Royal Regard

Chapter Twenty-Two, Part 1

Nick was trying to read another letter from his estate manager at Rathemore, confirming the house had been closed and his important possessions delivered to Wellstone by one of Huntleigh's ships. The manager would be pensioned, though still young enough to find another position, so Nick needed to write a character to send on the next mail coach. An additional concern, he could not allow the man to take action against Nick's tenants, as the letter placed blame on them for Nick's decision to shutter the estate, eliminate the man's position, and ignore the threat of rebellion on his property until the military forced him to act.

However, Nick was having a very hard time paying attention to his tasks.

Never, since Nick had been a randy boy whose younger sister spied on him with any young lady he singled out, had he so wanted to throw a woman over his knee and spank her into submission. He had no idea from whence the unwelcome impulse stemmed. For Heaven's sake, he didn't even like submissive women. And it didn't bear considering what Bella would do to him with a knife if he tried.

But this situation was ridiculous. In the space of a quarter-hour, he had saved a woman from degradation, fought publicly for her honor, averted criminal charges for dueling—or outright murder—and kept her name from social devastation, all without drawing too much of a crowd and keeping the details from her husband and the king for almost three days, an eon, by the measure of gossip among the ton. Nick was the hero in this story in every respect. Or rather, he should be.

One would think a woman thus safeguarded would offer her appreciation, her gratitude, perhaps an invitation to tea or a polite note or a "thank you, Wellbridge," not a shrewish curtain lecture. The next time she said, "You had no reason to run after him; you might have been killed," or "I can fight my own battles, if you please," he truly would instigate corporal punishment.

She had asked him to keep the secret, having finally convinced Charlotte she had been frightened, not hurt, by a footpad, but the trade-off Nick demanded was taking Bella's protection upon himself, using every inch of the access Huntleigh had given him to their house, grounds, and family life. He invited himself for every meal, played backgammon or discussed politics with Huntleigh late into the night, appeared early in the morning to re-pot plants with her in the hothouse or accompany her to the shops or deliver clothes to Huntleigh's church that she had sewn for the poor.

It was hardly on Nick's head that when Huntleigh saw the duke on edge, it sharpened his protective instincts. Or that Bella declared herself not-at-home to Charlotte, and had Watts deny her the house. Or that Firthley had expressed his concern to Bella's husband in Lady Firthley's stead.

Nick, by contrast, had steadfastly maintained the fiction that he and Malbourne had simply finally come to blows in their progressively more contentious battle for Bella's favor.

He held no culpability for the half a dozen courtiers and half a dozen ladies walking with Prinny and his latest mistress at the masked ball, who had watched Nick level Malbourne with a fist to the jaw. Malbourne's mask had been knocked away, and Nick had left his off entirely, but if he were any other man, hundreds of guests might have seen the fight, and as a matter of honor, either he or Malbourne would now be dead, the other on the way to the gallows.

Nor was it his fault that Huntleigh's fatherly demands for an explanation could no longer be safely ignored, or that Prinny summoned Nick for a game of piquet and every hand wagered, "The story of Malbourne's bruises at Vauxhall," until he won.

In both cases, Nick had said the barest minimum he could without breaking her confidence, but he had been speaking to very intelligent men who could add two and two, both of whom rang a peal over his head for keeping the secret.