by Liz Carlyle
Nash scarcely knew where Yorkshire was—and he certainly did not know what a finishing mill was. He had come home, stripped off his gloves, poured himself a healthy measure of okhotnichya, and tossed Wescot’s note of hand onto the teetering heap of detritus which awaited Swann’s return. And there, so far as he knew, it lay to this moment. Swann would finalize the conveyance, then sell it, or trade it—or do whatever it was he did with such things.
But that night—ah, yes, that night! Perhaps, had he not been angry with himself over his own behavior, he would have cared very little about Mr. Wescot’s. Perhaps he would have refused to play with him altogether, for it had come clear early on that the chap was but a rustic and in well over his head.
Nash became vaguely aware that the girl was still yammering on about Yorkshire.
“—and so, you see, his grandfather really felt that Matthew should have the mill,” she was explaining. “And he did die shortly thereafter. But then Matthew found out about the babe”—here, she paused to set a hand on her swollen belly—“and I am persuaded that he wants only the best for the child.”
“Are you indeed?” said Nash dryly.
The girl blinked back fresh tears and nodded. “That, you see, is why we came to London,” she said. “Matthew wants us to live here—to take our place in society, you see—for the child’s sake. He swears he shan’t squander a dime, no matter what his papa fears—and that with the income from the mill, he really can pay off his debts, and buy us a fine town house…b-but then he lost the mill!”
Good God, what a nightmare! An early widowhood, he feared, was the girl’s best hope—and if Wescot’s insolent mouth were any indication, that day might not be too far distant. But in the meantime, what was to be done about her? And the child?
Damn it, why was this his problem? By God, he had played an honest game—as he always did. And if Wescot’s family starved in the street, why must he now be troubled with it? Nash gritted his teeth. “And you are hoping, are you not, that I shall simply give you the mill back?” he said. “Is that it?”
Somehow, the girl managed to nod. She was softly crying now, not the heaving sobs of a few moments past, but the quiet snivels of hopeless resignation. At last, Nash sat down. He felt as worn as she looked—which was a damned shame when, not a moment earlier, he had been wallowing in the greatest pleasure of his life. He stared across the tea table at the girl, and braced his elbows on his knees. “Look, Mrs. Wescot, I am going to do you the favor of being honest,” he began.
She looked up at him accusingly. “But you are not an honest man, are you?” she said. “Indeed, they say you are perfectly wicked.”
“I am far more honest than most,” he returned. “And whilst you may hear many things of me—most of them true—you will hear no one name me a cheat or a sharper or a liar. So here, my dear, is the awful truth—you have a babe in your belly and an arrogant young fool for a husband.”
“I beg your pardon!”
But in his anger and frustration, Nash had no intention of stopping. “What your husband lost, Mrs. Wescot, he lost through conceit. What I took was a damned sight less than I might have done. The man played cards as if he had a dozen mills to spare and no family to feed. You must get him out of London—tomorrow would not be too soon—and keep him out. Mill owners from Yorkshire, Mrs. Wescot, rarely find any ‘place’ in society—and if you did, it would be the last thing you would wish for your child.”
She crumpled his handkerchief, and her face crumpled with it. “Oh, I knew it!” she wailed. “I tried to tell him so. We do not belong here.”
“When is the child due?” he asked bluntly.
She blinked a little uncertainly. “Why, the end of next month.”
“Have you any relations at all nearby?”
She nodded. “My cousin Harold is a greengrocer in Spitalfields,” she said almost sheepishly. “I did marry up, you see.”
Nash was not at all sure of that. “Is he a decent man, this cousin?”
The girl nodded. “He is plainspoken,” she said. “But kind—and honest.”
“Then you must send Harold to me, Mrs. Wescot, when the babe is born,” he ordered. “He will give to me the full legal name of the child—be it male or female—and I shall give you back your mill.”
“You…you will?”
“To your child,” he said bluntly. “Not your husband. With Harold the greengrocer as trustee. Do you understand me, Mrs. Wescot?”
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, dear.”
