed his chin. “Shall I keep you company for a while?” he asked, glaring pointedly at the doctor and Lofton. “I’m sure you two have other matters to attend.”

  They took their leave, as he’d intended. Now that he had her alone, he would say what he had come to say.

  Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he faced her. “Emily, please understand that I was extremely concerned. If I was curt with you, I apologize.”

  “Curt?” she asked with a mirthless laugh. “Beastly is more like it. You need your ears boxed.”

  “I have said I was sorry. What more would you have me do?” he snapped.

  She eyed him from under those softly curled lashes and pursed her lips. The look she offered stirred him so powerfully, he lost track of his thoughts. He wanted to kiss her, to slide his arms around her, to stretch out beside her on that bed. Over her…

  “If you truly want to make amends, you may read me poetry,” she declared in her most imperious voice, the one she once used when pretending to be an actress upon an improvised stage. The queen of pretense, he’d once called her, envying her the ability to lose herself in fantasy. He never could. Life was all too real.

  “Yes, I think a poem would do very well,” she added with aplomb.

  “The devil you say.” He hated poetry. “What sort?”

  “Byron.”

  “I loathe Byron and you know it.”

  She smiled her most evil smile. “Yes, I know. And I love him.”

  Nick knew she was having him on. It made him want to laugh aloud. Instead he grumbled as she would expect him to do. “Since when?”

  “Since now.”

  With a long-suffering sigh, he accepted her punishment with mock reluctance when, in fact, he would have done most anything to remain in the room with her and keep her in this playful mood.

  He walked over to the table by the window, picked up the book and took a seat in the chair where he had slept. Only after another prompt from her, did he open it to a selection at random and read.

  “And thou art dead, as young and fair

  As aught of mortal birth…”

  He cleared his throat and looked up at her. “Hardly appropriate.” He flipped several pages and began again.

  “I had a dream, which was not all a dream

  The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars

  Did wander darkling in the eternal space…”

  He shut the book. “I refuse to spout more of this morbid drivel.”

  She lifted her brows and sniffed. “Try ‘She Walks in Beauty Like the Night.”’

  His graceless rendering of the poem seemed to satisfy her need as well as any horsewhip might have done, while Nick secretly savored the penance.

  They were playing as th
ey used to do. He knew the first moment of real joy in seven years. How he had missed her.

  “Thank you, Nicholas,” she said brightly. “Now if you would, leave me to my own devices for a while and send me up a novel. Tell me you have something besides what I found in the library.”

  “I do, and your wish is my command, of course,” he said with no little pique at being dismissed while enjoying her company. His words sounded a bit sharper than intended.

  “How accommodating you are, Kendale,” she returned with asperity. Though she addressed him quite correctly by his title, she was also sharply reminding him that his father had borne the same name and the attitude Nick was displaying now. A deliberate taunt she had to know would sting.

  Though he still could see humor lurking behind her scorn, the scorn itself hit too close to the mark. “I am not like my father.”

  “I pray that is true,” she told him solemnly, her voice free of any humor now.

  She meant what she said. And she spoke for both of them whether she knew it or not.

  Nick wondered if the old man had started out this way, striking out in an occasional bad temper. Mounting vitriolic attacks that grew more and more frequent until they determined who he had been. Very likely, Nick decided.

  He all but shuddered with the realization that he could easily become the same sort of man if he allowed it to happen.

  His father’s upbringing and education were virtually the same as his own. The difference being that his father had not known a friend like Emily Loveyne.

  There had been no one like her for the young Ambrose. No one to make light of what seemed weighty matters to a boy on the verge of manhood. No one to poke gentle fun at his self-importance and overweening pride. No one to make him laugh and embrace the day. Nick’s mother had despised her husband and no one blamed her, least of all Nick. What a joyless lot, the Hollanders.

  He met and held Emily’s clear blue gaze. “I would not be like Father, Em,” he assured her. “Do not let me be.”

  She gave a slight shake of her head. “Were you angry because I am not ill, Nicholas?”

  “Of course not. You frightened me is all. I went a bit wild.”

  Her smile bloomed slowly, like a morning glory opening to the sun. “Then I really do forgive you. But I warn you, if your temper flies free again, I shall demand you read every last sonnet in the library.”

  “Properly noted.” Nick wished she would pardon him for past sins as readily as for his bad temper. “That kind heart of yours will be your undoing one day,” he warned her wryly. While she was in such good humor, he decided to risk all and delve into the topic that troubled them most. “Em, there is something we should discuss. Are you up to it?”

  Her smile died. She shrugged and looked away. “If you like.”

  He hardly knew how to begin, but he had to start somewhere. “You know I would never have boarded that ship if Father had not forced me to go. I swear to you by all that’s holy, he did use force or I would never have gone away.”

  She shot him a look of incredulity. Then she dropped her gaze and toyed with the edge of the coverlet, frowning. “But you stayed away.”

  “I had to,” he replied. “He threatened to ruin you and your family if I returned and tried to resume our…friendship.”

  One corner of her mouth lifted tremulously. “Friendship?”

  “Well, yes, I thought that is what we had,” Nick replied. “Somehow Father must have learned about the kiss, and assumed—”

  “As did everyone in the county,” she replied, then continued. “So he tossed you onto a ship for India. I do wonder what he told Dierdre about that.”

