Page 39 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
A small summer house hidden amongst the trees to the left of the path suddenly caught her attention. They had come here once in their effort to find quiet and out-of-the-way places and although the green shields of the summer trees were no longer in place the park was also far less peopled in winter than it had been back then.
‘I want to show you something,’ she said and was pleased when he followed her over the grass and came up the steps to the circular platform which sat above the Serpentine.
Greyness surrounded them. The sky. The water. The trees with their mottled winter bark.
Nicholas had to duck as he came beneath the boarding around the roof and she smiled at him even as she shivered with the cold.
‘This whole winter has been freezing.’
She felt him there next to her, touching warmth along the length of their arms. A small intimacy in a large landscape and a connection that felt so right and true she made no attempt at all to pull away.
* * *
She was shaking.
He wanted to bring her full into his warmth, but he also did not wish to frighten her.
‘I should have remembered the chestnuts,’ he said and liked the way she laughed. ‘But I do have this.’
Pulling his flask from a pocket, he screwed open the top. ‘It will warm you up at least.’
When she took it she sniffed at the top of it in a way that told him she did not quite trust what was inside.
‘Is it strong?’
Before he could answer she took a swallow and began to cough, the purity of the liquor making her hand the flask back.
‘Scottish whisky and the best my uncle could buy.’
‘I have heard it said that Aaron Bartlett has left the country having taken money from the Bromley coffers.’
‘In truth I don’t care what he took, it’s only good to be rid of him. Bromworth Manor is being cleaned of his presence, just as the town house was, and soon there will be nothing left of his legacy there at all. His son has followed him by all accounts so there is another worry gone.’
He tried to keep the bitterness from his words, but did not think he had succeeded when Eleanor looked at him with sorrow in her big blue eyes.
‘How was your guardian related to you?’
‘He was my father’s brother and I hated him right from the start. He was never a kind man or a good one and young children, for all their innocence, easily recognise duplicity when confronted with it.’
There it was again, a truth he had given to very few others. His hand tightened on the wooden handrail that he leant upon, but he liked how her warmth fastened him to goodness and hope. An anchor to a world he had been gone from for so long.
With Eleanor the shadows lightened and the demons that rode on his shoulders daily were less heavy. Frowning at his flowery thoughts, he scuffed at a broken baton at his feet.
‘Do you have any family left now? Anyone at all?’ She looked stricken as she asked her question.
‘None.’ The word was bare of emotion. He no longer craved the tie of blood as he once had as a child and even as a youth.
‘You could share mine, then. Grandmama is most adamant that she needs to keep an eye on you and you have always been Jacob’s best friend.’
The sweetness of her offer astonished Nick, though he did wonder where she herself stood on the spectrum. He suddenly wanted to kiss her, to bring her into his arms and take her mouth in a hard stamp of ownership and possession. The feeling was so strong he turned and moved away, a flurry of freezing cold wind and rain aiding his want to escape.
‘Come, Eleanor, I think I should take you home.’
