“I will order you a bath,” Nick decided, rising, “and send you up a tray, from which, Leah Lindsey, you will eat something. Valentine will be here soon, and he will play you lullabies before I send him elsewhere, and when I’ve set a few more things in motion, you and I will talk.”

He waited for her to protest, but she dropped her arms. “A soaking bath would be appreciated.”

“If you want me, you need only ring, or just yell. I’m not going out again tonight.”

He gave her another up-and-down look, assessing and weighing what he saw. “Come. I’ll take you to your room and show you where Lady Della will be staying.”

And he did, ensconcing her in a lovely, airy guest room, right across the hall from Lady Della’s quarters—and around a corner from Nick’s suite.

“Anybody seeking to travel the corridor you and Della are in has to pass my room. Your bath should be here in a few minutes. Turn around.”

“What?”

“Please turn around,” Nick said. “I have one very matronly housekeeper, Leah, who has retired for the day, and a cook who has likely nodded off over her sherry. I seek to unhook your gown, and then I will take my leave of you.”

He did his best to look entirely sincere, maybe even a trifle testy. She turned around and bowed her head, offering him her nape.

The pose was erotic, at least in the estimation of certain parts of Nick’s anatomy. He gave himself about two seconds to envision kissing her nape, and in those two seconds he caught the floral scent of her.

He’d never unhooked a gown quite so quickly. While he was in the neighborhood, he made short work of her stays then stepped away.

“There’s a vanity behind the privacy screen,” he said, “and you can change there while the water is brought in. You’ll find some things of Della’s hanging on the hooks, and the maids will leave you towels and soap.” He regarded her closely, fisting his hands to keep from touching her. “You’ll be all right?”

She nodded, looking to him forlorn, bruised, and much in need of tenderness rather than solitude.

“Then I’ll leave you for now,” he said. “Soak until you pickle, and I’ll come back later for further discussion.”

* * *

Nick left, and Leah felt his absence keenly. Nicholas Haddonfield, she realized as she finished undressing, was a toucher. He gathered information with his hands, with the embrace of his body, with his skin and his nose and his senses. He conveyed it too, conveyed caring and competence, and without his presence, Leah felt every raw edge on every nerve and emotion.

Climbing into the steaming, fragrant water helped settle her though, at least enough that she could consider her situation. Nick was coming back to her room to finish the discussion Darius and Trent had interrupted in the library. She had yet to accept Nick’s proposal, and watchdog that he was, he would not rest until she had.

She scrubbed herself from head to foot, then scrubbed herself again. The day’s memories would not wash away, but bathing helped put them at a slight distance. Then too, Nick’s tub was nigh large enough to swim in and shaped to encourage a lady to repose at her bath, and even to close her eyes.

“Lovey.” Leah heard a sound like a chair scraping. “Leah? Sweetheart? Lamb?”

She opened her eyes to find Nicholas Haddonfield looking large and concerned from his perch on a stool by the tub. His sleeves were rolled up, suggesting he’d been sitting there for more than a moment. Gracious.

“I fell asleep,” she murmured—inane comment. She had sense enough not to sit up, but realized the water and the fading bubbles provided her only so much camouflage.

Nick smiled at her with only a hint of innuendo in his expression. “As long as I’m here, shall we wash your hair? I promise not to peek, and your bubbles hide the best parts anyway.”

He sounded as if he were inviting her to stroll his back gardens or take tea on the terrace. Such was the savoir faire of the man who’d proposed to her.

“For now,” Leah muttered. It wasn’t right, however tempting it felt to be with him under such circumstances. It should feel shocking, upsetting, wrong… not reassuring, not comforting. Sitting in the warm water, seeing the concern in Nick’s blue eyes, Leah realized something else: She was going to marry him.

“You’ll have to take down my hair.”

He shifted his stool to sit behind her, giving Leah a measure of privacy in which to grapple with the truth of her realization. Downstairs, she’d told herself marrying Nick was the sensible, safe course. A good match, a friendly match, one she could accommodate if she dwelled on the things Lady Warne and Ethan Grey had suggested about propinquity and happenstance.

Here in Nick’s house, with him so casually at ease with a significant intimacy, accepting the notion took on bodily ramifications. They would occasionally share a bed, or at least a bedroom. She would see him in casual dishabille. He’d know when her monthly plagued her with cramps.

