“I had a mistress,” Ethan said, running a hand through his hair, “a perfectly mundane business arrangement with a woman suited to that purpose. She got pregnant, and because my dealings with her were exclusive, I married her to prevent my child from being illegitimate. Once married, a second child came along directly. When Joshua was two, and Jeremiah three, their mother succumbed to typhus.”

Nick scrubbed his face dry but stood for a long moment, naked and dripping all over the hearthstones while he clutched at the towel and stared at his brother’s face.

“How long ago did she die?”

“Several years. Several years this summer.”

“Did you love her?” Nick’s tone was puzzled.

“By the time she bore the second child,” Ethan said wearily, “I hated her, and she hated me.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick said, looking like he meant it quite sincerely. “I am not sorry you told me, though, and it goes without saying I would like to meet—no, I would like to know—my nephews, and I can promise you the rest of the family will feel the same way.”

Ethan nodded, wishing to hell he’d kept his mouth shut, for there was a damned uncomfortable spasm in his throat; an ache, really.

“Della doesn’t know?”

“I haven’t told her.” Ethan lowered himself back to his hassock, the scent of sandalwood wafting around the room. “I didn’t want to put her in a position of having to keep a secret from you, though she somehow got wind of my marriage.”

Nick stalked over to the bed and surveyed the outfit Ethan had assembled for him. It was tidy, conservative, and altogether appropriate for a social call on a lady. Ethan watched as Nick transformed himself from a gloriously naked male animal into a properly clad gentleman. He finished the ensemble with a sapphire pin for his cravat, then fished a comb off his vanity tray.

“My damned hair is too long,” he groused, combing the hair straight back from his face.

“You look dashing and fresh from your bath.”

“Leonie likes me clean and sweet smelling,” Nick muttered, regarding himself in his full-length mirror, then splashing on some scent. “I’m forgetting something.”

“Your jacket.” Ethan picked it up from the bed and tossed it to him.

Nick shrugged into it. “I still don’t feel quite dressed.”

“So stop in the garden and pick a bunch of posies. They are the perfect accessory for a gentleman with awkward explanations to concoct.”

“Pick some yourself, then,” Nick suggested, spearing Ethan with a look. “I can appreciate now is not the time to interrogate you regarding your sons, Ethan, but when you’re ready for the telling, I want to know why you’d keep them from us for years. Bellefonte did not do right by you when you were a boy, but those children are our family, and I would not have them think otherwise. I want to know who they are, what makes them laugh, what gives them nightmares, and what they do that reminds you of us when we were their ages.”

Ethan nodded, not knowing how to reply. If anybody had told him today was the day he’d tell his brother about his family, he would not have found the accusation amusing. But then, Nick was a tolerant man whose own sins were legion, at least by the lights of some people, so perhaps Nick was the right person to tell.

“Ethan?” Nick’s tone gentled when he paused by the door.

“Nicholas?”

“Whatever your reasons for guarding your… privacy,” Nick said, “I trust they were important to you at the time, and you were thinking of your sons’ best interests. As their father, that is your prerogative, and your duty. I do think, though, Bellefonte would want to know, if he doesn’t already.”

Ethan nodded, but the ache was back in his throat, so he let Nick leave without another word, then crossed the room to sit down on Nick’s great bed.

The proverbial cat was out of the bag, and the world hadn’t come to an end. Nick had offered condolences, in fact. An upset female clamoring for his attention, another female trying to deny herself his attentions, and Nick himself probably both hurt and bewildered, and yet Nick’s first impulse had been simply to acknowledge his brother’s losses.

Ethan sat on the bed for a long time, waiting for the ache in his throat to ease and recalling the sympathy in Nick’s blue eyes.

* * *

“What can he be doing?” Leah asked Lady Della, who had joined her in the informal parlor.

“Nicholas Haddonfield is a law unto himself,” Della said, pursing her lips as she joined Leah at the parlor window. “It appears he’s selecting flowers for a bouquet, but why he’d include something with thorns is beyond me.”

“What’s the hyacinth for?” Leah asked, dreading the answer.

“Sorrow,” Della replied, her tone puzzled. “He’s also conveying remorse, which is what the raspberry is about; affection, declarations of love, consolation, and I didn’t see that last little green sprig—the one from the shrubbery tree.”