Nash lifted his hands. “You may take it or leave it,” he said. “It is the best offer I can make you, and a bloody generous one.”
“Oh, it is generous indeed!” she said. “And very kind, too. But Matthew…he mightn’t like it.”
“Then you may send Matthew to me, ma’am,” said Nash. “And I shall put it to him in terms even a fool can understand.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, Lord Nash.”
Nash returned to the chair, and picked up her sodden cloak. “Come with me, Mrs. Wescot,” he said, “and I shall endeavor to hail you a cab.”
“No, I thank you,” she protested, rising. “I haven’t the money.”
“I shall pay the fare,” he said quietly. “You will catch your death, child, haring about London in a wet cloak—and I greatly fear that your rather imposing umbrella has breathed its last.”
She dropped her gaze. “Thank you, my lord.”
Nash looked at her very steadily. “Have you a place to stay, ma’am? The spring weather can be vile.”
“Our bags are still at the George,” she said. “But…but they have thrown us out.”
“Will your cousin Harold take you in?”
She nodded.
“Then I shall pay the driver to take you to the George to collect your things, and from there on to Spitalfields.”
“Oh, dear. That…that is a very long way, is it not?”
“Not so very far,” he reassured her. “And Mrs. Wescot—a word of advice, if I may?”
She looked back up and nodded.
He set one hand on her shoulder. “You are soon to have a child, my dear,” he said. “So I suggest you get yourself a backbone and get the whip hand on that husband of yours. However awful it may seem, the welfare of your child will depend upon your ability to do this.”
Her finely arched brows drew together. “But…but how?”
Nash set his head to one side. “You are a dashed good-looking girl, Mrs. Wescot,” he said. “Must I really explain this further? Use the gifts God gave you and bring him to heel. Never forget that—for the right woman—a man will do very nearly anything.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Wescot stiffened her spine. “Yes, my lord. I shall endeavor to remember that.”
Xanthia was bent over a chair, tidying her clothing, when Nash returned to his bedchamber. She jerked up at once, looking vaguely ill at ease. She dropped the last garment and crossed the room, her arms outstretched. “Nash?” she said. “All is well?”
He sat down on the edge of his bed and told her what had happened. By the time the story was finished, he had shucked back down to his shirtsleeves, and they were lying on the bed again, his head upon her shoulder and his arm about her waist. It was almost disconcertingly comfortable—and comforting.
“I do not know why it bothers me so, Zee,” he murmured. “I mean—I am not without feeling, but this is the nature of high-stakes gaming. If we all begin returning that which was fairly won—well, what would be the purpose in it? Pretty soon we’ll all be playing penny-loo with our grandmothers.”
Xanthia stroked a hand through his hair. “Part of the fault lies with Mr. Mainsell,” she pointed out. “He brought a man to the table who had no business being there.”
Nash said nothing for a long moment. “She was with child,” he said quietly. “Quite far along. Did I mention that?”
“No.” She stroked his hair again. “No, you did not.”
Nash curled a little closer. “That, I
think, is what unmanned me,” he admitted. “The thought of that child, being brought up by a man who likely hasn’t the sense to come in out of the rain—or worse, an infant being born into instant poverty, with a father in debtor’s prison…” His words fell away.
“You felt it would be your fault?”
“And on one level, it would have been.” Nash was quiet for a time. “I made a dreadful mistake tonight, Zee,” he finally said. “When we…when we made love.”
In his embrace, she stiffened. “It did not feel like a mistake to me,” she murmured. “Indeed, I was rather hoping we might do it again.”
Nash hugged her hard. “No, I mean that I left my seed inside you,” he murmured. “That is a risk I do not normally take—and twice now, I have taken it with you. It was exceedingly careless of me, and I think…yes, I think that is a part of what troubled me tonight. Mrs. Wescot is to have a child—and what say, if any, did she have in the matter?”
“Most women want children,” Xanthia remarked.
“Well, she should not,” he said sharply. “Her husband is an idiot.”
“Nash!” she chided. “You are in a very strange mood.”
