A Novella Collection

by Theresa Romain

  And to know too that when Nicholas turned away from the door toward her, she had never before seen the look on his face. It was one of curious intensity, his eyes fixed on hers as though he could imagine looking nowhere else.

  He braced himself with a palm against one wall, lifting his injured foot. “You might wonder,” he drawled, “what I said to Lady Frederick upon concluding my performance.”

  “That is not the first question that came to my mind.” She motioned for him to hop to a chair near him. “Sit, Nicholas, before you topple over. Then tell me what you said, since you obviously wish to.” She sat in another chair facing him, across the fireplace. Like an adversary—or maybe a new audience.

  He shifted his weight in the chair, frowning at his bandaged ankle. “This is most annoying.”

  Eleanor laughed. “You are too hard on yourself. It wasn’t a typical performance, but I was not annoyed by it.”

  “Ha. I mean that having a sprained ankle is annoying, but thank you for the reassurance.” He extended both legs toward her. His feet were shod in shoes of identical make, but one was much larger than the other. “When she said I needed more lessons, I agreed that I needed a lifetime’s worth.”

  “You weren’t that bad.” She still felt as if she were pounding up the stairs to the ballroom, knowing she was missing something but not sure what.

  “Ellie, for God’s sake, I am being figurative.” He sat up straight again. “Maybe. For this is the kernel of all the sense and all the realizations I’ve had knocked into my head: there is no one dearer to me than you, and I wish for nothing more than your happiness. The form that will take is for you and you alone to decide.” He took a deep breath. “I am sorry that I kissed you before the eyes of society, because I do not wish to embarrass you. I am sorry I spoke as though I doubted your judgment, for in truth I do not. I will support you in your marriage to Barberry. I hope he will love you as you deserve.”

  Ah. As he spoke, her heart hammered, flipped, engaged in other strenuous activities—and then thumped heavily, chastened. “That is what you wish for me?”

  “Yes. I wish your happiness.”

  “Thank you for your kind speech, but my happiness won’t come from Lord Barberry.” She cast her gaze downward. Her hands, still ringless, were strong. “I broke off the engagement to him. When he arrived at Athelney Place to escort me here, we…mutually agreed that we would not suit.”

  Poor man. He had looked so puzzled at the sight of her, with her hair bound and pinned up, but still curling riotously. “Are you unprepared?” he had asked. And she had said no, that she was perfectly ready.

  He had understood at once. Their engagement was dissolved with the same courtesy with which it had been formed.

  She stood from her chair, then paced the small distance to Nicholas and back. “I am not so eager for a husband that I will take just any, as it turns out. I want a loving family, but I have that already. Just not in the form I expected.”

  Sidney. Little Siddy. Mariah. Even, she thought, Nicholas. Perhaps someday his wife, if he wed someone pleasant. It was a good full life. She would find ways to be happy in it.

  Nicholas’s reply came after a long silence. “I didn’t know you were no longer engaged. This…changes rather a lot.”

  The firelight in the otherwise dim room made her eyes water. “I realize that. Otherwise, your ridiculous gesture of support would have gone undone. As it is, I am sorry it was wasted.”

  “Ellie!” Did he roll his eyes at her? “It was never wasted. Had I known you and Barberry were no longer planning to wed, I’d have dragged you into this parlor at once instead of forcing a room full of people to endure me playing I Sowed the Seeds of Love. I shall have to apologize to the lot of them.”

  She was still missing something. “All right. You have wished me happy…I think. Do you not want to learn to play the pianoforte?”

  “I have always wanted to learn. And if you’ll teach me, I’d be honored. If that’s all you want of me, I’ll understand. And if—”

  “Shh. Shh. You are babbling. What do you really want to tell me?”

  “Ah. That.” He looked abashed. “As it turns out”—he echoed her words—“I am not so eager for a wife that I will take just any.”

  Her heart was a boulder.

  “My parents had a dutiful marriage. They probably thought, when they wed, that it would be perfect. But it was often contentious and unhappy.”

