Page 46 of Tremaine's True Love
“Let me think about it,” Leah said, drawing Nick’s head down to her shoulder. “Nita says the oldest girl is a bright child, and I’m sure she’s a comfort to her mother. Her name is Mary.”
Nick allowed himself to be comforted, but the problem of Addy Chalmers was complicated and tangled up in the problem that was Nita. Also, in light of Nash’s meddling, the problem that was Susannah.
Given that list, the problem that was Tremaine St. Michael, and a bunch of bleating, stinking sheep, didn’t even intrude into Nick’s awareness as he fell asleep in the arms of his countess.
* * *
What could be more dear than a gentleman decked out in London tailoring, sitting on the floor before the hearth of a simple cottage, teaching children their letters in the ashes?
That sight had upset Nita, had put a lump in her throat where no lump should have been, and filled her heart with an aching joy. Somebody else saw the Chalmers children as worthy, as innocent. Somebody besides Nita and their own mother, and that was every bit as enthralling to Nita as Mr. St. Michael’s kisses.
“Will you stay for the assembly?” she asked as the horses trudged along the deserted lane.
“I’d like to, but perhaps not. Bellefonte has promised to set a price for the sheep, and it shouldn’t take him days to do that, if he’s willing to part with them at all. I’m needed in Oxford, I have business to tend to in London, and a trip to Germany is still a strong possibility.”
“You’d travel now, when winter is at its worst?” Beckman had traveled for years, George had just returned from travel, and Nita had worried for both of her brothers.
She worried for Mr. St. Michael more. He’d said he’d wished he could see her turning down the room. Had that wish meant anything?
“I am known to be a shrewd businessman. I travel when others are snug in their homes. I do business with any with whom I can turn a reasonable profit. I am often accused of sharp practice when, in truth, I’m guilty of working harder, taking more risks, and seizing more opportunity than most. When it suits me, I travel on the Continent as a Frenchman. When it suits me, I’m a canny Scot. When it suits me, I’m an Englishman with substantial holdings in Northumbria and the Midlands.”
Quite a speech from him—and a warning too. “You won’t cheat Nicholas out of his sheep.”
Mr. St. Michael said nothing for a good distance of frozen ruts, bitter breezes, and sheep, who regarded the passersby curiously from behind stone walls.
“Your Nicholas is tempted to send the sheep to Squire Nash. I had the sense that were I to offer for you, the sheep might more easily fall into my hands.”
Atlas came to a shuffling halt in the middle of the lane without Nita having asked it of him. “Nicholas saidthat?”
All manner of emotions lay behind her question. Indignation that Nicholas would see any of his sisters as part of a livestock transaction; compassion for Susannah, who would likely be married—and toEdward—as a result of such a bargain; and relief that Mr. St. Michael would warn Nita regarding Nicholas’s nonsense.
These reactions ricocheted through her in the time it took Atlas to stomp one big hoof and swish his tail.
And then… an emotion Nita did not want to name, somewhere between curiosity and hope. “I have never considered marriage very appealing,” she said. “Were you tempted?”
Mr. St. Michael sent William forward and Atlas moved off as well. “Tempted? Yes, I am tempted, but not by the sheep.”
In the middle of a gray, bitter winter afternoon, as Nita rode home in anticipation of scolds and censuring looks from family, as she worried for Addy Chalmers and her offspring, sunshine, pure, sweet, and warm, flooded her soul.
She hugged that sunshine to her heart until she and Mr. St. Michael had handed their horses off to the grooms and were crossing the winter-dead gardens behind Belle Maison.
“You were tempted by the prospect of marriage to me?” she asked.
Mr. St. Michael marched along beside her until they reached the gazebo, a lonely sentinel guarding the flower beds until spring returned. “You needn’t sound so pleased. I’m no sort of bargain as a husband. I have wealth, of course. Many men have wealth, but I travel a great deal. I’m firmly in trade. My disposition is not genial, and I eschew tender sentiments. I frequently come home at the end of the day smelling of sheep or commerce, or preoccupied with how to get ’round some solicitor’s clever wording. I lack charm and have all the wrong accents.”
Nita took Mr. St. Michael’s arm and fairly danced down the garden path with him when he would have stood in the wind reciting his shortcomings all afternoon.
“You were tempted,” she said, beaming at the dead roses rather than allow Mr. St. Michael to see her smile. “By marriage to me.” A niggling, inconvenient, tender part of her heart pointed out that he’d resisted the temptation—so far.
Nita led the way into the back hall, where warmth and the scent of fresh bread blended with the odors of damp wool and mud.
Mr. St. Michael pulled the door closed, rendering the hallway gloomy—or cozy.
“You are intelligent, attractive, kindhearted,mostlysensible, energetic, well connected, and reasonably dowered,” he muttered, his fingers at the fastenings to Nita’s cloak. “A shrewd businessman rejects no offers out of hand unless the terms are outright illegal or dishonorable. Marriage is an honorable institution, and illegality is not a concern in this case. You are free of prior obligations and of age.”
Nita was on the shelf. She started on the pewter buttons to Mr. St. Michael’s greatcoat. “You make a list of my faults, sir, not my positive attributes. Hold still.”
Holding still for more than an instant was not in Tremaine St. Michael’s nature, and yet he’d tarried long enough on the floor with the Chalmers children to get them to the letterW.
