Scandalous Brides Read online

  In his short tenure, he had persuaded no less than three clients to pay their accounts in full, leaving only two particularly stubborn ones in arrears. Elizabeth had bought a dashing new blue velvet cloak, paid Georgina her share of the rent, and still had coin left over.

  But more than that, clients now looked at her with a different air, a respectful air, a professional air. There were no more lewd remarks, no more agreeing on one price then paying another when the work was complete. It was quite marvelous.

  And entirely due to Nicholas. In their household, he was charming, witty, a little silly, a little roguish. In public, he was every bit a commanding military man, stern and uncompromising with all who owed her money. The hard glint in his onyx eyes could even make Elizabeth stand up straighter.

  Yet he never spoke of himself. Georgina was an unrepentant snoop, with a positive gift for ferreting out people’s secrets whether they wished her to or not. All her leading questions over the breakfast table only earned a grin, a “That is far too dull a topic to discuss over these superb scones,” and perhaps a suggestive comment concerning one of her late husbands.

  Elizabeth’s more delicate inquiries had fared no better. Their conversations were always interesting; he was a very intelligent man, and witty as well. But they always concerned business, Italian art, or gossip about the people they met at social gatherings. He never inquired about her own past, except for that night on the terrace; he never spoke of his own.

  “I will find out the truth.” Elizabeth climbed out of bed and lit a candle, searching through her cluttered writing table for a sheet of notepaper. “I will simply write and ask Lady Deake to tea, before she leaves for Rome.”

  Chapter Ten

  “He has settled well into secretarydom.” Georgina paused in sipping cognac and sketching in her book to glance at Nicholas, who had crossed the crowded terrace at Florian’s Café to speak to one of Elizabeth’s clients who was in arrears.

  Elizabeth popped a small tea cake into her mouth and chewed absently, watching with avid interest as Nicholas’s gleaming white grin flashed in the sunlight. He really was an utterly handsome specimen of manhood, despite his odd behavior.

  Yes, gorgeous but mysterious.

  Elizabeth was, in fact, becoming utterly and dizzily obsessed with her secretive secretary who kissed like an angel. She was becoming like a schoolgirl mooning over the dancing master. It was completely ridiculous, but there it was.

  She was blushing fire red just thinking about it; she could feel the color creeping down her throat. Nicholas looked up then, caught her staring at him with cake crumbs on her chin, and grinned his wonderful, infuriating grin.

  “Oh!” She groaned, snatching up her napkin and scrubbing furiously at the crumbs.

  “Blast it all, Lizzie, just bed him and get it over with!” Georgina muttered. Her gloved hand reached out for another of the cakes.

  “If only I could.” Then she would know what it was like, would know what Nicholas looked like with no clothes at all, and she could then go on with her life.

  Perhaps.

  “Why can you not?”

  “You know perfectly well why, Georgie.”

  Georgina shook her head hard enough to set the feathers on her bonnet bobbing. “Tell me, dear.”

  “I ought not to get so very close to someone, particularly an Englishman. He may know someone who knew me in Derbyshire.”

  “What does one thing have to do with the other? He won’t necessarily guess your secrets simply because he sees you in your chemise.”

  “Georgie! Some women may be able to take a lover and not spill all their secrets at once, but I could not. I would feel I had to tell him all, silly me.”

  Georgina nodded. “You do have rather a revealing face.”

  “I already feel horrible about deceiving him so. And he is only the secretary now.” The secretary she kissed passionately.

  “Lizzie, you are making far too much of this! You must simply steel yourself and keep silent. And if you talked too much you would not have enough time for the amusing bits, anyway. That is what an affair is for, after all.”

  The amusing bits. That sounded rather promising. Still, Elizabeth shook her head. “I wish I could feel as you do. It would make things so much simpler. But Nicholas would have to know he was bedding a murderess.”

  “Shh!” Georgina squeezed her hand, her forehead creased in a fierce frown. “I told you never to use that word, Lizzie. It is utterly untrue. You were merely defending yourself against a monster. And when I think of it, I could go and murder that stepbrother of yours myself for putting you through that!”

