I’ve no right to ask your pardon and yet I beg it anyway. I also ask you trust me again. Meet me at the edge of the Thames, where the Frost Fair was once held.
Consulting his timepiece for the sixth time since he’d arrived at the edge of the frozen Thames, an unwanted fear gripped him. She wasn’t late. He was, in fact, early. And yet, he was riddled with anxiety that Sybil would ignore the note his footman had delivered that morn to her maid.
Sybil would be well within her right to be furious. Every woman of his miserable acquaintance would have pouted and given him the cut direct for such a slight. Before he’d come to know her, Nolan wouldn’t have given a jot about her feelings, either way, and would have only cared for the loss of the funds she’d dangled before him.
But he did know her. He had come to appreciate her as a proud, clever woman who was bold in her every thought, word, and action. And for some reason, that equally scared the everlasting hell out of him—he cared what she thought. Because one of the only ways he’d managed to smile and survive had been in donning a devil-may-care attitude. About how the world saw him. How his family saw him. And how he viewed himself. Her opinion, however, had come to matter. It had since she’d challenged his reputation as wicked rake, during their carriage ride to Green Park.
The wind pulled at the hem of his cloak and it whipped noisily about his ankles. He did another sweep of the snow-covered landscape devoid of life and movement but for the handful of snow-covered oaks along the shore.
The loud crunch of snow brought him around. His heart thumped to a slow stop and then resumed a too-quick beat. She was glorious. Tall, plump, bespectacled, she’d not fit with the beauties he’d taken to his bed. Only to find that not a single one of them could ever hold a candle to her. The air lodged painfully in his lungs as terror mobbed his senses. What was this hold she had over him?
Sybil stopped several paces away. “Nolan,” she greeted. There was no recrimination. No acerbic demands.
“I did not meet you at Gipsy Hill,” he blurted.
The ghost of a smile hovered on the corners of her lips, as she came forward. “Yes, I gathered as much.” She stopped before him and then craned her head back, knocking her hood free. That familiar tight chignon accentuated her heart-shaped features. It drew his focus to eyes the color of warmed chocolate. “Well?”
“Well?” he asked gruffly.
“I expect there was something that kept you.”
That was it. I expect there was something that kept you. She’d not assumed or believed the worst. Didn’t make accusations about him visiting wicked gaming hells and stomp her foot at being abandoned.
“Didn’t worry that I, a self-centered rake, had abandoned you?”
She nibbled the gloved tip of her index finger. “Yes, well, initially, I did have that concern.” She grimaced. “Not the self-condemnation part of your question but rather the abandonment part.”
“Ah.” He lifted his head, smiling for the first time since he’d hummed a tune yesterday morn. Before his brother had demanded that meeting. “And tell me, what logic brought you to an altogether different conclusion.”
“There is first,” she stuck a finger up. “The fact that you are not as rakish as you’d have the world believe.”
“Don’t ruin my reputation, love.”
Sybil stole a quick look about and then the stiffness in her shoulders eased. “There is no one about.”
How very literal and logical she was. “I was being facetious.”
“Ah, of course.” She propped her right hand on her hip. “May I continue?”
His chest rumbled with laughter. “I’d be bereft if you did not.” God, when was the last time he’d so enjoyed himself? Certainly never in all his years of carousing or womanizing or visiting his clubs had he felt this easy joy.
Sybil stuck a second finger up. “You sent another missive this morn. Why would you do that if you did not wish to see m—” Sybil coughed into her hand. “Uh, that is. To see through the terms of our arrangement? As such, after much wondering and confusion and questions, I worked out that you, in fact, had every intention of meeting me at Gipsy Hill.” The lady spread her arms wide and he clapped his hands together, the thick leather muffling that sound. God, she was endearing. The kind of lady who captivated attention so that a man could think of no one and nothing but her and her keen wit and spirit.
“Brava, Miss Cunning.”
She dipped a little curtsy and then her amusement faded. “Well?”
Nolan rocked on his heels. He briefly considered ignoring her question. There was no place in sharing any further parts of himself with her. Not when she’d soon be gone and he’d return to his depraved, rakish existence. A hollow ache settled in his chest. “I had a meeting with my brother,” he admitted. “My brother is also my man-of-affairs.” He’d far preferred their relationship when he had been the older, more assured brother and not this sudden reversal of roles where he desperately required Henry’s guidance.