  “I remember.” So many times, she and Sidney had walked over to his family home to play, only to walk right back to their own house with him.

  “From them I learned that family life will inevitably be disappointing, so you might as well do whatever you want.”

  “I have never heard such sentiments from you before,” she teased. “You, a duke, doing what you wish?”

  “Such sarcasm!” He tilted his head. “It suits you. Minx.”

  She lifted her brows. “So, what of your courtship of Miss Lewis? If you’re not eager for a wife, then she is…”

  “Happily in the arms of Lord Barberry’s eldest son, if my servants’ gossip is to be trusted.”

  “Servants’ gossip is always to be trusted.” She plumped into her chair again.

  “If so, then the lady was observed—by Lord Barberry’s servants—to meet his heir’s eyes and smile, which is more than she ever did for me.”

  “A shame.” It was not a shame. “I was proud of having found you someone perfect, all blonde and blue-eyed and meek.”

  She was not proud of this. She had regretted it almost at once. But she valued Nicholas’s happiness, just as he said he did hers.

  He did not reply for a long while. When she looked at him curiously, she noticed a tremor in his hands. “That is not perfection to me.” He steepled his hands beneath his chin, then drew in a deep breath. “I find that I prefer green eyes and brown hair. Brown with a hint of red in it, that looks rich and wild by the light of a candle and like spun copper under the noon sun. But it is not the green eyes and the brown hair that I truly prefer. It is the lady who possesses those features.”

  The lady who…

  He meant…

  Her heart, her breath, even the very fire, all seemed to pause.

  “I…” She trailed off. Tried again. “Say some more things like that.”

  Did her hair really look like copper? Was it rich and appealing? Just now, it seemed a weight on her head, keeping her from thinking straight.

  “There is but one more thing to say. I love you.”

  The fire gave a cheery snap. Her heart cautiously beat. Her breath was still caught. “As…as a friend, you mean? A lifelong friend? Whose happiness you value?” This was her comeuppance for toying with the truth of her feelings when he’d asked.

  “No.” He dragged his hand through his hair. “That is—yes, but as more than that too. As a man loves the woman who is the better half of his heart. The claws don’t matter anymore, because I’m not empty in the middle.”

  Deeply, slowly, she let out her breath. In the space left behind, bright joy began to grow. “I don’t know what that bit about the claws means, but you say it as if it is quite a good thing.”

  “A very good thing. Very good indeed. I’ll tell you all about it some other time, but for now just know that it’s because of you. My love. When you started looking for a husband, I couldn’t stop thinking about that. When you went out into the world, I couldn’t stay away from your side. In short, I think you might be perfect for me, and I hope you’ll entertain the possibility that I could be for you as well.”

  Her hands fluttered, as if trying to pluck his words from the air. Why was it so dark in here? She wanted noon light on him, full and strong, so she could read his every lineament. “I cannot believe it.”

  “Is it so hard to credit? You have always been essential to my happiness, and I hope I have given you some as well. For so long, I have loved you; I have just been too much of a fool t
o realize it.”

  “Dukes,” she said faintly, “can be fools sometimes.”

  “They can. I freely admit it. I will never deny that again.” He held out his arms to her then, and she all but flew into his lap.

  “You said a great many things,” she said. “I have only a few words in reply. I love you, and I think I always have.”

  “Thank God for that,” he said.

  Thereafter, the two of them discovered that this was not only the sort of space in which Eleanor might take her hair down and shake it free. It was also the sort of space where a man—a dear, clever, strange, and wonderful man—might loosen his cravat, take her in his arms, and become her lover.

  Sort of. As best as one could become a lover in a chair made for one, while he had an injured ankle. The possibilities were limited but intriguing, and Nicholas was relentless. There were whispers, laughter, and kisses after kisses; then the shifting of clothing by questing hands. Pleasure quieted their voices, brought them together new and delighted, until it all tightened into a glorious burst and Eleanor collapsed against his chest with a soft cry.

