Chapter Forty-Three
Nick was exhausted. He had, in the short space of forty-eight hours, traveled to Epsom and back again, publicly destroyed his chances at a marquessate, and learned that his son did not like him, no, not one little bit.
It was the last part that rankled most.
He stretched in his leather chair in front of the fire. “My own son thinks I’m a monster, and he can’t even speak yet.”
“Give him time,” Miss Sherwood told him. “He isn’t used to men. There are no men who live with me, and the two lads who work the farm rarely come into the house.”
“But I’m his father.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know that,” she said practically.
Nick sighed. He was just fortunate that Miss Sherwood had agreed to his plan. It had taken a lot of explaining and promising to convince her to relent and allow James to come to London. Then it had taken several pounds to convince Miss Sherwood to tag along. Her farm couldn’t run itself, she’d said, and even the two farmhands weren’t enough. She required an additional two men for the duration of her absence—and it wasn’t lost on him that it took two solidly built men to replace one small woman.
But Nick had done it, willingly. Frankly, the thought of being alone with his son terrified him. He had no idea how to care for a baby, and James was still very much a baby. At one year of age, his vocabulary was limited to Jane—although he couldn’t manage the J, so it sounded like Ane—and ball, neither of which was very useful in discovering if the boy was hungry or whether he was warm enough.
And Nick did care very much that James was warm enough. He would cheerfully murder the man who caused the boy to shiver. It was the strangest feeling of helplessness, of surrendering all common sense. Nick would do anything for this tiny creature. This was what Adelaide must have felt when she’d left James to find work. Perhaps, too, it was what his own mother felt when she had sent him away from his home.
“When will you tell Adelaide?” Miss Sherwood asked.
There was a loud pounding against the door.
Ah.
“I expect someone already has,” he said.
That had been his plan. The moment he came back from Epsom, Nathaniel had informed him that Adelaide’s engagement would be announced at Almack’s. Nick had tried all yesterday and this morning to reach her, but to no avail. He was turned away at her door and his letter returned unopened. Nathaniel had promised he would tell Adelaide himself, tonight, before the engagement became public. He must have kept his word.
Nick stood and went to the door, wrenching it open with his heart in his throat.
And there she was, beautiful as always, and quite damp from the rain. Her eyes sparked with fury as she faced him. She was no longer his sweet angel, but a warrior queen ready to do battle.
Not exactly his plan.
“I want my son,” she demanded.
He stepped back silently, allowing her to enter. She stormed past him and came to a sudden halt as she realized he was not alone.
“Jane?”
Miss Sherwood stood quickly. “Adelaide. I had not expected you like this.”
Adelaide paled. “Are you…and Nick…?” She struggled with the words.
“God, no,” Nick said as he caught her meaning. “Adelaide, no.”
“I am only here as a nurse for James. Just until…” Miss Sherwood paused, then smiled wryly. “Well, just until you, actually.”
For a moment, Adelaide looked taken aback, but then her spine snapped straight and she tilted her chin up. “And here I am. Give me my son.”
Fuck.
This was not going at all as he’d planned. She was a great deal angrier than he had hoped, for one thing. For another, her lips were turning slightly blue.
He moved toward her carefully. “James is sleeping. You’re wet and cold. Let me take your cloak, and you can stand closer to the fire. Then we will discuss this rationally.”
There was a mulish set to her mouth that made him think she would refuse and happily freeze just to spite him. But she removed her cloak with sharp, angry motions and flung it at him. The look she leveled was scathing. “I am not here to be rational, Nick. I am here for James, and I will take him by any means necessary.”
Well, that was good news.
“Even marrying me?” he asked.
She lost all power to speak at that, whether from rage or— No, it was definitely rage. He eyed her warily. Her face had gone from white to red. He braced for the explosion.
But her words were quiet, even as they devastated him. “You are cruel.”
He was vaguely aware of Miss Sherwood murmuring something about James as she hastily exited the room, but his focus remained centered on the small lady in front of him who seemed determined to bring him to his knees.
“Let me explain, please.” He reached for her, but she dodged, moving swiftly to her left. He followed, maneuvering his body between her and the door. She watched him with those eyes that always saw right to the depths of his soul. “Stop running from me, Adelaide.”
“Stop chasing me.” She took a step backward and bumped into a table. She gave a sharp cry as the corner connected with the back of her thigh.
He stopped. His hands clenched into fists as he restrained them from reaching for her. “Can we not be reasonable? Sit down. I promise I will not sit too close, and we will discuss it calmly. Please, angel.”
There was a fraught edge in his tone that belied the rational words. He was no more calm than she was. Her gaze darted about the room, searching desperately for an escape, and then she made a mad dash for the door. He caught her about the waist, halting her.
“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked.
Instantly he released her, leaping back as though she was made of fire. “Adelaide,” he pleaded.
Her chin trembled. He prayed she wouldn’t cry. His nerves were already frayed to pieces from the events of the past week—an odd experience for a man who had made a living as a spy. His nerves were usually quite solid. But he could not bear her tears, especially not when he was the cause.
