Scandalous Brides Page 13

  “Georgie, I must. I have no choice. I would never see you in such trouble for my sake. The scandal could mean the end of your career. If I go away quietly, you can put it about that I am ill and have gone away to—to Switzerland or someplace, to recover.”

  “Never! I do not care about all that. What are some old portraits I’m finishing to your safety? You are my own sister, Lizzie; I would die if any harm befell you. And you are not safe with that man!” Georgina shook her head fiercely. “I never liked him, even when all the girls at Miss Thompson’s were swooning over him. He was too cool by half.”

  Elizabeth turned away and leaned her forehead against the wall, closing her eyes tightly. What to do, what to do? Of course she could not stay and see anyone arrested and put in clink on her behalf. Yet how could she simply pack her things and leave meekly with Peter? How could she leave her work, go back to Clifton Manor, where so many memories waited?

  How could she go back to that staid English country life, after Italy?

  She shuddered just to think of the old vicar, the Misses Allan, Lord and Lady Haversham with their deadly dull “salons.”

  And, worst of all, how could she ever leave Nicholas?

  Nicholas.

  Elizabeth slowly opened her eyes and stared sightlessly at the white plaster of the wall as the worst, the most hideous thought fluttered through her mind like an insidious whisper.

  No. Nicholas could have nothing to do with all of this. Simply because he had disappeared from the house the very morning Peter appeared...

  But Nicholas loved her! Did he not? Those weeks in the country had been the most glorious of her life, and his adoring attentions had told her he felt the same. Surely his kisses, his sweet words, did not lie?

  And then, how could he even know Peter? An artist’s secretary, a bastard son, would never have occasion to meet the Earl of Clifton, let alone conspire with him in such a way. Surely.

  However . . .

  How well did she truly know Nicholas, a tiny voice whispered in the back of her mind. She knew the feel of his arms, his kisses, how he moved with her so perfectly when they danced. He had told her of his father, but she did not know who that father was, how Nicholas had come to be in Italy, how he dressed so fashionably if he had to seek employment.

  She sank onto the nearest chair, her knees suddenly too weak to support her, her head in her hands as these unwelcome thoughts chased around her mind. If she loved Nicholas, how could she even suspect him? She had given him her heart and her very soul; she could not be such a poor judge of character. No artist could be.

  It all had to be a ridiculous coincidence.

  But then how did Peter know where to find her? She had been so very careful all these years.

  Apparently not nearly careful enough.

  “It cannot be,” she whispered. “He loves me.”

  “What did you say, Lizzie?” Georgina leaned over her. “Are you quite well? Shall I have Bianca fetch some brandy?”

  “No, no brandy. I must keep my head about me. I shall be well presently.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes. Georgie, have you seen Nicholas at all this morning?”

  Georgina frowned in thought. “No, not at all.”

  “Bianca told me he went out quite early.”

  “Blast! If only he were here . . .” Georgina’s voice trailed away. “No. Oh, Lizzie, no, of course it was not Nicholas who betrayed your whereabouts. He . . .”

  “He what? He loves me?”

  “He does love you! I know the way he looks at you, Lizzie. He would never conspire with Peter Everdean against you this way.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I do hope you are right. But I cannot be sure of anything now, the world is so havey-cavey all of a sudden.”

  “You can be sure of me. I will not let him take you away, not when your career is so promising before you.”

  “Georgie, my dearest friend, what choice do we have? He only wants me to go to England with him, for some unfathomable reason. He doesn’t really want you arrested. And it is only until I am twenty-one, less than a year away. A year of rusticating could hardly do me any harm. Then I can come back here. Or maybe go to India, or America!”

  “America! Oh, Lizzie, we should go there now. He will lock you up. He will force you to marry. He will ...”

  “Georgie,” Elizabeth interrupted firmly. “I escaped him before, I will again. All will be well.” She clung to her friend’s hand. “All will be well.”

  Georgina was quiet for a long moment. “You will write every day?”