  Nick sighed and rolled his eyes. “We’ve already established that there was no reason for him to tell her anything. There was no real betrothal, only his wish for one. What more can I say to that?”

  She eyed him keenly then, as if to judge his honesty. “Swear to me you never promised to wed her, Nick. Can you swear it?”

  He placed his right hand over his heart. “I swear.”

  She nodded slowly. “All right, I will take that as truth. But you could have written to me and explained your departure easily enough. He would never have known of it.”

  Nick was taken aback. “But I did write.”

  “Strange. Your letter never arrived.” She did not believe him about this, Nick saw. Serious doubt clouded the clear blue of her eyes. Her questioning of his word made him feel defensive. How dare she not believe him? “You did not write to me,” he accused.

  “And where should I have sent the missive, Nick? I had no inkling where you were for years. Only when the earl died did anyone know for certain you were in India. You could have been anywhere at all.” She swallowed hard and her breathing grew rapid. Was she going to cry?

  This mounting agitation was not a good sign. He was losing ground here. “Just know that I did not leave here voluntarily and I would have returned if I could have done so without putting your family’s welfare at risk. Those are the facts, Emily.”

  She sneezed again. It gave him the perfect excuse to leave dangerous ground. He had to admit he did not want her asking any more questions about the day he had kissed her. What if she demanded to know whether he had loved her then? No woman would want to hear that, no, he was only a young man caught up in a mad infatuation.

  She would not be glad to know that he had assuaged that lust with numerous women since that time and now recognized so-called love for what it was. The word was a fabrication invented to prettify what took place between a man and woman.

  He wanted her as fiercely as he had then. But the additional feelings he had for Emily were a bit more noble. He cared deeply for her and liked her enormously. Being near her made him happy. But even that admission would not suffice if she asked him outright if he had loved her.

  He could lie, he supposed, but he didn’t want to. Neither did he intend to admit the truth.

  Again she sneezed.

  “Listen to yourself,” he said. “You have caught cold. I’ll send Lofty up with more of that tea you like.”

  He turned to go. If he did not leave the room immediately, he knew he would have to take her in his arms and show her how much he wanted her delectable body. And more. Something ephemeral that he’d only touched briefly. Some thing he could not name that had remained with him for seven long years and warmed him when nothing else could.

  Perhaps she represented home to him the way his father and Bournesea never had. There was comfort within Emily’s arms that he could find nowhere else. And he had looked.

  He could make love to her. He had the right to now. But she would protest. And the scare she had provided last night brought home the possibility that any soul at Bournesea could fall ill with cholera at any instant. He must keep his distance for a while longer until he was sure it was safe, for he’d had more exposure to the disease than anyone else here other than Dr. Evans and the three patients who had it.

  Painful as it was for him to accept, regaining Emily’s friendship would have to take precedence over seducing her. She might be content enough without a bedmate, but she certainly would be needing a friend in the near future. The Countess of Kendale was unlikely to find any close chums among her new peers, or have any left among her old ones, for that matter.

  The poor girl had no inkling yet how much she would need him, even if she no longer wanted him as a man.

  Emily hugged a pillow to her breast and relished her conversation with Nick, even the cross words. He had not wanted to leave her, after all. His father had made him go. And he would have returned if possible. Best of all, he swore that he and Dierdre had been in no way attached.

  She had not dared ask how he felt about her, for fear of what he might say. He had been worried about her. That bode well, didn’t it? She asked herself why on earth he would become so upset if he did not love her.

  Of course, his concern might have been that there was another probable case of cholera to deal with, not because
it was she who fell sick with it. That sobering thought dampened her euphoria.

  He had been contrite about his outburst of temper, so he must care. But then, she argued, Nicholas always had been man enough to admit when he was wrong about a thing. She also knew he would do anything in the world not to be like the old earl. That worry alone might have prompted his apology. Had it also prompted his explanation about why he’d left her?

  She released the pillow and tossed it away from her, crossing her arms over her chest and sighing with resignation.

  No matter how she tried to twist events to her liking, or how hard she wished something good to come of this, there was the great possibility that Nick did not love her and never had.

  Their banter had roused fond memories of how it once had been between them. Before she knew she loved him and thought that he loved her.

  He had taught her to ride so that they might gallop the fields of Bournesea together. Where his tutor had failed miserably, she had taught Nick to read music and play the old piano on which she had learned.

  Together they had spent many a day sharing such pursuits, and were great friends despite the differences in gender, age and station. Always, he had shown her the greatest respect. In turn, she had shown him little of the awe most people would think his due as heir to the earl.

  He often said that he loved how she totally disregarded that. Apparently, not many had done so, even when he was away at school. His friends were few, he had admitted once, and that made her all the more special.

  “Perhaps not so special now,” she muttered, feeling tears threaten. But she had wept enough over this and would not weaken again. Someone had to make pie of this mincemeat and she knew very well it would have to be her.

  The door to the armoire creaked and slowly drifted open on its own. Emily stared at it, round-eyed with wonder.

  Of course! She should dress and go downstairs. There was no point at all to her lying about feeling sorry for herself. She got up and went to choose something to wear from the wardrobe Nick had put at her disposal.

  This entire house felt like a dark, dank mausoleum. The men confined here must sorely need cheering. Even if she was not allowed to associate freely with them, she could give them music and lighten this dreary day.