  “Georgie ...”

  “No! What occurred was entirely his fault, not yours. You deserve happiness, Lizzie. But that is not all that is keeping you from Nicholas, is it, dear?”

  Elizabeth bit her lip and glanced away. “No. I ...”

  “Nicholas!” Georgina looked up with a too-bright smile as Nicholas appeared beside them. “We were just speaking of you. Care for some cognac?”

  “Thank you, Georgina, cognac sounds perfect. And I hope you were only saying very interesting things about me.”

  “Georgie only ever says interesting things,” Elizabeth commented. “Particularly about handsome men.”

  Georgina rolled her eyes. “I was only remarking on what a consummate businessman you are, Nicholas. Exactly what Lizzie needed.”

  Nicholas laughed, his head tipped back to reveal the strength of his tanned throat above his snowy cravat. “I certainly hope that may be the case, madam.”

  Elizabeth smiled reluctantly. It was always thus when he was about; no matter what her fears or worries, he could make her laugh or smile. Simply by his presence. “Absolutely.”

  “Then perhaps this will help solidify my position.” He tossed a small velvet pouch into Elizabeth’s lap.

  She opened it, and gold spilled onto her palm. Enough, more than enough, for a daring blue silk gown she had coveted in a dressmaker’s window. The gown she had hoped could entice Nicholas into another indiscretion. “What... ?”

  “The last of what Signor Visconti owes you for that sketch of his children. He just paid me.”

  “That stubborn old goat?” Elizabeth squealed with joy, and leaned forward to kiss Nicholas’s cheek in impromptu thanksgiving. “You are a wonder, Nicholas!”

  His arm tightened around her waist, clinging. Elizabeth drew back a little to look up at him, puzzled.

  He was watching her, his eyes narrow and opaque, no hint of his rakish smile. He stared at her as if he had never seen her before, and had not the least notion of how she had come to be half on his lap.

  Perhaps he was not so unaffected by their kiss as he had seemed. Tentatively, Elizabeth reached out her thumb to wipe away the trace of tinted lip salve she had left on his cheek. His jaw tightened, but he did not move away. Instead, he leaned, just barely, into her hand. His silken curls brushed against her fingers.

  It was the most intimate moment Elizabeth had ever known, and it was over in an instant. Like the sun crawling from the clouds, Nicholas laughed, pressed a hasty kiss into her palm, and deposited her firmly back into her own chair.

  If not for the lingering warmth on her hand, she could have said she imagined the whole incident. Nicholas’s brief intensity was gone, and he was laughing with Georgina.

  Elizabeth forced a smile to her own lips, and ducked her head over her open sketchbook.

  “Well, mes amis, I must be away!” Georgina gathered her sketches, her parasol, and her reticule, and rose to her feet in a rustle of butter-yellow silk skirts. “I have a new model I am interviewing for my scene of Apollo and Daphne.”

  “Not another Paolo!” Elizabeth cried. More than one handsome model, lovestruck for Georgina, had turned their houses head-over-ears with midnight serenades, lavish bouquets that blocked the corridors, and even, on one memorable occasion, a gift of a squealing piglet. Elizabeth had quite enjoyed the respite from models.

&nbs
p; “Certainly not, Lizzie! I am through utterly with Paolos.” Georgina kissed Elizabeth’s cheek, then, giggling, Nicholas’s. “I will see you tonight. Do not forget our theater engagement, my dears—The Merchant of Venice!”

  With a twinkle of her fingers, she was gone, leaving Elizabeth quite alone with Nicholas. If one considered a table in the most crowded café in Venice quite alone.

  It felt as if it were to Elizabeth.

  Nicholas helped himself to the last cake. “And what are you going to do with this fine afternoon, Elizabeth? No models to inspect?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Not a one, I fear! No sittings, either, since Signora Bruni canceled. I was thinking of taking a tour of Santi Giovanni in Brogana,” she said, mentioning the fifteenth-century church she had often seen but never gone inside.