  “Every, every day! And I shall paint every day, even if I have to do a portrait of Lady Haversham’s poodles.” Elizabeth stood and smoothed back her hair, trying to bring some composure back to her countenance. “Now, I shall tell Peter to return to his hotel, or wherever he came from, and wait for us to send him word that I am ready to depart. That should bring us a little time, at least. Bianca is such a slow packer.”

  “Yes. And if all else fails, we could always have Nicholas challenge Peter to a duel!”

  Elizabeth could not help but laugh at the vision of Peter and Nicholas, in their fine coats and polished boots, facing off across a Venetian square filled with pigeons.

  Her composure lasted only until she had dismissed Peter and gone up to her bedroom. As she closed the door behind her, the first sight she saw was Nicholas’s half-finished portrait, propped on its easel in the corner.

  She went to it, and traced the painted dark curls with her fingertip, moving over his eyes and his smile.

  His wonderful, dazzling, mischievous smile. She turned away from the painting. Even if he were a deceiver, she could not stop loving him just like that, in an instant. He had brought true laughter into her life, brought life into her life, when she had thought her whole self given over only to art. That could never fade, no matter what came. Could it?

  “Forever, you said,” she murmured. “But I have not time for such fancies now. I must think. Think!”

  She took her small traveling trunk, only just unpacked from the country, and began carefully, slowly folding her undergarments and night rails and tucking them inside. Her day dresses went in, her hats and slippers. All her gowns had been taken from the wardrobe and piled on the bed when the longed-for, but dreaded knock came at her door.

  And when she opened it to see Nicholas’s pale, haunted face, she knew the truth.

  His wild gaze went past her to the open trunk, the pile of gowns. “What are you doing, Elizabeth?” he croaked, his voice hoarse and broken, nothing like his usual laughter-filled tones.

  She turned from him and went back to slowly folding her clothes, her mind a careful blank. She forced herself to concentrate on the dresses in her hands, the feel of silk and muslin, the scent of the lavender sachets she tucked into the folds. She did not want to think of the man behind her. She did not want to either love him or hate him.

  “I am packing, of course,” she answered. “Surely you must know I am going on a voyage, Nicholas. If that is your name.” She clutched a fur-trimmed pelisse to her bosom dramatically, feeling more and more like some melodramatic Minerva Press heroine.

  “It is my name, blast it!” Then his stillness shattered. He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to face him, to look up into his eyes. “I did not lie about that.”

  Elizabeth wanted to sob, to collapse on the floor and howl with the agony of it. She wanted to beat him with her fists, to kick him until he felt as much pain as she did. Until that instant she had clung to hope, but now it was irretrievably gone. “You did come here because of Peter.”

  Nicholas’s hands tightened on her arms, as if he feared she would disappear in a puff of smoke if he let her go. He nodded slowly.

  “Did he pay you?” she asked softly.

  “No! Lizzie, it was not like that . . .”

  She did cry then, at the sound of her nickname on his lips; hot, silent tears that fell unchecked down her chin and spotted her bodice
. “Then what was it like, Nicholas? What could possibly have induced you to be so unspeakably cruel? To ruin all my hopes? Tell me! Damn you, tell me why.”

  Her careful control was quickly slipping away. Nicholas led her to the dressing table and forced her to sit, kneeling before her like the veriest supplicant before his empress. He held her hands between his, and she was too wrapped in misery to snatch them back.

  “I knew Peter years ago,” Nicholas began. “In Spain.”

  “Spain.”

  “Yes. We were in the same regiment, and we became friends.”

  Had anyone ever really been friends with Peter? Elizabeth sniffed, and wiped at her eyes with her sleeve. “So that is your reason? Friendship?”

  Nicholas pressed a handkerchief into her hands. “More than mere friendship, Lizzie. Peter saved my very life.”

  She snorted inelegantly. “Peter? A hero?”

  “Yes, he was. I was terribly wounded. You have seen my leg, when we were swimming.” He had the grace to blush at the mention of just how much of him she had seen that day. “I would have bled to death there on the battlefield, if he had not carried me miles to the field hospital, fighting off the French every step of the way.”

