Nicholas: Lord of Secrets by Grace Burrowes Page A

began.
    “No,” Leah said firmly. “You have tied up too much coin buying Hellerington’s markers, in the first place. In the second, you are going to be marrying soon, and you cannot be supporting me while you are waiting at the altar for your countess.”
    A logical woman was an abomination against the natural order, or at least against Nick’s protective intentions.
    “Do you think I wouldn’t be supporting a mistress if it pleased me to do so?” The question was out, a function of how rattled Nick felt at the prospect of Leah having to leave the country again to escape her father’s scheming.
    “You will not keep a mistress once you’ve chosen your bride. You would not dishonor your wife that way.”
    She was as bad as Valentine. “I keep no mistress because I enjoy variety, not because I entertain any notion of being faithful to my countess.”
    Now, now when they must part in moments, she beamed a smile at him. “Tell yourself that, if you must. You are not that hard of heart, Nicholas.”
    Bother that—though he loved hearing her use his name to scold him. “How did you enjoy your visit with my grandmother?” Nick knew it was a maladroit change of subject, but a gentleman didn’t argue with a lady, and Leah was just so… wrong.
    “She is a lovely woman and asked to call upon me tomorrow.”
    “Be warned,” Nick said as they approached the waiting footman. “I might join her.”
    “That would be lovely.” Leah gave him a smile that reached her eyes, and Nick searched his mind in vain for the reasons he wasn’t going to make her his mistress.
    “I will make a point of it then.” Nick smiled back at her, knowing the footman’s eyes were goggling out of his head. Nick bent over Leah’s gloved hand then straightened without turning loose of her. “And that other matter I raised with you? We’ll both put our minds to it, and I’m sure a solution will present itself. My thanks for your company, my lady, and until next we meet, may you keep well.”
    Before swanning off with Wilton’s spy in tow, Leah bobbed the requisite curtsy, and waited that extra beat of the heart for Nick to release her hand. Nick watched her go, thinking he usually engaged in the flirtation and innuendo business without thought, but in this instance, he sincerely hadn’t wanted to let her hand go.
    Try as he might, he could not come up with a credible reason he shouldn’t marry her, but Leah as his mistress? No. Not now, not ever, not even if she begged him, naked on her knees between his…
    “Jesus, help me.”
    ***
    Emily smiled over at Leah from between the pages of a small volume. “I am enjoying this book to no end. Miss Willers claims she does not know the language of the fan or the glove or the parasol, but the way she says it makes me think she simply disapproves.”
    Leah glanced up from her needlework and kept her voice down. “She is not a finishing governess. It’s very likely she doesn’t know, Em. She’s taught you a great deal though. And a decent girl hardly needs to be sending coy signals with her fan, her parasol, or her gloves.”
    Though a decent girl might dearly wish to send those signals.
    “My French is wonderful,” Emily said, “my Italian passable, and my manners impeccable. I can do fetching needlepoint, I play the piano a little , and I know how to seat any dinner party of up to thirty if the Regent and his Princess are not both attending.”
    “I don’t know who could solve that particular puzzle. You do not seem very proud of your accomplishments.”
    “I’ve been at lessons for ten years, Leah.” Emily used a feather as her bookmark, a pure white quill about six inches long. “What do a few words of French or Italian matter when it’s my face and my fortune that will decide my future?”
    What was this about? “You’d be surprised how handy some foreign languages can be, but you have a point. Your skill at academics should not entirely decide your future, nor should your