Page 43 of A Secret Consequence for the Viscount
‘What were we celebrating?’
‘I can’t really remember.’ Her cheeks flamed and the memory of something was so firmly written on her face that Nick knew she lied.
* * *
The wine was a celebration of our first kiss here at Lackington, Allen & Co. at Finsbury Square.
It had been summer and the day had been hot and so they had gone to find chilled wine and a small hamper of food for a picnic by the Serpentine.
Then, he had looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman he could imagine. Now he only appeared perplexed. At her poorly formed falsity probably and her reddened cheeks. She had not blushed in six years and now she was doing so on an hourly basis.
Well, it had to stop. She was no longer eighteen and foolish and Nicholas Bartlett was hardly going to take her hand and run laughing through the streets in search of sweet treats and then kiss the dusted sugar off each finger as she ate them.
The sheer absurdity of it made her smile.
She noticed that everyone watched him, covertly, his sheer presence now impossible to miss. At six foot two he had to bend at the portal, yet he filled the room with such a masculine grace and power that it took her breath away.
‘I visit the library every time I come down from Millbrook House to London.’
‘And is that often?’
‘As little as I can possibly manage it, truth be told. Usually only at Christmas.’
‘The life of a widow is a quiet one, then? Tell me, where did your husband hail from?’
‘Scotland.’
‘Fred Challenger says he was from Edinburgh and Oliver Gregory swears it was the Highlands. There is a difference?’
She felt suddenly sick and a sheen of sweat built on her top lip. ‘You have been asking about me?’ He was a man who could discover facts about her past that few others could. If he put the timings of her return together and the birth of Lucy...
‘Only in passing, but I am sorry for your tragedy, Eleanor. It must have been hard to be so alone.’
‘I have my daughter.’
‘And I am glad of it.’
He did not patronise her or give unwanted advice. He spoke only in words that were simple and true.
It must have been hard to be so alone.
Because he had been lonely, too, she thought. In childhood on the death of his parents and in the wild dangerous antics of his youth. In the card rooms of London when the numbers never added up and he was left with a handful of debtors shouting for payment and an uncle who was withholding his inheritance. Certainly in his restless years abroad when he had shifted from place to place with an unknown killer on his tail and a memory that gave him no recall of peril.
Even here now, in the over-stacked salons of Lackington’s, he looked unapproachable and out of place.
For a second she wondered if she had the heart to climb the steps to the small scientific reading room they had visited last time and find the quiet spot at the end of a row of shelves. Could it ever be again like it was, that young unbridled love, breathless with passion? Giddy with the thrall?
Now she was shy of him in a way she had not once been for she’d seen the glances every woman had thrown his way no matter where they went. Desire had that certain raw and hungry look she hoped could not be discerned on her own face.
‘Penny for your thoughts, Eleanor?’
She smiled at his question and gestured to him to follow her.
Every leather-bound tome looked as if it had not been touched for years, the dust settled in the interim. The view was a fine one, however, and he went to the window to peer over London.
‘When I arrived here I thought everything looked so neat. The houses, the streets, the people.’
‘America is more wild, I suppose. Less ordered.’
