The carriage jolted to a stop at the base of the stairs, Nicholas alighting and helping his mother down before looking up at the bulky brick facade of the townhouse. It was even drabber and sadder looking than he’d remembered it being. There was something decidedly off here.
It wasn’t his problem.
He escorted his mother into the townhouse, coming face to face with his father for the first time in years and noting thatthe man looked very different. He was still trying to present the same stern milieu that he’d always displayed, but his eyes were tired, and there was fear buried in there.
“Your Grace,” Nicholas bowed shortly. “As I told Her Grace, I am here until spring and then I will be returning home.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” his father huffed. “You are heir now, and you will remain and do your duty to the duchy.”
“I will not,” he said firmly. “My duty, as you put it, is to my life back at home, not to you or to the duchy. If you wish my brother’s mess cleared away, that falls squarely on you.”
His father spluttered, with that old anger in his eyes that had made a younger Nicholas afraid. But he was no longer a child seeking this man’s approval; in fact, he could practically not care less about it.
The only approval he needed was his own.
“Some tart back on the subcontinent?” His father scoffed.
“Hardly that,” Nicholas shot back. “I have business concerns and a life that no longer concerns you.”
Chapter Two
Gods on high, Nell was utterly and completely and stiflinglybored. It was another idiotic party, another bid by her parents to be accepted by the Ton, which Nell was next to certain would never happen.
And she didn’t care a jot. Her parents—well, it was going to kill her mother once she realized it—but as for Nell and her father, they both shared looks over the roast at the supper table that said they had been far better off before all thisfaff.
Ordinarily, Nell would make her excuses at some late hour when the wine had been flowing, and it was a certain thing that she wouldn’t be missed. But tonight’s party was at their townhouse, so there was no true escape for her.
She couldn’t even go to the library, not that there was anything in it, but there had been people in there kissing, so she’d left it to them. And if she tried to sneak off to her room, her mother would notice and pull her back down to the party.
It meant she was stuck. And if there was one thing that Nell despised, it was feeling as though she didn’t have control over her life. Which was why she was outside, coming up on the teeth of winter in her thin party dress.
No one else was out here; no one was enough of a fool to be out here in the freezing cold, but Nell at least had control out here.
“I hate this,” she said to nothing and no one. “I hate it so much.”
“As do I,” a voice answered her from the air. It was gracefully accented, as though the speaker wasn’t entirely from the continent. “I would very much like to return home.”
“What’s stopping you?” Nell looked toward the voice, squinting into the darkness of the garden and found only the garden wall. “You’re a man; you can do as you please.”
The laugh that came back was sour and humorless. “I will be leaving as soon as I can extricate myself from this nonsense.”
“I wish I could,” Nell sighed, moving slightly closer to the wall and sitting on a bench so cold it had icicles hanging off the underside. “But mother has decided I am to come out this season. She has no idea that I really don’t care a bit. Or maybe she doesn’t care that I don’t care.”
“I’m Nick,” he said. “I know it’s considered crass to introduce oneself, but you don’t seem the type to mind.”
“I’m Nell,” she replied. “Please, let’s do away with as much of the formality as possible; I’m drowning in it.”
The man on the other side of the wall huffed out a laugh. “Done. I am too. Mother is nothing but coaxing, and His Grace will not cease with his demands that I take on the duchy.”
Nell nodded. “Mama wants to be a proper Lady. Papa and I just want to go back to what we were doing before His Majesty elevated Papa for what he did during the war.”
“Who is your father?” Nick asked. “Is there a possibility I might know him?”
“I doubt it,” Nell shook her head. “Papa’s name is Steven Warrick, now Earl Warrick, ugh.”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell, apologies.”
“It’s alright; you don’t sound like you’re from here, anyway.” Nell grinned at the wall. “Or maybe that you haven’t been here for a long time.”
