Leah was going to hate them. There was no way on earth the truth could come out without Leah being mortally put out with both of her brothers—and that would kill Darius more quickly than any penchant for vice and crime.

When Darius brought the decanter over, Trent grabbed the neck of the bottle and held it over his glass until the tumbler was full to the brim.

* * *

Leah drifted in a comfortable, contented fog, the rocking of the carriage and the warmth of her husband’s embrace soothing her into a drowsy, post-wedding lassitude. Nick must have been dozing as well, for he’d gone silent before they’d even left Town, and as darkness had fallen, he’d kept his peace.

Leah could not quite sleep, but because the seat was well upholstered and considerably deeper than any she’d seen before, she was content to doze. Her brother Darius’s words of parting after the wedding breakfast kept ringing in her memory: Reston is a damned decent man. He could love you, if you’d allow it. Really love you, not just use you to thumb his lordly nose at his indifferent papa.

Had that been the sum total of Aaron’s interest in her? Leah told herself it wasn’t, that Aaron had been genuinely fond of her and as considerate as a very young man could be. But Darius—damn his too-knowing brown eyes—had a valid point as well. Aaron Frommer had been fond of dramatics too, and of feeling victimized by his place as a marquess’s fourth son. He had been making a play for his father’s attention by riding to Leah’s rescue, trying to assert his independence while proving he’d not achieved it, in truth.

She curled down onto Nick’s chest more snugly, thinking this was an admission she could make because Nick had married her, and married her knowing her past and accepting it.

Accepting her.

“Penny for them?” Nick’s voice vibrated under her ear, and his hand came through the darkness to rest on her cheek. “I’ll light the lamps, if you insist.”

“I’m fine without them. I was thinking you are uncharacteristically silent.”

“Tired,” Nick said softly, his fingers feathering over each of her features in turn. “And worried about my father.”

“You felt his absence today at the wedding,” Leah guessed, closing her eyes beneath Nick’s explorations.

“I felt that, and his presence, his approval. He would like you, Leah. Approve of you. He will like you.”

“You say that as if you’re sure.” Leah turned her head so Nick’s fingers could wander more easily.

“I didn’t realize his approval was a factor until Ethan pointed out Bellefonte would get on with you swimmingly.”

“What are you doing?” Leah asked, stifling a yawn.

“Touching my wife’s face. You met Magda? She’s older than she looks, probably older than Della. Her parents lived into their nineties.”

“I’ve never met anyone who lived so long.”

“Her father lost his sight early in life,” Nick went on, “and she used to tell me about him touching her mother this way. Magda said she was closer to him as a child, because he could tell her mood by the way her feet hit the stairs on their porch, by the way she came through the door, by the feel of her hand in his, or the sound of her exhalations. I’ve been fascinated by that, by the thought that her father knew his daughter so well.”

“A blind hound often does well enough, provided he had some sighted years first.”

This was a new facet to Nicholas Haddonfield, this thoughtful, quiet man with excruciatingly gentle hands. Leah tried to tell herself it was yet more of his cozening, but the notion simply wouldn’t wash.

Nick’s thumb brushed over her lips. “Maybe someday when I am an old, blind hound, I will know your moods by touch, sound, and instinct, Leah Haddonfield, and perhaps you shall even know mine.”

In the soft darkness of the spring night, Nick sounded so wistful, and his hands were so tender as they skimmed and caressed and danced across her face, she felt a lump constrict her throat. Maybe Darius had been right, and this misbegotten union might flower into something real and lovely and permanent.

“I would like that, Husband.” Leah turned her cheek into his palm and kissed the heel of his hand. “I would like, someday, to know you by instinct.”

Leah drifted off, content in Nick’s embrace, and did not wake up until he was hefting her into his arms and trying to extricate her from the coach without disturbing her.

“Nicholas, I can walk.”

“Nonsense,” Nick said, shifting as he freed her from the coach. “I will carry you over this threshold, for it’s one we own. Belle Maison, thank God, is still in my father’s hands.”

Leah did not protest, though she wanted to. With his talk of blind fathers, dying fathers, and thresholds that “we” owned, he was looping one thread of longing after another around Leah’s heart.