“Arbutus,” Leah said, thinking back to her blue salvia—I think of you. At least he hadn’t put that in this bouquet. “What does arbutus mean?”

Della continued to visually follow Nick’s progress around the gardens. “I love only thee.”

Damn him. Damn him for being so attentive to a woman he’d loved long before Leah and her stupid difficulties had landed at his feet.

“He has a mistress,” Leah said, the words making her heart ache. “He admitted as much, and he loves her, and yet he thinks to oblige his father by making a white marriage with me.”

“He thinks to protect you by marrying you,” Della said, watching her grandson. “If Nicholas thinks he can sustain a white marriage, he’s deluding himself.”

“Why do you say that?” Leah tried to keep her curiosity out of her tone, but Lady Della was speaking with firm conviction, and her thoughts seem to echo comments Mr. Grey had made to Leah when they’d been out riding.

Comments about marriage being fraught with opportunities for an enterprising wife, regardless of the terms her husband thought he’d struck at the outset.

“Nicholas is as lusty as a billy goat, my dear,” Della said with a smile, “and he comes by that honestly. More to the point, he is not in the habit of denying himself what he desires most, and he desires you.”

Leah marveled at Lady Della’s indelicate speech, even as she resented the notion Nick could be reduced to the motivations and simplicity of a barnyard animal.

Resented that too. “He desires her more.” Much, much more. Enough to promise the woman fidelity for all the rest of his days.

“For now, perhaps, but you’ve known him, what, weeks? And she’s been part of his life probably for years. Still, you would have the advantage, as his wife, since you will be in his life for the rest of his days—and nights.”

“That is not the point,” Leah said, temper fraying as outside in the garden Nick took a moment to arrange his bouquet just so, then trimmed up the end of each stem with a knife. “I do not want to compete with some doxy for my husband’s affections. I do not want Nick to marry me out of pity, or because it’s convenient for his purposes, or it’s the only way I can be free of Wilton.”

Della turned, planted one fist on her hip, and shook an elegant finger. “Listen to yourself, my dear. I can understand resenting a mistress, but as for the other, you are not using your head. Pride will be no comfort when Wilton’s schemes have landed you in Hellerington’s bed, or somewhere worse. Do you know there are men who enjoy—intimately—beating women, hurting them, making them bruise and cry and bleed?”

“My lady!” Leah was horrified to hear such ideas coming from the mouth of a refined elderly woman. Worse yet was the simple content of Della’s words.

“There are still those who traffic in female slavery, as well,” Della went on. “Then too, men carrying diseases are a menace of a different class, and you are upset because Nick will never put you at risk of same.”

One did not clap one’s hands over one’s ears in disrespect of one’s elders. “You are trying to frighten me. I am not wrong to want my husband’s respect.”

“No, you are not,” Della conceded as Nick sauntered out of the garden, “but Nick does respect you. If he didn’t, he’d be leading you a dance, flirting up a storm as only Nick can flirt, and enticing you into his bed, as only Nick can entice.”

“What do you mean?” Leah’s curiosity was reluctant now. She wanted to despise Nick—and call him back, finery, flowers, and all, to tell him so—though Della was suggesting she should not have that comfort.

“Nick isn’t using his head either, my dear, or he’d realize you and he will be expected to dwell under the same roof for at least the period of the earl’s mourning, and that will be a very long year, indeed. And he’ll have to be at Belle Maison, too far from Town to make coming and going frequently easy. When he takes his seat, he’ll be scrutinized from every angle, and this profligacy he’s so casual about now will be frowned upon by those whose vote he might seek for this or that reason.”

Leah’s brows knitted as Nick disappeared from view. “You are saying he won’t be able to avoid me as easily as he thinks.”

“He won’t be able to avoid you,” Della said, “and he won’t be able to indulge in many of his usual diversions.”

“That doesn’t mean he’ll become a husband I can live with.”

Della’s blue eyes softened, as did her voice. “Love is frightening to most men. They come to it kicking and bellowing, all indignation and wrath to hide their confusion and the fear that they’ll misstep. Women, by contrast, know little else but to seek it, and you and Nick are no different.”