But she rallied, thank God.
“I do not know what game you are playing at, Nick.” She clasped her hands in front of her and held his gaze steadfastly. “But I will not marry a man who despises me. It would drain all my joy, day after day, to live with such a burden. And I…I am my worst self when I am with you. In time, I would come to loathe myself quite as much as you loathe me already.”
He stared at her, shocked to his very core. She thought he despised her? Worse, she despised herself? “You can’t mean that.”
“I do mean it. I am disobedient, lustful, wicked.” She buried her face in her hands. “I am so very wicked, Nick. I can’t bear it.”
His chest tightened, and he would have wrapped her in his arms had he believed she would allow his touch.
“Then I don’t see how the rest of us can be expected to, either.” His boots tapped against the floorboards as he crossed the room to the desk. He opened the drawer and thumbed through the papers, searching. “How can any of us bear our own wickedness, Adelaide, if you cannot bear yours?”
She lowered her hands. “You don’t understand. I—I crave you, Nick. It feels like I am starving, and the only thing that slakes my hunger is your touch. If I marry you, I will never be free of it. I will never be free of this…this lust.” A hot flush swept over her cheeks.
He paused in his search and looked at her over his shoulder. “Dear God, I hope not,” he said fervently.
She wrung her hands. “Oh, you don’t understand!” she cried despairingly.
“No, I suppose I don’t.” He rubbed his chin. “Even if you spend every night enjoying my mouth on your breast and my cock between your legs—and I truly hope you will—what of it? Will you be less of a sister to Alice, less of a daughter, less of a friend? Will you suddenly go about kicking servants and small dogs?”
She laughed in spite of herself, and her heart broke free of its tethers. “No.”
“At your most wicked—which is, I am happy to hear, when you are with me—you still have more goodness in you than anyone in all of England. It does not bode well for humanity, I must say.” He turned back to his papers. Ah, here it was. He shut the drawer and moved toward her in slow, measured steps. “I won’t touch you. I only want to give you this.”
She took the paper he offered her. “‘Requirements for Adelaide’s Husband’?” she asked, bemused. Her eyes skimmed the page until she came to the last word. She raised her gaze to his. “Worthy?” she whispered.
“When I wrote that, you had disobeyed your parents, had lustful relations with me—although I fail to see that as anything other than wonderful—and allowed everyone to believe you were dead. I knew the worst of you, but I had not yet learned the best of you. And still I knew I was not worthy of you.”
The paper crinkled as her hands clenched. “I abandoned my son.”
“You did as you had to. You left him, yes, but you did not abandon him. You saved him from whatever horrific fate awaited him at the nunnery. You crossed the Channel with him in your belly and kept him safe. He never knew a day without love, and that is all because of you.”
Her eyes closed briefly as she swallowed hard, and then she opened them again, pinning him with a fierce glare. “You said you did not want my love. That my love was not good enough.”
He winced. “I ought to be horsewhipped for such hypocrisy. It was I who did not understand how to love. You, however, have a rather large capacity for loving,” he said. “It’s a bit baffling. Like the Shakespeare poem we discussed. ‘Love does not alter when it alteration finds.’ Yours is not a blind way of loving. When someone you love disappoints you, or you discover their faults, your love doesn’t lessen. It simply expands to include all the ugly pieces.” He gave her a crooked smile. “I have so many ugly pieces, Adelaide.”
“But you are not hard to love,” she said, then bit her lip as though she wished to take the words back.
“I am not a good man. But greedy, selfish wretch that I am, I mean to have you anyway. I want to be happy, and nothing can ensure that except your happiness. Let me be the man who makes you happy, angel. I’ll devote my life to it, I swear I will. I do love you so. Once I thought giving you up was my penance, but now I know that loving you is my salvation. Don’t send me away.”
She blinked at him with eyes that were suddenly wet. “You love me?”
He hated that he had ever given her cause to doubt it. He ached to stroke her cheek with his fingers, to wipe away her tears.
“My God, I love you so very much. Heart, soul, and body. There is not even the smallest part of me that is not desperate for you. I need you. I gave up the marquessate for you and for James, so that you would not have to bear the burden of my folly. My only regret is that I did not have ten more titles to toss away, if only to convince you of the depth of my love.” He took a cautious step toward her. “Tell me I am not too late. Tell me—”
He got no farther. She ran toward him with a soft cry and he closed the remaining distance. He caught her in his arms, crushing her against him. “You are my lodestar, Adelaide. My soul is in your keeping. When I am lost, I have only to look at you and the way is clear. Call that wicked, if you will, but I know it is right and good and true.”
She tilted her chin up to look at him. “I do love you, Nick.”
“And I love you.” He touched his forehead to hers. “It has the strangest effect on me, angel. I actually want to be good. You must marry me. The world will be a better place with you to keep me in line.”
She laughed. “Well, when you put it like that… Yes, my love. I will marry you.”