  They were both breathing hard. Together. Heartbeat against heartbeat, they settled into an embrace that felt, to Eleanor, like the embodiment of love.

  She caught her breath first, though raggedly. “We must try this again on a larger piece of furniture.”

  “And soon, I hope.” Nicholas stroked her back, currently covered by a very loosened bodice. “This is not a good beginning to convincing you that I can be proper and responsible.”

  “You are most responsible! I have never doubted your fitness as a duke for a moment.”

  “And as a lover?” Oh, that wicked twinkle in his eye.

  She blushed furiously. “I am impressed by my experience so far.”

  “I am not too scandalous, as you once called me?”

  She pretended to think about this. “You love me?”

  “I love you.”

  “And you respect me?”

  “Enough to make sure the door was latched before I put my hands up under your skirts.”

  She laughed, helpless at the force of her joy. “Then that is precisely the right amount of scandal. Let’s wed as soon as we can get a license, and I shall be your scandalous duchess.”

  Those Autumn Nights

  Theresa Romain

  Chapter 1

  Plop.

  A plaster chunk dropped to the middle of the breakfast table.

  So it had come to this. Bertram Gage, former major in the 13th Light Dragoons, was being assaulted by the ceiling of his rented house’s breakfast parlor.

  “Oh no! Did the ceiling fall into the toast, Bertie?” Georgie’s voice held a laugh.

  Bertram had to smile. He had received his nickname years ago from—well, never mind the identity of the lady who had first called him Bertie. But his military friends had adopted it next. Now his sister, Georgette—at not quite twenty, fifteen years his junior—had embraced it as well.

  “It did.” Bertie pushed aside the toast, removed the lid from a fat blue-and-white teapot, and placed the pot beneath the troubled spot on the ceiling. “There. The problem is fixed.”

  It was nothing of the sort, of course, but it was as fixed as the ceiling and broken-slated roof of the Friar’s House was going to get while he was leasing it. Over the past few months, the plaster ceiling had cracked and bubbled under the pressure of each summer rain, and now with the first cloudburst of autumn, it had given way.

  The Friar’s House was a beautiful pile of medieval stone and modern brick not far from the health resort of Tunbridge Wells—though neither its location nor appearance were the principal reasons he’d let this particular house during Georgie’s lengthy recovery from illness.

  No, he had chosen it because it belonged to the Greenleaf family. Ten years ago, they had been too lofty to give the time of day to a brash young cavalryman of low birth. But they weren’t too proud to take his money now.

  With grim satisfaction, he watched a rusty raindrop slide down the branching bronze of a graceful chandelier.

  “You should have the roof repaired,” Georgie said, as though hearing and contradicting his thoughts.

  “We’re not permitted to alter the house. It’s a condition of Greenleaf’s lease.”

  Not that he didn’t do what he could to keep the ancient home livable. The expensive but threadbare carpets were clean. The graceful, if scratched, furniture was kept in high polish. Windows gleamed on sunny days, though the frames about the fine old diamond-shaped panes were rotten.

  “Nonsense, Bertie. Even if it would make us more comfortable, and the Greenleafs or their future tenants? You’ve replaced half the furniture in the drawing room, and—”

  “The structure of the house, then. I agreed not to alter that.” Andrew Greenleaf, the old ass, had insisted. As though he thought Bertie was a savage who would knock the walls down as soon as he took possession. “And the new furniture will return with us to London when our lease ends. The old pieces have only been moved to the attics. Greenleaf will get back every bit of his heritage, just the way he left it.”

  Even a man as prideful as Greenleaf wouldn’t mind having his roof slates replaced, surely. But Bertie hadn’t offered, and he wouldn’t. In his own way, he was as prideful as Greenleaf—which was why he had let a house long forbidden to him, and why he would make no improvement to it that he couldn’t pack up and take with him at the end of this year.