  “Why that? Sounds dusty.”

  “Because, pagan, an artist should never pass up an opportunity to observe a church or palace. It may prove most edifying. Or at least something to do of an afternoon, while waiting for the night’s festivities to begin!”

  “Hmm, well, in that case, Madame Artiste, I shall accompany you. You have quite convinced me of the charms of old churches. And you need an escort.”

  An unwilling little thrill made Elizabeth’s heart beat just a tiny bit faster. An entire afternoon, alone with him! “Well,” she said, a teasing reluctance in her voice, “if you feel it would be quite dangerous for me to venture to the church alone...”

  “Oh, yes, it is. One never knows about those vicious nuns. And you could educate me on the finer points of Gothic architecture.”

  “You could not be such an infidel if you know that Santi Giovanni is in the Gothic style. There is an intellectual hiding inside of you, Nicholas.”

  “You have found me out again!” He drank the very last of the cognac, and smiled at her. “I must send off a quick message, and then we can be on our way.”

  Elizabeth smiled and nodded, telling herself that the strain in his voice, the light in his dark eyes, was surely all in her imagination. He was quite her merry Nicholas again.

  “... domed and columned in the Gothic style. It was once the funeral church of the doges, including ...”

  Elizabeth leaned against Nicholas’s shoulder with a suppressed sigh. An historical outing had seemed such a good idea. Churches usually fascinated her, and Santi Giovanni in Brogana was quite magnificent. But somehow the warmth of the incense and the beeswax candles, along with the droning voice of the guide and the cakes and cognac she had consumed at Florian’s, were conspiring to put her to sleep where she stood.

  “You are not attending,” Nicholas whispered. “Should you not be writing all of this down?”

  “Shh,” she answered. “I am contemplating.”

  “You are drowsing. Come, I have a much better idea for our afternoon.”

  Elizabeth brightened a bit. “What?”

  “Come along, and I will show you.”

  “But the tour is not finished!”

  “We will just slip around that candelabra, see, and out that door, and be gone in a trice. That old tour guide will never even notice.”

  “But where... ?”

  “Just come with me! You will not regret it, Elizabeth, I swear.”

  So she went.

  He could not do it.

  Nicholas took Elizabeth as far as the secluded canal where an empty boat was waiting, only to find that he could not possibly force her into it and take her away. It was not just because of their passionate interlude on the terrace. He could not put fear and disillusionment into the silver-gray eyes that were laughing up at him now.

  He had done horrible, terrible things in his life, but this he could not. Elizabeth quite simply deserved better than to be hauled off summarily like a bundle of freight, like a possession. She deserved...

  Well, what she truly deserved was to be left to live her life in peace, to be allowed to have her career and make her choices with no interference. It was a realization that quite startled Nicholas. He had always liked women, of course, but he had always put them into tidy compartments in his life—young things in white at Almack’s who were not to be touched, and courtesans and daring widows who were safe to trifle with. And then, in a compartment all her own, was his mother.

  This was a new way of seeing the world, to consider that a woman was a person, with thoughts and talents and wishes all her own, and a right to make choices.

  It had taken extraordinary women, like his wonderful Elizabeth and her outrageous, independent “sister,” to make him realize this. And yet it was too late.

  He still owed Peter a great debt. He was still obligated to take Elizabeth back to England, by some means. But not this way. Not by force and fear.

  He would simply have to think of something else.

  “Well?” Elizabeth said, tapping her half boot impatiently and interrupting his moment of epiphany. “What are we going to do?”

  He had to think quickly. What did ladies like to do? “Shop!”

  “What?”

  “Shop. On the Rialto.”

  “Oh!” Elizabeth laughed, obviously thinking of the bright new coins in her reticule that were simply burning to be spent. “What a grand idea! And what a unique gentleman you are, Nicholas, to think an afternoon of shopping would be all the crack.”

  “Oh, my dear.” Nicholas half turned her, so she would not see him wave off the lurking Benno. “You do not know the half of what I think the ‘crack’ is.”

