Page 45 of Tremaine's True Love
“I am composing a letter in my head to Beckman. Nita and George should pay Beckman a visit, if the weather ever breaks.”
“If the flu season starts, you mean. Why not send your entire horde of siblings?”
The idea was tempting, which was no credit to Nick’s familial loyalty. “I love my brothers and sisters,” he said, “but since the baby showed up…” Since the baby had arrived, Nick never had time alone with his wife.
“You worry more,” Leah said. “You worry in a whole new way, and you were a prodigiously talented worrier before his lordship arrived.”
The little Viscount Reston was healthy as a shoat, with a full complement of Haddonfield blond hair and marvelously merry blue eyes—most of the time. The boy enjoyed marvelously healthy lungs too.
“Am I too heavy?” Nick asked.
“You are too anxious. What aren’t you telling me, Nicholas?”
Nick mentally rummaged around among his cares and woes, put aside his curiosity about Tremaine St. Michael, and lit upon his most recently acquired problem.
“Edward Nash mentioned Addy Chalmers when last I spoke with him.”
Leah’s fingertip paused on the bridge of Nick’s nose. “When he attempted to wheedle coin and sheep from you, under the guise of asking permission to pay his addresses to Susannah?”
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” Nick said, shifting to crouch over his countess. “But Susannah fancies him and she hasn’t fancied any other fellow, so what’s to be done? When Nash assured me the baronetcy came with a tidy income, I thought he was acknowledging that Susannah’s dowry was of no moment. Then he turns around and hints about the sheep, between broader hints about Addy Chalmers.”
Leah kissed Nick’s nose, a now-see-here sort of kiss. “What did Edward say about Addy? He’s caused you to frown, and I prefer my earl smiling.”
“Nash asked me how long I intend to tolerate a fallen woman raising up her brood of bastards under my very nose.”
“Oh, dear.”
Bastards were a sensitive topic among the Haddonfields, and not only because Nick’s older half-brother Ethan bore that dubious distinction.
Nick brushed Leah’s dark hair back off her forehead. Since having the baby, her hair had become different—thicker, softer, more kissable.
“What sort of ‘oh, dear’ was that?” he asked, kissing her brow.
“Oh, dear, Edward has appointed himself the moral magistrate of the shire. What business is it of his if you’ve reduced Addy’s rent?”
Reduced it to nothing, while allowing her boys to poach game and firewood from the Belle Maison home wood.
“You’d have me tolerate sin among our tenants, lovey?”
Leah turned her face away, presenting Nick with an ear to kiss instead, but it wasn’t an ear-kissing moment. “You’ve never been a hypocrite, Nicholas. I love that about you.”
Such were the Countess of Bellefonte’s charms that she could scold while murmuring endearments.
Nick flopped to his back, because his sweet, kind, lovely, practical countess was also the lodestar of his honor. Around them the house was quiet, as if waiting for spring and weary of winter.
“I used to tease little Addy Chalmers in the churchyard. I helped carry her mother’s casket. Now, she’s no longer decent, but is that the fault of her children? Am I to burn her out and put those children on the parish when their sustenance costs me nothing but a few skinny hares and rotting tree limbs?”
Prostitution was legal—the great men of England who made the laws had been careful about that. Living entirely on the proceeds of immoral commerce was, however, against the law, and Addy had no other reliable means of earning coin.
“Nicholas, do you ever wonder whose children those are?”
Nick did kiss Leah’s ear. “All the time. The oldest one, the little redhead, reminds me of somebody. Addy would know who her father is too.”
“But Addy has never said. Do we have work here for her?”
A family the size of the Haddonfields could employ a small army, assuming the staff didn’t make Addy’s life hell.
“Nita has asked the same thing,” Nick admitted, “but then who would watch those children? The oldest girl can’t watch a newborn. The infant needs its mother.”Hermother. Addy had born another girl, may God have mercy on the little mite.
