Scandalous Brides: In Scandal in Venice\The Spanish Bride (14 page)

“What?”

“I sense that Nicholas, for all his virtues, is not all that he appears to be.”

“Whatever do you mean—not what he appears to be?” A growing panic seemed to climb from Elizabeth’s stomach to her throat. “Have you heard something concerning him?”

“No, Lizzie! It is only a sense. I cannot explain it, it is simply a ... feeling.”

“You think I am foolish to have this regard for him?”

“Not at all. I am merely saying—be cautious. I know I told you to follow your heart, dear, and so you should, but at the same time do not let your love blind you completely.” Georgina took Elizabeth’s hands again, and smiled reassuringly. “I have a great deal more experience with men than you, for good or ill. I like Nicholas, truly, but I must advise you now not to be too rash, Lizzie. Yes?”

Elizabeth squeezed her friend’s hands in return. “Yes. I will do as you advise.”

“Very good! And remember—one can be cautious and still be merry. This time is for you to rest, to think, to be comfortable with people who care about you. Such as me—and Nicholas.”

“Oh, Georgie!” Elizabeth kissed Georgina’s cheek. “I am the most fortunate woman in the world to have a friend such as you.”

“Not half as fortunate as I, dear Lizzie.” Georgina held her close for an instant, then sat back with a smile. “And now, I think I will just rest a moment, before we reach the villa.”

Elizabeth nodded and returned to her contemplation of the landscape. “We
will
be isolated here. I have not seen a structure, a person, or even a goat for fully half an hour.”

Yet even as she spoke the road turned and they faced a downward slope into a wide green valley. Tiny cottages and a spired church were laid out below like a toy village. They seemed to sparkle in the afternoon sunlight, a fairy kingdom.

And set above the storybook hamlet on a verdant hillside was a villa, its white stucco and red-tile roof softened by climbing ivy and pots of red and pink flowers lined up on the terrace.

A man was waiting on that terrace for their arrival, his black hair undulating like a satin ribbon in the light breeze.

Elizabeth leaned out of the window again when she saw him, and waved madly.

“Oh, Georgie!” she cried. “It is beautiful! It is going to be such a wonderful month.”

When the carriage drew to a halt, Nicholas was there to open the door and help them down.

His hands lingered warmly for just a moment longer than was proper on Elizabeth’s waist.

“Welcome to your new home,” he said, and kissed her cheek. “I hope you will like it. I filled every room with flowers, just for you.”

“Then I am sure I shall.” And over his shoulder, she smiled at Georgina.

“If you do not stop fidgeting, Nicholas, I will not be able to finish before the light changes!” Elizabeth waved her paintbrush at Nicholas, and stamped her bare foot on the grass.

Nicholas settled back into his pose, lounging against some crimson cushions laid out on the ground, and laughed up at her. “So very sorry, Madame Artiste! We cannot have the light change, can we?”

Elizabeth frowned at him, but she could not truly be angry. Not on such a very splendid day. The sunlight filtered through the budding branches of the trees, casting a pale golden glow over the scene before her. The carpet spread on the ground, the array of fruits and cheeses and wines, and the man who laughed up at her were all sparkling in the Italian sunlight.

In the distance, she could see their villa, and Bianca airing the laundry out of an upstairs window. Georgina had set her easel up on the terrace, and she was near enough that Elizabeth could make out the pink of her shawl. But it felt as if she and Nicholas were all alone in some enchanted land out of time, with only a few sheep to watch the progress of her portrait.

The subject of the painting rolled onto his back and beckoned to her with one long, tanned hand. “You have been working far too hard for such a lovely day, Madame Artiste. Should you not take a respite and try one of Bianca’s delightful apricot tarts?” He picked up one of the pastries, and bit into it with such relish that some of the apricot ran down his beard-shadowed chin. He had not shaved for two days, since Elizabeth had arrived in the country, and it gave him a delightful, piratical air she was trying to capture on canvas.

“Mmm!” he murmured. “Do try one!”

Elizabeth could not resist leaning down to kiss away the sticky fruit, but she pulled back with a laugh when his arm encircled her waist. “I should take a rest before you eat them all! You have already devoured all of the sandwiches.”