She puzzled her brow. “Is he a…” He could practically see the wheels of questions turning in her mind. “An inadequate man-of-affairs?”
“Egads, no,” he exclaimed. “Henry isn’t bad at a single thing. Unlike my sister and me, Henry is the Pratt of reason and calm and logic.” Whereas, he? Well, he’d once been those things until that damned fall. One slip from a horse and a life forever changed. Would she, a logical being, think differently of him if she knew? Despite the cold, his palms moistened within his leather gloves. She wouldn’t…knowing her even a short time, she’s proven herself a woman who’d not condemn your weaknesses…Tell her…
“What was your meeting about?” she asked with the directness he’d come to expect and appreciate from her.
“After,” he gruffly sidestepped. He’d not spoil one of these last moments with talk of his failings or the fate awaiting him and his entire family. “I didn’t ask you here to discuss…” Sybil pierced him with her eyes. She’d never accept a glib lie on his lips. It was what set her apart from anyone and everyone else he’d ever known. Mere days ago, that truth would have horrified him. Not any longer. For with her, he felt free and he’d not relinquish that. Not even to protect himself. “I asked you here for altogether different purposes,” he substituted. He motioned to the same red blanket he’d fed her Gunter’s ices on, shifting her attention sideways.
She wandered over and then sank down beside the pair of skates. With almost reverent hands, she picked up the delicate black pair he’d had commissioned two days earlier. “What…?”
“They are skates,” he supplied needlessly, joining her on the ground. He proceeded to draw them on over his black boots and then turned to her. Slipping them from Sybil’s fingers, he helped her into her pair.
“They fit,” she blurted. “How did you know which size?”
He immediately lifted a palm. “It was but a quick measurement at Covent Garden.”
The lady’s lips parted and a soft, breathy exhalation filtered out. Simultaneously unnerved and elated by the adoration there, he stood and held a hand out. Wobbly, she teetered left and then right on the skates. Muttering under her breath, she shot her arms out to balance herself. “This is not enjoyable,” she accused, blowing a loose strand back from her eye. The stubborn curl fell promptly back into place.
“Ah, but this is not skating,” he pointed out. Taking her by the gloved hands, he led her slowly to the edge of the Thames.
She looked out for a long while, with a distant, far-off gaze. He followed her stare, looking for a hint of what she saw. Only snowflakes carried by the wind danced upon the smooth surface. “Come,” he urged. Holding fast to her hands, he skated backward, leading her farther and farther out onto the surface.
With every glide of their blades, Sybil’s laughter increased until it rolled over the empty Thames. He grinned. He could not help it. And what was more…he didn’t want to help it. With her, he didn’t have to paste that false, rakish grin on for the world.
“I concede the point.”
“And what point is that, Miss Cunning?” he asked, his breath stirring the winter air.
“This skating business is, indeed, good f-f—eek,” her feet slid out from under her and he quickly caught her, righted her, and set them back into motion. “Enjoyable,” she finished with a smile. “This is enjoyable.”
Their blades sluiced noisily over the frozen surface, scraping along the ice. Retaining a grip on her hand, he guided her in a small circle until her shoulder shook. “There,” she said suddenly, pointing across the way. “Do you know the tale of the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge’s meeting at the Frost Fair?”
“Indeed, I do not.” Nor did he care to ruin this moment with mention of anyone. The only person he cared about was the one in his arms. Another wave of shock slammed into him. How easily she’d slipped inside.
“Five years ago, nearly to this date,” she went on. “It was a story on every front page of every gossip column.”
“Gossip columns are rubbish better for a bin.” Those same sheets that had painted him as a whore who’d sell himself to women looking to be debauched. He’d learned to not trust a single word within them.