Nick’s fingers in her hair were deft. He stacked her pins neatly on the vanity and tugged her hair down over her shoulders in long, unfettered skeins. He’d undone many a lady’s coiffure. The knowledge left Leah more sad than angry.

“Down you go, lovey. All the way.”

She submerged completely, a baptism of sorts into a marital reality she had yet to inform Nick she’d accepted.

“Now close your eyes,” Nick instructed, “and lean back.” He used both hands to lather her wet hair, taking the weight of her head in one broad palm and massaging soap into her scalp with the other. The sensations were novel, both soothing—to be cared for—and arousing—to entrust her welfare literally into his hands.

The arousing part, she’d have to learn to deal with.

“I’ve always liked your hair,” Nick observed conversationally. “My sisters are all fair, save the youngest, and so many of the blushing little debutantes aspire to that pale-English-rose sort of beauty. On most of them, it’s insipid and childish. You have color and substance. Your hair is full of fiery highlights, and it always smells lovely.”

“You notice too much,” Leah murmured, eyes still closed.

“Dunk.” Nick’s voice held a smile. To Leah’s pleasure, he repeated the shampoo and finished it off with several thorough rinses with warm water.

“My thanks.” Leah sat up, blinking water out of her eyes. “I’ll ring for you when I’m through.”

“Not so fast.” Nick rose from his stool and retrieved a bath sheet from the wardrobe. “We have things to discuss.”

“We can discuss them when I am dry and decently covered,” Leah replied. If the bath water weren’t cooling, though, she would have been just as happy to drift off and discuss things in the morning—or never. Once Nick was assured they’d be marrying, she doubted there would be any more cozy baths.

Which might be for the best, drat the man.

“Out you go, lovey.” Nick averted his face and held the sheet wide. “I won’t peek, if you’ll recall.”

He wasn’t going to be nagged into leaving, and Leah was too tired to argue with him. Then too, she was hardly a blushing virgin, and he was no callow youth.

She wanted him to peek, though, which made the sadness a little harder to ignore. “Close your eyes, Nicholas.”

He did, and she rose, stepping carefully from the tub, and backing into the bath sheet to wrap it around her. Nick’s arms finished the task, enfolding her in clean, soft toweling and his fleeting embrace.

That had been nice, that simple hug. Also heart wrenching.

“Your robe?” Nick held it out then smiled as he saw that holding the bath sheet closed required both of Leah’s hands. “I’ll hang it behind the screen. When you’re decent, I’ll start on your hair.”

“There’s no need for that.”

“Can’t have you taking a chill,” Nick replied, the soul of equanimity. He probably bathed women regularly, the wretch. When Leah had retreated to the screen, Nick bellowed for the footmen to remove the bath, and by the time Leah emerged, it was gone.

And Nick was sitting on her bed.

Maybe her husband-to-be had a cruel streak? “Why are you still here, Nicholas?”

“Because we need to talk, lovey.” Nick’s tone had lost its teasing quality, and Leah knew a sinking dread in the pit of her stomach.

“I’m too tired for this,” she said, crossing to the bureau and retrieving a brush.

Nick rose and prowled across the room to her. “And yet we do need to have a very personal conversation, Leah, and sooner rather than later. I would spare you this if I could, but soon Della will arrive, and until such time as you are my countess, she will afford us little real privacy.”

“You are going to bully me into marrying you,” Leah said, lowering herself to the thick rug on the floor before the hearth. She arranged her robe so she could sit cross-legged, and started on her hair with the brush.

“I will not bully,” Nick said, folding his long frame down behind her, “but I will attempt to persuade. No matter what scheme we concoct, Leah, you will not be safe as long as your father is the male in authority over you.”

“He won’t live forever,” Leah said, giving up the brush without a fight. Nick put it aside and took a towel to her hair, twisting lengths of hair with toweling to wring moisture in his strong grasp.

“You shouldn’t brush it when it’s sopping wet,” Nick chided. “And while your father will not live forever, he is in good health and not that old. He could live for a long time. Rather than coming up with schemes to buy you time, Leah, I think we need to discuss what about marriage to me makes the idea so objectionable.” He wrung the rest of her hair to dampness with the towel, then added, “I want you to be honest.”