Page 35 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
‘Young then?’
‘Sometimes I feel like I am a hundred.’
He swallowed because she kept doing this to him. Allowing him a small window into her soul that showed only a truth.
* * *
She had hurt him, she thought, in some way. Again. Perhaps her honesty was something he did not wish for. Perhaps in the aftermath of the lies he had lived with he now held a discomfort of the truth? Especially her truths, with all their corresponding sadness.
His hands were running across the door of Napoleon Bonaparte’s carriage as if such a treasure was the only thing he wished to think about. Another couple lingering next to the conveyance watched him with interest and the man spoke suddenly.
‘Bromley. My God, I had heard that you were back from the dead. David Wilshire.’
Nicholas looked at him for a second as if trying to place him. Finally he seemed able to. ‘You knew Nash Bowles if I remember rightly and I beat you in a card game which you did not take kindly to?’
‘I used to take losing more seriously than I do now,’ the man said, ‘though Bowles has not forgiven you. He still proclaims weekly that he is no friend of yours.’
‘There are many more who might claim that honour, Mr Wilshire.’ Nicholas’s voice was tight, the tone in it hard.
‘You are meaning those to whom you owe large debts at the gambling table, I suppose, though it is said now you are more proficient at winning than you once were.’
‘Word travels fast in London. Did you also hear I suffer fools less gladly?’
Wilshire frowned and stepped back, tipping his hat in leave and dragging the woman he was with from the room. The Viscount looked after them with a frown.
‘At school there were those students who were bullies, cheats and troublemakers and he was one of them. I doubt he has changed.’
‘Who is Nash Bowles?’
‘A miscreant who wanted to be a partner in Vitium et Virtus in the early days and who was not pleased to be turned down.’
‘By you all.’
‘By me, in particular.’
Eleanor had the impression he was not telling the whole story, but she did not feel comfortable to press further, so she was surprised when he continued talking.
‘Some of the men who hate me probably have good reason as there’s only a certain amount of arrogance people can stomach before the bile begins to work.’
‘People like Bowles?’
‘No. Not him. His animosity comes from a whole different place altogether.’
* * *
There it was again, that uncompromising anger, that hard flash of steel in him that was so much different from the man he had been. But if she was truthful that same resoluteness was also a part of her character now. She and Nicholas Bartlett had been transformed in a way that was similar, hardened by life but still trying to live.
She liked the way he took her arm, after they exited Bullock’s, and helped her across the road as they walked towards Green Park, though once on the other side he let her go.
‘Did we walk much, then?’ There was now decided interest in his words.
She wanted to say that they hadn’t had time, particularly after the first few days when all they looked for were secluded and quiet areas to be alone together, to whisper and to touch.
To kiss for the first time in the back room at Lackington’s when Nicholas had simply leaned over the dusty scientific tomes nobody ever looked at and taken her mouth beneath his.
A pure pain of shock ran through her at such a reminiscence. He had been slender then, softer. Just a youth. What would it be like to kiss this man he had become?
Could she risk taking him there tomorrow? To Lackington’s? Part of her wanted to, but the other part felt only fear. What if he remembered and then scorned her? What if this new Nicholas wanted nothing to do with a woman who had thrown herself into his bed after only four days of knowing each other and had conceived an illegitimate child in the process?