“Yes,” she said, nodding in agreement. “Normally, I’m of like opinion. But these stories,” she slipped and he steadied her. “These were different. I was riveted. Gossip columns printing tales not of unfaithful husbands and cheating wives, but a young couple, strangers, in an altogether different light.” It would be nigh impossible to not be captivated by her reverent whisper and the faraway glimmer in her eyes. “He was a broken-hearted widower,” she continued, as Nolan spun her back to face him. “The ice broke. Lady Katherine fell through. They say he stood just over there.” She stuck an arm out and pointed in the distance. “And while everyone stood unaware, he sprinted across the ice—”
“A person cannot sprint across the ice. Not without skates.”
“Oh, do hush, Noel,” she chided in teasing tones. “You’re ruining the romance of it.”
“You are a bluestocking and a romantic.” It was an ever-endearing revelation about Sybil Holly.
“That was the first I ever wondered whether a woman could find love, while remaining also in love with learning. I believed it impossible to have both, but,” she added softly, “stories of what happened to the Duke and Duchess of Bainbridge were not for women like me. As such, I convinced myself I wanted nothing more than my life as I’d always known it.” But she did want more. It was there in the unfinished thought, as real as if it had been spoken. And it both terrified and captivated him.
Unnerved by this uncharted path, he brushed a golden curl behind her ear. “A lady, dragged under the ice and frozen through, nearly drowning to death?” Nolan angled her in his arms. “That isn’t romantic, Sybil Holly.” He drew her closer. Their blades scraped softly in the quiet as he pulled her into his arms. “This is romantic. Our bodies matching in rhythm.” He led her in slow, wide arcs across the ice as she learned the movement of the skates, and he memorized the feel of her through her cloak. He lowered his voice to a quiet whisper. “The opportunity for a man to hold a woman close, enjoying the heat from her body in this cold.” Sybil’s breath caught and he ached with the need for this meeting to go on forever with her.
Nolan hummed quietly, providing them a discordant tune as they skated. He then brought them to a stop. They stood motionless. Their breaths mingled, hers tinged with mint and cinnamon. He dipped his head needing to taste her, once more—
She cried out as her legs slid out from under her, taking him down with her. He shifted in time so he landed hard beside her with a grunt. Pain shot along his hip.
“Sybil?” he demanded, frantically passing his hands over her for hint of injury. When he registered a quiet rumble, he looked up. She lay on her back, eyes closed, shaking with her mirth.
“That latter part, however, was decidedly not romantic.”
Joining in her amusement, Nolan rolled Sybil atop him so she lay draped over his chest. The cold of the ice penetrated the wool of his cloak and garments. And God help him if he was warmed anyway from her nearness. “I never professed to be one of those debonair rakes,” he pointed out, running smooth circles over her lower back.
She propped her chin atop his chest. “A-aren’t all rakes?” If he were a better man, he’d feel a modicum of guilt at her shivering.
“Pfft.” He waggled his eyebrows. “There are a good deal many types of rakes. The wicked ones beyond redemption. The ones who are scandalous for the attention it brings them. There are—”
Her sharp bark of laughter cut across his perfunctory list. “Enough.” She swatted his chest. “I-I do not want to discuss other rakes.” She held his gaze; all mirth now gone. “I want to discuss you.”
He recoiled. There was nothing he wished to discuss less. He’d already exposed himself before her in ways he never had another person. To do so any further, would only leave him splayed open from which he might never recover.
“Wh-What of your finances?”
And once again, with her clever mind, she’d so very neatly pinpointed the very secret that had gone into his becoming the man he’d allowed himself to become.
“They are rot,” he said, lifting his gaze overhead. He focused on the thick, grey cloud cover and the scent of snow that lingered in the air.
She burrowed deeper into him, as though she sought to steal any warmth in his frame. That trust; her natural ease scared him as much as the questions on her lips. Questions that continued coming. “Th-that is all you’d say?”
“What would you have me say?” he demanded impatiently, snapping his gaze back to hers. “That my family is in dun territory because of my ineptness? That I barely have sufficient funds for my sister Josephine’s Come Out next year?”
“N-Not because of your wagering,” she accurately surmised, her teeth chattering in the cold.
He hesitated. His breath stirred puffs of white air. “No.” He’d always enjoyed the gaming tables, but he’d never been reckless in his betting. “I wagered away my family’s happiness in different ways,” he said, unable to keep coating those words with a rancid bitterness.
