“With the composer?”
“Yes. Her sister lived with them for a month without her husband, and then the composer came to London and whisked her away.”
“Her sister lived with them before the scandal?”
“Yes. Nicholas, it isn’t a very hard story to follow.”
“Was her sister at the ball?” He should have been more specific. There were hundreds of balls in London every year, but Patience would know which one he was speaking of. The ball that had changed everything. The one that had him leaving Town faster than Mother had left for Paris after Father had died.
“I left when you did. She may have come late, I suppose. Why? Do you think her sister had something to do with the fact that Mercy rejected you?”
Nicholas rubbed his forehead. “I have no idea.”
“Why would her sister coming to London make her feel like she needed to reject you?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I’m a man dying in the desert who has just been given a glimpse of a mirage. But also, I told her that avoiding scandal has been my number one goal since Fatherdied. I told her the most important thing to me was protecting the family name.”
“Oh, Nicholas.” Patience put a hand on his elbow. “You told her that without also telling her you have a mother that ran off to Paris instead of properly mourning Papa and a sister who has added nothing but shame to the family name and you still love us? Ideals are well and good, but none of us have lived up to them.”
“In hindsight, I see that, perhaps, I should have mentioned that as well.”
“Perhaps you still can.”
Nicholas closed his eyes. He wanted to believe this mirage. He could taste the cool, clear water of believing Mercy had rejected him not because she didn’t love him but because she did. But the reality was that he was dragging himself through the desert for sand.
Mercy hadn’t simply rejected him. She’d manipulated him into meeting with Lady Plymton. If her reason for rejecting him were to save him from disgrace, then the last thing she would have done was arrange for him to meet Lady Plymton in the library. “No, I don’t think I can. I’ve thought of a thousand reasons why Mercy might have rejected me, and when I follow the logic of them to the end I always come up with the same answer. She didn’twantto marry me. And if I think too hard about it, I think she may have even wanted to hurt me. So it’s best for everyone if I don’t think about it and move on with the rest of my life. If there were any logical reason Mercy would’ve had to end our courtship, while still wanting to marry me, trust me, I would have found it.”
“But if she’d known about her sister’s scandal—”
“No, Patience. When you mentioned it, I thought perhaps for a moment, but no. The scandal doesn’t actually explain anything, and I’m not even certain I’d want it to. She’d spent a large part ofour courtship trying to arrange meetings with other women for me. A healthy relationship could never develop from one built on deception.”
“Nicholas...” Patience’s voice had an odd ringing quality to it.
“What?”
“You do know my relationship with Anthony developed while I was deceiving him, don’t you?”
Nicholas gritted his teeth. Patience throwing her happy marriage into his face was far from helpful. “The two of you are different, and Ottersby spent months pining over you after you left. I’m not pining over Mercy. I have no interest in her, not anymore.”
Patience raised an eyebrow at him.
He took a deep breath and schooled his features. “I don’t.”
“You’ve called her by her Christian name twice in this conversation, Nicholas. You, the man who won’t leave his house without his stockings starched.”
Blast. He had. “I don’t starch my stockings.” His valet did. “And I have no desire to rekindle a relationship withLadyMercy.”
Patience sighed and nodded. He could almost see her filing away this conversation and moving forward. Which hopefully meant she hadn’t noticed his lie. His body screamed at him to pull Mercy right back into the moment of their stolen kisses in her drawing room. He simply had to clamp down the thoughts that ran through his head every time he saw her. The news of her family’s scandal almost gave him a reason to hope. But unless he had an explanation of how she could have given him that letter from Lady Plymtonafterhe’d told her about his fear of bringing shame to his family’s name, his hope was as delusional as drinking sand.
Chapter 30
Mercy could count on onefinger the number of humiliating experiences that were worse than setting foot in the music room last night. The only thing worse had been meeting Nicholas’s eyes in the library after he’d discovered she’d been trying to foist him off on other women.
Thankfully, she hadn’t seen Nicholas since. He hadn’t been at breakfast, nor had he shown up in the drawing room later. Lady Ottersby had made an excuse for him, but the truth of the matter was, Nicholas must not want to see her any more than she wanted to see him.
Mercy turned the page of her book. She’d sequestered herself in a corner of the parlor so that if he did decide to show up, at least he would be capable of ignoring her in her current location. But most of the party had been here an hour already, and she’d finally stopped jumping at every movement thinking it might be him. Thirty more minutes and she could excuse herself to go rest in her room. If she simply would have told her parents the truth about what had happened with Nicholas, they never would have brought her here.
But her parents already had one daughter they were extremely disappointed in. She couldn’t bring herself to add herself to that list.