  As he looked about the breakfast room, he wondered whether this decision was for the best. In the tidy chamber, busy paper hung on the walls, vertical stripes in cream and green overlaid with spiraling vines. They hugged the scents of toasted bread and cooked meat close, as did the heavy red velvet draperies that stretched almost from ceiling to floor. A fireplace at one side spit and smoked as rain found its way down the chimney and played over the coals.

  It could so easily have been a pleasant room.

  The Friar’s House could so easily have been everything Bertie ever wanted.

  Overlaying all, though, was the chill of water and damp. The sharp odor of wet wood and rotting plaster.

  Plop. A chunk of the ceiling fell wetly into the teapot.

  What a change in fortune ten years had wrought. Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, he wondered: What had happened to the Greenleaf fortune, which they’d once held as dear as their ancient bloodline?

  Oh, probably it was unseemly for a graying thirty-five-year-old war veteran with a bullet wound to feel grim triumph about a decrepit plaster ceiling. Especially when sitting with his convalescent sister, who he had rather hoped would eat the toast. That seemed unlikely now that it was adorned with a chunk of mildewed plaster the size of a man’s thumb.

  Georgie toyed with the food remaining on her breakfast plate, which was—for now—free of fallen pieces of the Friar’s House. In appearance, she and Bertie were not un-alike. Though only half siblings, they shared their father’s dark brown hair and dark eyes. Bertie’s olive complexion was a legacy from his Spanish mother, who died in childbirth. Patrick Gage, grandson of an earl, had eventually made a second marriage as scandalous as the first: to a brewery heiress whose birth was as low as her fortune was great.

  Georgie’s mother. She’d been a kind stepmother to Bertie, the only mother of any sort he had ever known. When she died of an illness a few years after Georgie’s birth, the so-called family home in London’s Kensington neighborhood stopped seeming like anything of the sort.

  Drip. Drop. Drip. Outside, the morning sky had a dim gray luster. Within, the ceiling wept another chalky tear into the teapot.

  Georgie laid down her fork with a clatter. “Why do you obey Mr. Greenleaf’s every wish? Even the foolish ones? You were such a fine leader during the war.”

  Bertie snorted. “No one’s following me now. I can’t even persuade my own sister to eat a decent breakfast. Besides, it’s Greenleaf’s house. Changi
ng the furniture is easily undone. Neglecting the upkeep of the house or land is not.”

  Georgie muttered something profane, which Bertie pretended not to understand. “I’ll ring for more toast.”

  “No need, I’ve finished.”

  “Nonsense. You’ve hardly eaten anything.”

  This time, the profane response was unmistakable. More loudly, she said, “Three rashers of bacon? Toast, before it wore the ceiling? Cheese? An apple?”

  “Are you listing foods that exist? Because you cannot be naming everything you ate this morning.” He sighed. “You are still far too thin. Some beef broth, maybe, to take back to your room?”

  He tried to keep his tone gentle, but fear nibbled it ragged about the edges. Surely her cheekbones were still too sharp? Her eyes hollow? Pneumonia had made her so ill that not even nine months of fine country air had returned her to robust health.

  How close he had come to losing her—after losing his parents, his stepmother, and in war, almost his own life. She was dearest of all to him, this half sister almost a generation his junior. When they were younger, she adored him.

  Adoration was hardly the expression on her face now. “I. Ate. Enough,” she said through gritted teeth. “And I already heard the same ‘poor invalid, have some beef broth’ speech from Mrs. Clotworthy when I saw her in the corridor outside her chamber this morning.”

  She referred to her companion and chaperone, a distant cousin of middle age and mild temperament who seemed always occupied with knitting something useless rather than ensuring her charge was cared for.

  “Besides which,” Georgie added, “it’s time to clear away. You’re to have a caller this morning. Any minute, possibly, so—here, let me adjust your cravat. You look a bit rumpled from your tussle with the teapot.”

  He swatted away her hands. “I do not. The cravat of a former major doesn’t dare rumple. Not that it matters, unless the caller is someone of great elegance. Who is it? The prime minister?”