The delicate press of Sybil’s palm against his cheek forced his attention back to her. “Tell me,” she urged softly. Her glasses slid forward and he reached between them, automatically pushing them back into the proper place atop her pert nose.
Tell her to go to hell. Do not let her in. Remind her that she is nothing more than a paid assignment.
“I used to be a brilliant student,” he said quietly. He quirked his lips up in one corner. “That is not arrogance.” And he could only speak of it because he was no longer that clever lad of his youth. “I loved my studies the same way I love riding.”
A wistful smile played on her lips. “I expect you were a naughty child.”
“Oh, the naughtiest,” he replied instantly. “To my mother and father’s chagrin.” He thought back with a pang of sadness for the late baron and baroness who’d now been gone seven years. Where most lords and ladies were born with ruthless, calculated kin, Nolan’s family had long been the loving lot who’d defend one another to the death. Even when one didn’t deserve it—like him. “They never attempted to change me.”
“You are fortunate in that regard.”
Just a handful of words that spoke volumes about her own existence. “A disapproving papa?”
“A devoted papa,” she corrected. “And a dragon of a mother who wishes me to be everything I can never be.” Sybil hesitated. “Everything I never wish to be.”
He opened his mouth to put another question to her, but she touched a fingertip to his lips. “We were discussing you.”
Yes, they had been. And yet, his query hadn’t come as diversionary efforts to stay the flow of her questions. Rather, it had come from a genuine desire to know everything about Sybil Holly Cunning.
“I was naughty,” he murmured, again. “My mother was adamant that I was too risky with my mount. Demanded I take care. And so…” His throat worked. The memory of that long ago day whispered forward. The thrill of the wind battering his face as he’d taken a stone wall. He pressed his eyes briefly closed. “I jumped a wall I had no place jumping. I was thrown.” He continued over her gasp. “The back of my head hit the wall and I was found unconscious.”
The sharp pain so stark, if he closed his eyes he could feel it still. “My head hurt like the devil for weeks and weeks after. When I was, at last, able to return to Eton, I opened my mathematics book and…”
She captured his hand, giving a slight squeeze. That tender, silent, unspoken show of support giving him the courage to share something he’d never revealed to another soul.
“None of the numbers made sense any longer. It was as though I’d been handed books in a foreign language. I told no one.” He ceased the distracted circles he rubbed over her back. “I suspect my father knew I was changed, but he never treated me different for it. Simply tried to help.” Which had only made it all the worse. Nolan had retreated and retreated until all what had been left was a shell of the clever boy he’d been.
“And that is why your finances were not in order.”
“And that is why,” he murmured. “My father’s former man-of-affairs, I trusted implicitly and it cost us.” Nearly everything. “And now my younger brother is left trying to set it all to rights.” Nolan could not meet her eyes, afraid of the disgust or, worse, pity, he might see there.
He should have known better with Sybil Cunning. She shimmied herself higher up his chest, wiggling back and forth in a move designed to torture. But she touched the tip of her nose to his. “You still have not learned what it took me nine and twenty years to realize.” Her voice trembled slightly from the passion underscoring that husky timbre. “A person is incapable of doing everything for oneself. If that weren’t the case, I would have never invaded your home and sought your help.”
His chest tightened. What if she’d never knocked on his door? What if she’d, instead, found another bounder who’d learned the cleverness of her mind and the taste of her lips and the sultry sound of her laughter? But she hadn’t. She found me. Some of the pressure eased.
“Don’t you see?” she pressed. “It isn’t about your being able to do something or not do something, Noel. It’s about knowing when you cannot do something and who to look to for support and assistance. You found him.” She smiled. “And that is what matters most.”
He wanted to hold on to the gift she held out. A pardon for his countless mistakes, but his past held tight, refusing to relinquish its hold. “Your inability to ice skate never destroyed your family.”
“No,” she agreed. “It damaged my spirit.” Just as his was. How alike they were in that regard. “There are far greater perils than financial ones, Nolan.”
They lay there for a long while with the cool ice penetrating the fabric of his cloak and, still, Nolan remained. Wanting to freeze this moment with her forever. Five days ago, Sybil had entered his home and asked him to show the world to her through different lenses…only to now find, with her here in his arms, that she’d shown him more than he could have ever taught her.