“Yes, I daresay,” he murmured.
Nash spread his hand wide across her womb, as if doing so might guard her from the worst. He considered the risk he had run tonight and knew he should have been appalled. Terrified. Or at the very least, deeply concerned. But for himself, he was none of those things. To him, the odds of a pregnancy were only a little more calculable than the odds of Rothewell turning up on his doorstep with a brace of dueling pistols. It required a gamester’s risk, one which he was prepared to take. For the alternative—not being able to make love to Xanthia—simply was not an option now. But was she prepared to take that risk?
Most women want children.
Xanthia was right, of course. But did she want children? At Lady Henslow’s she had suggested that she had rejected marriage and motherhood. And now that he knew her better, he was beginning to believe it might be true. Certainly she had refused at least one proposal outright. She lived an unconventional life, and was quite obviously loath to give it up. Moreover, Neville’s was the thing around which her world revolved. How could a woman own a business and raise a family?
But many women did. Perhaps not women of his class, but it was commonly done. And even amongst England’s upper class, some women managed large estates. Others did an almost overwhelming amount of charitable work. If Xanthia conceived, what would they do?
They would do what most everyone in such a predicament did—marry. He would insist upon it—and if he did not, her brother bloody well would. For all his liberal notions about his sister, Rothewell was quite obviously a man of hard resolve.
Xanthia was right about his mood, too. It was very strange tonight. She might well decide she did not wish to see him again. She had come here to enjoy his company and his body, not to jog him from one of his melancholy moods. He forced it away and lifted his head to kiss her. But this time, it was tinged with an altogether different sort of desperation—and one which was wholly foreign to him. It would not do to examine that emotion too closely.
“I like you in that dressing gown,” he said, when their lips parted. “It does not look half so fetching on me.”
She picked at it a little nervously. “I thought I ought to put something on,” she murmured. Then she hesitated, as if there was more she wished to say.
Nash decided that there had been enough serious conversation for one romantic evening. Besides, he was half-afraid of what Xanthia might say were she to give their odd liaison much thought. He rolled up onto his elbow. “Have you dined?” he said, his fingers toying with a strand of her hair. “There is a cold supper laid out in the dining room. Will you join me?”
“Yes, I am famished,” she said, smiling widely. “My dinnertime headache seems miraculously to have vanished, and I could eat half a horse now.”
“I believe it is just cold roast beef,” he said. “Will that do? And will you dine in your dressing gown, madam?”
They laughed together at the absurdity of it all as they dashed down the stairs hand in hand. He felt oddly young and more than a little foolish. And suddenly, he did not give a damn.
On impulse, he decided to stop on every floor and give Xanthia a brief tour of the house’s public rooms. Northampton House was one of London’s most stately private homes, and it had been purpose-built for the seventh Marquess of Nash when Mayfair was little more than a cow pasture. Nash knew it was much admired. But for the first time, he felt himself actually looking at—and admiring—his own home. It was an inexplicable pleasure to see it through Xanthia’s eyes.
She oohed and ahhed appreciatively at the sumptuous furnishings and gilt woodwork of the withdrawing room. She remarked upon every painted ceiling, every pilaster, and every cornice, then gushed at length over the mahogany furnishings and dramatic velvet draperies of the library. They reached the dining room still holding hands. Xanthia gasped when she saw the long, lustrous dining table laid with Northampton’s massive silver epergne and its grand flotilla of matching service pieces.
But at the far end of the table, Nash’s face fell. For all the splendor set upon the tabletop, there was, of course, but one place laid. He picked up the lone wineglass. “We could share?”
“Have you another fork?” she asked.
“A hundred of them, I daresay,” he admitted. “But I couldn’t say where.”
She laughed again. “You really do live a life of pampered privilege, do you not?” she said. “Pour the wine whilst I poke about in your cupboards.”
“That sounds exciting.”
