Nicholas: Lord of Secrets by Grace Burrowes

willing for you to be at risk of harm under your father’s roof,” Nick said.
    “I could be your mistress.”
    Nick stopped in midstride and peered down at her. By St. Michael’s mighty sword, she was serious. The hound in him was barking approval of her mad scheme before he could toss the damned beast in the nearest rain barrel.
    He closed his eyes, the better to obscure his wayward impulses from Leah’s notice. “Lamb, you would disgrace your siblings by becoming my mistress, and it’s well known I do not keep a particular mistress. I am rather thought to be a connoisseur of variety.”
    “Oh.” Leah’s face flamed, and Nick felt awash in contrition.
    For not agreeing to ruin her?
    “Leah”—Nick’s tone took on a cajoling note—“you were casting about for a solution, tossing out any idea, no matter how unlikely. I comprehend that, and let’s keep thinking, though I did not embark on this project to ruin you, delightful as the process might be for me.” Delightful, captivating, pleasurable, exhausting.
    Nick kicked his internal hound hard in the ribs.
    Leah looked off into the distance, where a nanny and her charge were throwing a ball for a brown-and-white spaniel. “It was just a thought.”
    He leaned down to speak directly in her ear. “A wonderful, scandalous thought. You should never have put such an idea in my head.”
    “What other ideas can we come up with?” Leah asked, eyes front, shoulders back.
    The ideas that came to mind were not constructive, not in the least.
    “You could get engaged to someone else,” Nick suggested. Ethan might do it, provided the engagement were temporary. Beckman was another possibility, though he’d have to be retrieved from Portsmouth first.
    “An engagement is not a permanent solution,” Leah said, “but I’d take it, if it were the only option.”
    “Engagements can last months, years even. If you are engaged to my brother Beckman, the earl will no doubt soon be casting our family into mourning. That would buy you a year.”
    “That is ghoulish, Nick, to use your father’s death that way, to buy me time to escape Wilton.”
    Impossible woman—not that he particularly liked the idea of even a temporary engagement between Beckman and Leah. “I can get you to the Continent. You could go back to Italy and wait Wilton out. He won’t live forever.”
    If anything, her pretty mouth became more grim. “I will not become your dependent, though Italy has a certain appeal. I was happy there, all things considered. I would be there without a brother or father, though, so it could be more difficult than it was five years ago.”
    “Would your brothers help you leave the country?” This was an obvious solution, one he should have thought of sooner, and the only one she wasn’t shooting down right out of the gate. “You are not a minor, so you should be free to leave, and you already know the language, I presume?”
    “I do. It isn’t so different from Latin, though I’m rusty, of course. I think supporting me would be a hardship for Darius and Trent though.”
    “Why is that?” Nick slowed his steps as much as he could, because they would soon come back to their starting point.
    “Darius has tied his coin up in that place in Kent,” Leah explained. “When Ambrose Place was sold, Darius took what little my mother left him and sank it into his own property. He gets a very small stipend from the Wilton estate, but Trenton and I are both puzzled as to how Darius supports himself. I don’t think Darius has coin to spare, and Trenton is in much the same boat, because his funds are derived from those of his children.”
    “Unfortunate. We will continue to think on this, though. I cannot accept your present circumstances, even if—and you will note the conditional—old Hellerington’s guns have been spiked.”
    “I will brace my brothers on the prospect of a return to Italy.”
    “If it’s a matter of passage money or a stipend…” Nick