  Elizabeth nodded a bit. “I see.”

  “Do you?” A reluctant hope lit in Nicholas’s eyes. “Do you see, Elizabeth, how very much I owed Peter? I thought he was dead, that my debt would forever go unpaid. Until last winter, when I met him again in London.”

  She drew her hands from his, and turned to the gilt-framed mirror above the dressing table. The white-faced woman there seemed a veritable stranger. “So you discharged your debt. My life for yours on that battlefield.”

  “Elizabeth, please!” he cried, trying to take her hands again. “I had no idea . . .”

  “No idea of what?” She held her hands away from him, folded them before her to still their trembling.

  Nicholas sat back on his heels. “That you are who you are.”

  “What could that possibly mean? Of course I am who I am.”

  “I was a different person then, Lizzie. I was selfish, wild. I thought surely you had run away in some spoiled pique, that it was all a misunderstanding. That it would be a simple thing to persuade you that it would be best for you to return to England.”

  “What occurred to make you think otherwise?”

  “You, of course. I saw your life here. Your work, your friends. I saw that you were not some pampered, petulant miss; you were a strong-willed person who would not be easily persuaded.”

  Elizabeth’s fist suddenly came down on the table, rattling bottles of scent and pots of rice powder, as anger finally melted the knot of horrible numbness. “So you concocted this ridiculous scheme to insinuate yourself into my life, to pretend to care about me!”

  “That part was not a lie.” His voice was low and intense, in counterpoint to her white-hot anger. “I do love you. I think I have loved you since I first saw you at that masked ball. You are so unlike anyone I have ever known.”

  “You say you love me, yet you planned to hand me over like some piece of merchandise to my brother, knowing how I felt about my life here.”

  “I do not know! I do not know what I would have done, had the issue been forced on me. I tried to tell you, but I was a coward, I let you put me off. But I vow this to you, Elizabeth—I did not bring Peter here. I have not even been in contact with him since I left England.”

  Elizabeth’s head ached unbearably. She closed her eyes against all the pain, but it would not be shut out. “I do not know what to believe. I am far too tired to sort all this out right now.”

  “What will you do?” he asked quietly.

  “Go back to England, of course. To spend the next year at Clifton Manor, until I reach my majority and can rejoin Georgina here.”

  “Lizzie, you don’t . . .”

  “Yes. I do. I may even decide I want to. There is something rather soothing in the English countryside, is there not? Perhaps I can really think while I am there.”

  “But I can’t let you just leave me like this!” he said softly.

  “Oh, Nicholas.” She turned back to him, and laid her fingertips against his beloved face. “You have no choice in the matter, and neither do I.”

  He grasped her fingers, pressing them to his lips. “I will do whatever you say. I only want what will make you happy, you know that. Will you write to me at least?”

  “I do not know if I can. I don’t even know your true name.”

  “Sir Nicholas Hollingsworth.” A ghost of his former dashing smile whispered across his mouth. “At your service.”

  Her eyes widened. “Old Nick Hollingsworth?”

  “One and the same, I regret to admit. But how did you know of my unfortunate sobriquet?”

  “I used to read all the London scandal sheets when I lived at Clifton Manor. You were a favorite subject.” She laughed, a mirthless, hollow sound. “Now I understand about Lady Deake and her odd behavior. She threw a glass of champagne in your face at a ball once, did she not? And then fled the scene in tears?”

  He looked down at the carpet, his ears crimson among his black curls. “That was a very long time ago.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth agreed. “A long time ago. I do regret not being the one to restore her Veronese. Perhaps she will hire Georgina.” She looked back to the mirror, to watch his reflection in the glass. “I may write to you, if only to hear about the oh-so-dashing life you led, and will probably lead again.”

  “Will you, Elizabeth? Will you write?”

  “Perhaps.” She stood and went back to her packing, her spine very straight. “Now I do think you should leave. Before Peter returns, or Georgina comes after you with the andirons.”