Her eyes reluctant to leave his face, Xanthia slowly released his hand. Nash lit the candles, and she carried one into the shadowy passageway which linked the dining room to the opulent gilt withdrawing room. As she had suspected, it was a narrow butler’s pantry—and as was proper, everything was locked up tightly. She tugged on the drawers to no avail, then lifted the light to look all around. The pantry was neat as a pin, the marble floors and counters glistened, and behind the glass doors, the plate shone.
“You shall have to share,” she said, returning to the table. “No, wait—the sideboard.” She went to it, and began opening doors and drawers. There were plates in the left door and a minimal amount of spare cutlery in the top drawer. “By the way,” she said, returning to the table, “you have exemplary servants.”
Nash was staring at her, some fervent but nameless emotion in his eyes.
“What?” she asked, letting her gaze run the dressing gown. “Have I a smudge?”
“No, it is just—” He jerked out a chair to seat her. “It is just that I am not accustomed to having a woman puttering about the house.”
“I am sorry,” she said quietly. “It must feel intrusive.”
He shook his head, and returned to his chair. “No, it feels—different. Pleasant.”
Xanthia leaned back against her chair and surveyed him. “Did you grow up alone, with only your father after your mother’s death?”
“What?” Nash’s expression cleared, and he lifted the lid of a nearby platter. “Oh, no. Father remarried immediately. My stepmother still lives at Brierwood.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, taking a slice of the beef from the dish he offered. “You mentioned sisters. And I met your stepbrother at Lady Henslow’s, did I not?”
“Yes, Anthony Hayden-Worth,” he said. “Lady Henslow is his aunt.”
“I thought him very charming,” Xanthia remarked. “Are the two of you close?”
Nash cleared his throat. “Well, we are vastly different people,” he said, passing a dish of cold potatoes. “But I am very fond of him. Tony was seven when our parents wed, and I was a grown-up thirteen. It was good for me, I suppose, to have someone besides myself and my own misery to think about.”
“You were a real brother to him?”
Nash smiled, but it was faint. “I wanted to be,�
� he admitted. “I had had an excellent example in my brother Petar. But Tony…”
“Yes?” she encouraged. “Go on.”
Again, he seemed to hesitate. “I always felt Tony resented me,” Nash explained. “Though he certainly never said as much. I was so dark and so foreign and so frightfully ignorant of all things English. Tony used to laugh at me, and say, ‘Well, if you are going to be an English lord, you must learn so-and-so—’ And of course, I did not know it, whatever it was, so I had to struggle to catch up.”
“But you did learn,” said Xanthia. “Indeed, you likely know more than I do.”
Nash cut her a chary glance. “Oh, I doubt it, my dear,” he said. “That first year, Tony and I shared the same books and tutors, for I was still struggling to learn the language, and I knew almost nothing of English history. It was…a little humiliating. Have you any notion, my dear, how long it takes to get rid of an Eastern European accent? I am lucky, I daresay, that my father did not beat it out of me with his razor strop.”
How very sad his life had been. Perhaps she should not have dredged up such old and painful memories. Xanthia set down her fork and propped her chin in her hand. “I have a question,” she said, studying him. “What does Tony call you?”
“Nash,” he said, as if it were obvious.
She shook her head. “No, before you were Nash,” she said. “What is your Christian name?”
“Oh,” he said quietly. “Stefan.”
“Stefan,” she repeated. “You never said.”
“You never asked.”
Yes, and there was a reason for that, she inwardly admitted. De Vendenheim had told her his full name early on. But inexplicably, Xanthia wished to hear it from Nash’s lips. He pronounced it with an elegant, almost haunting softness over the vowels. “It is a lovely name,” she said.
He lifted one shoulder, as if it were of no consequence. “It is spelled with an “f,” he said. “Father wished me to change it, so that it would look more English. But I refused. It was not my name.”
“It was an unreasonable request,” she said. “Was he disappointed?”
Nash broke off a bit of bread. “I often disappointed him,” he answered. “Deliberately, sometimes, I suppose. I felt that he wanted to strip away that part of me which was not English. Suddenly, after years of ignoring it, England was all that mattered to him. I found it dashed confusing.”