  Later that evening, when he had deposited Elizabeth at the house with her new purchases so she could dress for the night’s festivities, Nicholas drifted aimlessly through the narrow walkways of Venice. He was quite unmindful of the light rain that had begun to fall and that soaked his bare head and dripped onto the collar of his greatcoat. He didn’t heed the passersby who knocked into him and hurried on, or the beggar children who sometimes appeared underfoot. He did not see the buildings, some magnificent and some squalid, or the piles of refuse and the lines of sodden laundry.

  He could only see Elizabeth.

  Never in his life had Nicholas Hollingsworth, war hero, dedicated rogue, and nobleman’s bastard, felt so completely out of sorts. Even in battle he had had a sword and pistol to defend himself with. Yet before a pair of quiet gray eyes he was utterly defenseless. What little was left of his honor was vulnerable to her smile.

  He had paid off a very irate Benno, who had not been at all happy that his carefully planned trap had come to naught. Nicholas had sent the odious little man away, and now he was left with no plan at all. No ideas for taking Elizabeth to England and into the care of her stepbrother.

  He could only now admit that he did not want to take her to England. And for one very selfish reason. He was happy. Truly happy.

  Nicholas loved living in the narrow house on the canal. He loved breakfasting with Elizabeth and Georgina, sharing the English newspapers with them, and listening to their laughter and their plans. He loved the smells of turpentine and chalk that floated down the corridors, watching a blank canvas come to a true and sparkling life under Elizabeth’s brush. He loved dancing with her at a ball, or just watching her across a room as she talked with her friends, her elflike face alive with enthusiasm. And yes, he even loved to spar with that ridiculous Sir Stephen, who still imagined he might have a chance with Elizabeth.

  “This is horrendous.” He groaned and leaned back against a damp wall. “Of all times for me to become disgustingly content. Of all places! Of all women.” Nicholas closed his eyes.

  Peter had been the best friend Nicholas had ever known, until he found Elizabeth. Peter had not always been so cold, so unbending. He had lived with Nicholas through the terrors of war, the deaths of comrades, and the deadly dull times of waiting in dusty Spanish billets. He had saved Nicholas’s life, not just on that battlefield, but numerous times, with his company.

  Yes, Nicholas was happy in Elizabeth’s company. He could stay for eternity in that chaotic house and never
want to leave. Surely he owed the woman he could love a happy life, a life of her own choosing. And, for whatever reason, she very clearly chose not to live that life with her stepbrother. There were secrets in her life, he knew.

  His honor told him that he owed it to Peter to keep his word.

  Nicholas opened his eyes and stared up at the slate-colored heavens, letting the rains pour down over his face.

  “Tell me what to do!” he shouted. “Tell me what is right.”

  It was the closest he had ever come to a prayer.

  Chapter Eleven

  London

  “What is wrong, mon chèr?”

  Peter Everdean, Earl of Clifton, turned from the fire to glance at the woman who reclined in his bed. Her hair spilled sun gold over the brocade sheets and her fetching white shoulders, but he was unmoved. Detached.

  “Go back to sleep, Yvette,” he murmured.

  “But, mon chèr!” She pouted prettily, stretching against the pillows. “Eet ees very lonely here in this huge bed, and I cannot sleep when I am lonely.”

  “Yvette!” He slapped his palm against the arm of his chair, startling awake the greyhound that slept by the hearth. “I said go back to sleep. I am trying to think, and your egregious false French accent is not helping matters.”

  Yvette slid beneath the bedclothes, wide-eyed, and Peter returned to his absent contemplation of the red-orange flames.

  He had thought, hoped, that bringing the oh-so-talented Yvette to his London town house would help him to forget, if only for an hour or two. It had not. Even her soft moans, her practiced sighs as she moved beneath him, had not erased Elizabeth from his worries.

  Where was she, by Jove? It had been weeks, weeks, since Nick Hollingsworth had gone to Italy, and there had not been a single message from him. Not a word as to whether she had been located, what she was doing, if she was well or ill.