Page 64 of Tremaine's True Love
All true, damn it. “What if the babies don’t arrive, St. Michael? Children appear or not as God wills, no matter how badly we want them or dread them.” Addy Chalmers probably dreaded them, for all she seemed to do her meager best by the ones in her care.
“I have, at last count, eight separate households,” St. Michael said. “I have a niece who must see some of the world and the great capitals. I can take Lady Nita traveling all over the Continent in fine style. I have business associates who must be entertained, connections at various royal courts. Lady Nita would be my countess when it suited her, and that position will keep her well occupied even if we are not blessed with children.”
St. Michael was not merely ignorant, he was so uninformed regarding the realities of marriage as to beinnocent.
When a woman ached to hold a child in her arms, all the royal courts in the world meant nothing. And yet, married to St. Michael, Nita would be well cared for. She’d want for nothing, and she’d probably be transplanted to some other shire, where her mother’s legacy of medical meddling wouldn’t open the door for Nita to engage in the same folly.
“I wish you luck, then,” Nick said as the ladies stopped by the gazebo. Whatever disagreement they were having, they’d at least not brought it into the house.
“One concern yet troubles me, Bellefonte.”
The damned sheep could disappear to the land of the fairies, for all Nick cared. “You’re doubtless about to inflict it on me.”
“Lady Nita deserves more than a husband who tolerates her merely because she brings a herd of valuable sheep to the union. We are agreed on that, though I do want those sheep.”
“So you’ve said.” Though apparently, St. Michael could buy all the merinos he wanted elsewhere, and probably buy his own county to stash them in too.
“Doesn’t Lady Susannah deserve the same consideration? If you made it clear to Nash that Lady Susannah comes without a substantial settlement, would he still seek her hand, or is he merely tolerating the lady because she arrives in his arms with a fortune in tow? I suggest you test his resolve at least.”
“Take your suggestions and go count lambs with them, St. Michael. My sisters have returned, and I must greet them.”
Nick would have made his exit, but that troubled, exasperated expression had crossed St. Michael’s features again.
“If I’m to marry Lady Nita, and these excesses of Christian charity, as you call them, will soon be curtailed, why bother castigating her for them?”
Innocent and ignorant, but not devoid of all chivalry. Nick took encouragement where he could find it.
“You are willing to marry her, St. Michael, with or without the sheep. I comprehend this and commend you for your great magnanimity or shrewdness or whatever—though I notice you’ve not mentioned true love. Despite what you might think of my dunderheaded attempts at being the earl, I am also Nita’s brother,and I love her. You are a fine, well-bred ram, and will turn all the heads at the assembly, et cetera and so forth. Nothing in our discussion, however, allows me to conclude thatLady Nitawill haveyou.”
Nick bowed and left, lest the consternation on St. Michael’s face inspire hearty, and not exactly hospitable, laughter.
CHAPTERELEVEN
“What aren’t you telling me, Nita?” Kirsten Haddonfield was plagued with an unladylike curiosity about life in general. When it came to her older sister though, her inquisitiveness was increasingly motivated by concern.
All the way from the malodorous little cottage, Nita had kept maddeningly silent. She swished along through the winter-dead garden, exuding competence and un-spilled confidences.
“I do not gossip, Kirsten.”
“And I do? I sit among the good dames of the shire and spread rumor and innuendo over a pot of scandal broth? I’m not asking you to gossip. I’m asking you to talk to me.”
Nita slowed as they approached the gazebo. “I haven’t thanked you yet for coming with me.”
Kirsten drew Nita into the little structure, because privacy inside the Belle Maison manor house was nonexistent. Della lurked at keyholes, Nicholas loomed around corners, George had the knack of being everywhere at once, Leah reported everything to her dear earl, and Susannah—dissembler at large—half the time only pretended to read.
“You should thank me,” Kirsten said, taking a seat on the hard wooden bench. “I’ll never get the stench out of my habit. Hell ought to include a place of honor for the first woman who realized that boiled cabbage is nominally edible.”
“When the alternative is starvation, such a woman should be canonized.”
Nita’s habit had long since passed the status of a disgrace. The hems were muddy and mended, the blue fading, rather like Nita herself.
“Nita, you are turning into a scold and a drudge, but you will please have a seat and bear me a little more company anyway. Before Mr. St. Michael started cheating at cards the other evening, I thought you’d forgotten how to laugh. It was unfair of Papa to require you at his bedside and to send the rest of us away.”
Papa had been gone for more than six months. In accordance with his wishes, the family no longer observed first mourning, but the loss of him lingered in family jokes, stray pieces of music, and his favorite quotes from Alexander Pope. In Papa’s final decline, he’d found someplace far from home for every one of his children to be except Nita, the de facto lady of the manor.
A privilege and, apparently, a bitter penance. “Papa didn’t want anybody to see him grow so feeble.” Nita’s reply had the ring of an oft-repeated and unsuccessful attempt at self-comfort.
“Papa was an arrogant old boot,” Kirsten said, “and not above taking advantage of your kind heart. Belle Maison would have fallen apart without you these last years. You might remind Nicholas of that.”