“And who ate every bit of sole almondine at supper last night, before the plate even came to my end of the table?”

“Touché.”
She wiped her hands on a paint-stained rag, and sat down beside him, tilting her head back to let the warmth of the sun flood over her face.

When Nicholas shifted to rest his head on her lap, her fingers crept into his silky curls. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of the fragrance of wine, grass, paint, and Nicholas’s own evergreen soap.

She had never been so deliciously, madly full of scream-out-loud joy. Not simply ordinary joy, as when she completed a particularly fine painting or held a baby against her heart and smelled its milky scent, but dance-around-naked, full-to-bursting, life-is-perfect joy.

A warm day, a canvas on her easel, and this man’s head on her lap was all it took to make life absolute perfection.

“Have you ever been so happy?” she whispered, almost to herself.

His hand swept gently around her waist, warm and secure. “Only once before.”

Elizabeth’s eyes opened. “Once?”

“With Mariah.” His lips curled in a smile that was sweet with remembrance—and with teasing.

“And who is Mariah?”

“Oh, the love of my life. She was an angel of perfection, with golden curls and adorable freckles, right here.” He lazily tapped the end of Elizabeth’s nose.

Freckles! “Oh? And where is this angel now?”

“I have no idea. We had a hideous falling-out, and she left me flat.” Nicholas sighed. “My life has never been the same.” He buried his nose deeper in her muslin skirts. “It is too pitiful to recall.”

Elizabeth frowned suspiciously. “Just when was this falling-out with the love of your life, precisely?”

“I was seven, she was nine. An older woman. I put a mouse down the back of her dress and she never spoke to me again.”

“You beast!” Elizabeth laughed, beating him across the shoulders with a folded napkin. “Here I was all prepared to feel sorry for you, and you were telling such a Banbury tale!”

“Every word is true, I assure you. My life has been desolate of romance since Mariah.”

“Now, why do I doubt that? Was there ever truly a Mariah?”

“Certainly there was. She was our cook’s daughter. I was quite mad for her.”

A silence fell. “You had a cook when you were growing up? Servants?”

“Yes, of course. There was the butler ...” Too late, Nicholas saw the trap he had laid for himself. He sat up, and looked at her warily. “Yes. We had servants. My pockets were not always to let.”

“Are your pockets to let now?”

“Of course. I am working as your secretary, am I not?”

“Of course.” Elizabeth framed his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her steadily, not laugh and turn away. “Nicholas, tell me about your family.”

He did try to turn away, but she had him well and truly caught. “It is not very diverting,” he answered.

“I do not care about being
diverted.
I simply want to know about your family, your home.”

Nicholas moved away from her. “I am a bastard,” he abruptly announced.

Elizabeth’s eyes widened in shock. “A ...” She shook her head. “I take it you are not speaking metaphorically.”

“Quite literally, I’m afraid. My father neglected to marry my mother.”

“I see.”

He rushed on in the face of her silence, before he could lose all his nerve. “My father was already betrothed, you see, when my mother came up
enceinte,
and he refused to break off his engagement. His fiancee was the daughter of a marquis, you see, and my mother’s father was only a well-to-do cit. But my father did his duty to us, oh yes. When my mother’s family cast her out, he set us up in our house in London. I had tutors, a pony, and later Eton and Oxford, a commission in the army. He even acknowledged me, gave me a place in Society. He did his duty; more than his duty, some would say.”

Nicholas spoke evenly, perfunctorily, but his features were tight with the strain of recalling his youth. Elizabeth wiped at her eyes with the napkin. “I would say not! Your father had a duty to love you! To be your father. And in that he failed miserably.”

Nicholas shook his head. “He had another family to be father to, a wife and three respectable daughters, who all married well and set up their nurseries, just as they ought. I was an embarrassment, a mistake who refused to fade quietly into the background. I was wild, I flaunted myself all around Town with my racing curricle and my mistresses. I decided if he was going to hate me, it would be for a damned good reason.”

“No!” Elizabeth was crying in earnest now, her heart breaking for the lonely boy he had been, the lonely man she was only now being allowed to glimpse. She knew all too well the heartbreak families could cause one another, when they were meant to be the ones who loved each other the most. So upset was she that she did not even blush at the mention of his mistresses. “He could not have hated you, Nicholas. No one who knows you could hate you.”