“My lord, my lady.” An old fellow standing by the mounting block bowed and picked up his lantern. “Congratulations, and welcome to Clover Down. The lad will light your way.”

Nick nodded his thanks as the coachmen steered their conveyance around to the carriage house and a young footman held up a second lantern to illuminate the front steps of the manor house. The butler opened the door, offered them congratulations and welcome, and was quickly waved off to bed. Leah gained her feet only when Nick had deposited her in the master bedroom, which to her surprise boasted an enormous tub of steaming, rose-scented water.

“A lookout was no doubt posted,” Nick said, “and the water kept heating in the laundry until we were spotted. Your staff wants you to feel welcome.”

“I most assuredly feel welcome. Perhaps you’d like to go first?”

“We can share. Because this is our wedding night, I will be your lady’s maid.”

Leah turned and offered him her back, thinking how odd it was, to be so casually intimate with Nick once again, and how nonchalant he seemed with the whole business.

“I feel as if I’m watching some woman who looks like me embark on her married life with a man who resembles Nicholas Haddonfield,” Leah said, her back to her spouse.

Nick’s fingers made short work of the myriad buttons on Leah’s wedding dress. “Maybe married life, if it’s to be successful, is no different from the rest of one’s life, or it shouldn’t be.”

“This feels different,” Leah decided, “but not strange.” She turned, the back of her dress gaping, and lifted her hands to Nick’s chin.

“Hold still,” she said, unfastening his sapphire pin and untying the elaborate knot in his cravat. Without pausing, she undid the buttons of his waistcoat, and then relieved him of his sleeve buttons, which also sported inset sapphires.

“You do clean up well, Nicholas.”

“You aren’t going to stop now, are you? I am hardly ready for my bath.”

He was teasing, so Leah humored him. Many married men had no valet, and this was something she could do for him as his wife. She undid the buttons at the knees of his satin breeches and the garters to his stockings, slipped off his shoes, then took another step back. Nick reached forward, turned her by the shoulders, then eased her gown down to her hips and unlaced her stays. Leah balanced on Nick’s shoulder to step out of her gown and found herself facing him in chemise and petticoat.

He smiled down at her. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He knelt to deal with her stockings, garters, and slippers, then unfastened the tapes to her petticoats, gathering the entire frothy pile and dumping it on the couch that faced the hearth.

Leah watched him pad barefoot across the room, and it was as if with each piece of clothing they shed, Nick became more himself and less that polite, well-dressed aristocrat she’d married hours ago.

“You are looking at me, Wife. I like that.”

“You are rather hard to miss.”

Nick walked right up to her and gathered her close. “I will blow out all the candles, sleep in my clothes, pledge to leave you in peace, but on our wedding night it will be expected that we share a bed. I’ll sleep elsewhere if that’s what you prefer.”

He offered her a reprieve. Nick, in his boundless kindness and perceptivity, was offering her a reprieve.

“Let’s begin as we intend to go on,” Leah said, though she could only manage it with her cheek resting against Nick’s chest. The fine linen of his shirt lay beneath her nose, and below that his beating heart. She pushed his shirt aside, put her ear over that heart, and listened to its steady rhythm while Nick’s hands caressed her back.

“It shall be as you wish.” He rested his cheek against her temple, and silence spread around them until Leah planted a tasting kiss over his heart.

“Lovey?”

“Nicholas?”

“What are you doing?”

Such a careful question. She dropped her arms from around him. “I honestly don’t know, though of this much I’m certain: I am not enamored of what passed between us earlier, when you pleasured me and I allowed it. We are to be married, though.”

He remained unreadable, watching her as she visually took in the tub, the bed, the flowers in a vase on the windowsill—red roses, of course, with maidenhair and baby’s breath.

“We are married,” Nick said, as if picking up the conversational shuttlecock and batting it to her.

Leah had thought about this, after he’d left her aching in her bed, when she’d dressed in her wedding finery, and on the coach ride out from London. Her husband was a stubborn, independent, shrewd rogue of a man, but he was also kind and the closest thing Leah had to a friend. She hadn’t been at ease with what had passed between them, but neither was she ready to toss all intimacies with him aside.