  Nicholas also stood. “I do love you, Elizabeth. That was never a lie, not for an instant. I will always love you.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know how to believe you.”

  “No.” He turned to leave, but she stopped him with a word.

  “Nicholas?”

  “Yes?” He swung around in hope, but she merely held out a rather rumpled letter, folded and sealed.

  “You are not the only one who has harbored secrets,” she said. “And for that I am sorry. Please, read this when you are alone, and you will understand.”

  Nicholas swallowed hard, searching for the words that would make things right between them, that would prove to her the depths of his feelings. But in the end, there were no words. He pressed a single kiss on her averted cheek and left her standing there, the door clicking shut softly behind him.

  “I love you, too, Nicholas,” Elizabeth whispered. “And that is the very damnable thing.”

  “Nicholas! Where are you going?”

  He was almost out of the door, his valise in hand, when Georgina flew downstairs to grab his arm in an iron grasp. She wore a nightgown and a shawl; her feet were bare and her hair loose. She had obviously been crying, as her cheeks were puffy and as red as her wild curls.

  Nicholas had never thought to see Elizabeth’s glamorous friend so disheveled and distraught. It was another black mark against his character; another life he had wreaked havoc in.

  “I am leaving, Mrs. Beaumont,” he answered her.

  “Leaving? Now?”

  “I think it best. Under the circumstances.”

  “Whatever are you talking about? You must help Elizabeth! You cannot leave now, we need you.”

  “You have no need of me.”

  Her eyes were wide, bewildered. “But you love her, do you not? You are to marry her?”

  Nicholas almost laughed aloud with the bitterness of it. “I doubt Elizabeth would care to marry me now, since she thinks I have brought such disaster on your house.”

  Georgina stared up at him in utter disbelief. “This is your doing? You were working for Peter all the while?”

  Nicholas was too tired to explain again, too exhausted to justify what had truly been unjustifiable. He drew a small velvet jewel case from h
is coat and pressed it into Georgina’s cold hand. “Please, give this to Elizabeth, Mrs. Beaumont, and accept my deepest apologies.”

  Even when the heavy front doors were between them, he could hear her screaming curses at him in English, Italian, and French, vowing grotesque vengeances on him and all his descendants, like some Amazon of old.

  He could tell that all those horrid novels had not gone to waste.

  He believed he now knew how Adam had felt, when he was expelled from Paradise by an angel with a flaming sword.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t the secretary.”

  It was quite the last voice Nicholas had wanted to hear, aside from Georgina Beaumont’s, when he had come to Florian’s with the express wish to become drunk as a bishop. He knocked back his brandy, and closed his eyes against the warm sting. “Get away from me, Peter.”

  “Or what? You will challenge me to a duel, perhaps?” Peter slid into the chair next to his and signaled to the waiter for another brandy. “I would hardly recommend it. You are quite foxed already, and obviously suicidal. It would be no challenge for me at all, and no way to get back into Elizabeth’s good graces. She is quite fond of you, I see, though I scarce could say why.”

  Nicholas did not answer, or even look at his friend. He stared fixedly out the window at an arguing couple who had paused beneath the portico. The dark-haired woman threw back her head; her hands gesticulated wildly in the air. If there had been a heavy object to hand, she would no doubt have thrown it at her hapless partner’s head. The man listened to her in stony silence.

  If only Elizabeth had flown at him like that! If she had only railed at him, cursed him, thrown paint pots at his head. Instead she had confronted him in chill calm, icy dignity, her lovely silver eyes grave and dark as slate, unforgiving. He knew from his own experience that such anger, pushed deep down inside, was the very worst sort. It would only fester there, getting colder and larger until her hatred for him overcame all her love.

  “You knew,” he said, still watching the couple. “You knew that I would fall in love with her.”

  Peter shrugged. “Certainly I did not know. Contrary to popular belief, I am no sorcerer possessed of the dark arts. Even I cannot know what a person’s foolish heart will do.”