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“Is it?”
“I’ve hurt a young, innocent lady, and my dark, scarred heart is bleeding. I have to find some way to make this better.”
She’d said she was the one lady in the world who was immune to his charm and he’d believed her because he’d wanted to believe her, and because she had a convincing way of saying things, as though she were the authority on the topic.
He’d known she was inexperienced and easily hurt. He’d wanted to believe that she had shed her inhibitions so easily and entered freely and mindfully into a mutually pleasurable physical relationship with convenient time restraints.
What was it about her that made him want to be a better man?
He’d never had a twinge of conscience. Not once in all these years of debauchery. This was his destiny and he was merely fulfilling what was prescribed for him by his father and grandfather.
If this experience showed her nothing, hadn’t it shown her that he was unstable?
“I need to ask you something,” Nick said.
“You want me to take Lady Hatherly to India.”
“How did you know?”
“She missed her ship. And I know how much it means to her to go. And I also know how much you love her.”
“I don’t—”
He was going to deny it. And then he shut his mouth.
“Uh-huh. That’s what I thought,” Lear said with a smug smile.
“How did you become so all-knowing?”
“Always wanted to see India. Long passage around the Cape of Good Hope, though. Five, six months. Of course, it will give you time for that honeymoon you never properly had.”
“I’m not going. I can’t leave the duke, you know that.”
“Uh-huh,” Lear said skeptically. “Well, if I’m outfitting one of my ships for India, I’d best be going to make the preparations.”
“She’ll bring her cat with her.”
“That’s fine. I need a new ship’s cat. Mrs. Peebles perished, sadly, when she slept in the wrong barrel.”
“Kali will be an excellent ship’s cat; she loves to hunt mice and she’s not afraid of anything. When can you be ready? I’ll pay all costs, of course. She needs to be in Calcutta by December.”
“Two days. Do you want to tell her, or should I?”
“I’ll tell her,” Nick said.
Lear nodded and left.
I’ll tell her, Nick thought, and I won’t shout: Don’t go to India.
Even having that thought seemed sacrilegious. This was Alice’s goal. All her hard work and scholarship would be for naught if she didn’t follow her heart to India.
She would leave, and his life would descend back into chaos and emptiness.
She’d left a book behind on the chair by his bed. A memory penetrated the darkness of his mind. She’d read to him for hours, sitting by his bedside.
He touched the ridged spine of the book, thinking of Alice’s supple spine, the feeling of her smooth skin beneath his hands.
Think this through, Nick.
