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.”

Leah held Della’s gaze, trying to think, not simply react out of hurt feelings—and finding it wretchedly difficult.

“My father has never wanted me,” she said. “My brothers are burdened by my situation, though they do care for me. I do not want to be simply an obligation for a husband who cannot care for me.” The truth of that sentiment, the longing to be wanted and cherished by a particular, worthy man, hit with a stark pain.

“Then be useful to him. Run his households, grace his arm in public, be his friend, give him time, and accept what he can give you in return.”

“You are asking me to be patient,” Leah said, “and reasonable, and adult.”

“I know this is difficult. It’s difficult for me most days, and I’ve been practicing a great deal longer than you, my girl. Imagine how hard it would be for us were we men.”

A small, hesitant smile bloomed on Leah’s face at this sentiment, and in the place in her heart that had been missing her mother for long, long years, warmth kindled. Lady Della wrapped her in a hug, and in those moments, the horror of being Nick’s countess didn’t loom quite as painfully or as immutably.

Nick was just a man, as Della had pointed out. Leah would consider in the coming days if she could resign herself to marriage with him, with all the attendant frustrations—and hopes?—that might entail.

“Too late, Nicholas Haddonfield, you’ve been spotted by the enemy’s pickets.” Leah addressed him crisply, though her tone was laced with humor, and she didn’t make any move to leave her post at the kitchen’s worktable.

Nick took another two steps into the dim, cozy confines of the kitchen, both relieved that Leah was speaking to him and wary that he’d just been caught in a female ambush.

“I’m easily spotted, another burden of my excessive height, but nobody’s firing on me yet. What brings you here at this hour?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Leah said, rising and fetching the kettle from the hob.

“Tea won’t help with that.” Nick reached up to a high shelf that ran around much of the kitchen. “This might.”

“Brandy?”

“Brandy,” Nick confirmed, getting down two glasses and pouring a healthy slosh into each one. “I’m also in search of victuals. To your health.”

“And yours.” Leah saluted with her glass and sipped her drink.

“Are you hungry?” Nick wrestled a wheel of cheese from the larder and then commenced plundering in search of a loaf of bread.

“I am. Just a little.”

“I’ll eat with you here then, while Valentine assaults our ears with his infernal finger exercises.”

Nick shaved off slices of cheese then sliced bread as well. A hungry man needed meat—and Nick needed to puzzle out Leah’s mood—so he put the bread and the cheese wheel away, and carved off slices from a hanging ham to add to a growing platter of food. It was too early for strawberries, but Nick put two Spanish oranges on the plate and grabbed two linen serviettes.

After an instant’s hesitation, he decided the enemy picket was in a friendly mood, so he scooted onto the bench beside her.

“I am pleased you did not flounce out of the room upon sighting me,” Nick said as he passed the platter to Leah—an appetizer of honesty. “Eat, for I’ll gobble up all you do not take.”

More honesty, because he was famished.

“What about Lord Val?” she asked, arranging cheese and meat between two slices of bread. “This needs butter, my lord.”