“You should hate me, Elizabeth.”

“Why? Because you were not born in wedlock? Believe me, my family is hardly of pristine reputation.” She threw herself upon him, clinging when he would have moved away. She forced him to look at her. “And you should know me better than that, Nicholas! I never judge people by their appearances, their families, or their fortunes. I have seen that in my own life, and it caused me nothing but pain. I can only judge by what is in a person’s heart. You have a beautiful heart. You have made the sun shine in my life every day since I met you.”

“Elizabeth, no ...”

She pressed her fingertips to his mouth, stopping his protests. “No. Your father was wrong, very wrong to treat you as he did, and one day he will know that. But I would never play you false, Nicholas. I would never push you to the background. I know too well what that is about. You and I, we are meant to live in the forefront of life, always.”

“Elizabeth! Beautiful Lizzie.” He crushed her against him, his face buried against her neck, his tears wet on her skin. “You should know how much I deserve your scorn, but I could never bear it if you looked at me with hatred, God forgive me.”

“I could never look upon you with hatred. I love you.”

He looked up at her shining face, her eyes glowing silver. “Say it again!” he begged.

“I love you.” She turned his face up to hers and kissed him on his cheek. “I love you, Nicholas, come what may. We are two of a kind, I knew it when I saw you at that masked ball. I have been waiting for you forever.”

“I love you, too, my Lizzie. Always remember that, always. My heart is yours no matter what may happen.”

Elizabeth turned to the sun, and laughed and laughed. “And my heart is yours, whatever comes. But what can come between us now? We love each other, do we not? Nothing can change that.”

“I pray you are right.”

“I am right. Unless you have a mad wife in the garret, as in one of Georgina’s horrid novels?”

Nicholas laughed reluctantly. “No wives of any sort.”

“Then we shall be together always. Nothing can part us now that you have given me your heart, and I have given you mine.”

“Nothing.” And Nicholas clutched her close against him.

Chapter Thirteen

“S
hall you go out tonight, my lord?”

Peter did not even turn from his window, where he was watching people gather around one of Rome’s famed fountains as night drew near. “Out? Where would I go out to?”

“I merely saw the letters on the table, my lord, and thought perhaps...”

“Ah, yes. Lord Braithwaite is in residence here, and invited me to a small dinner he is having tonight. I had not thought to attend, but perhaps you are right, Simmons. I should renew his lordship’s acquaintance.”

“Very good, my lord. Shall I lay out the blue coat?”

Peter nodded briefly, and turned away again.

He had decided to make the brief stop in Rome on his route to Venice. Carnivale was over in the Serene City, and most of the English in residence there had fled the somberness after the recent bacchanalia. There were many English in Rome, and he had had hopes that someone would know Elizabeth, tell him where she had gone.

Thus far he had found no one who recognized Elizabeth’s miniatures, and no one he could claim an acquaintance with except the corpulent old Lord Braithwaite.

Thus this evening’s festivities, though he was not feeling in the least sociable.
Someone
had to have seen her at some time. She could not simply have vanished, though it appeared to be so. Elizabeth was just... gone. She could be in India or China, for all he knew. Along with Old Nick Hollingsworth.

“Damn him,” Peter whispered. “If he thinks he can thwart me, he is much mistaken.”

“I could scarce believe it when dear old Braithwaite told me you were in Italy! Imagine—an
earl,
right here in the midst of our little society.”

Peter grimaced, and nodded vaguely to his dinner partner. Lady Evelyn Deake, yellow curls bobbing and jeweled fingers flashing, had not paused for breath during the soup or fish courses. She showed absolutely no signs of slowing now that the roast lamb was on their plates. Not even Peter’s distant replies and glazed eyes could stop her.

It was his most dreaded nightmare, being trapped at a dinner party with indifferent food, watered wines, an overheated room, and a dull dinner partner. It was almost worse than Spain.

“Of course, we
have
met before,” Lady Deake continued, pausing only for a refreshing sip of wine. “At the Borthwick ball last Season. You were there with that dashing Lady Ashby!”