hanged your mind."
She acted as if she hadn't heard him. "The sooner I go, the sooner we can get you out of here." She rose calmly to depart, leaving Lassiter choking on his myriad, unheeded commands.
Derek almost smiled when, on her way out, she called over her shoulder, "Oh hush, Father! My mind's made up."
When she reached Derek, she paused and looked up to him, her face grave. She probably thought this was all his doing. He felt a flush of guilt because, if she hadn't arrived when she did, it would have been.
"Listen, I can help you," he said, not caring if Lassiter heard him.
He did. "Shut up, Sutherland!"
"Go to hell, Lassiter," Derek barked before turning back to hear her response.
"Haven't you done enough?" she asked, her eyes laced with sadness as she turned to go. Derek was right behind her, but the big man who'd been waiting stepped in front of him.
"Not unless ye'll be wantin' another fight," he warned as he backed out the door.
It rained, the bone-chilling, lingering rain that always reminded Nicole of her last stay in this awful land. She'd been five years old. Her father was broken, her mother dead. Somehow he'd managed to get them to London from the South American port where Laurel Lassiter passed away. He would tell his mother-in-law in person that her daughter had died.
A week after the dowager learned of Laurel's death, she'd reemerged from her room as forbidding as ever. Her blond, gray-laced hair was perfectly coifed, her spine rigid. Only she looked much, much older and was clothed in black. She demanded to see Lassiter, and Nicole had been sent outside to play. But as usual, she couldn't get warm, so with frozen feet and hands she'd sneaked back into the house. She stopped outside the door to the sitting room and peeked in when she heard them talking about her.
"She'll never marry," her grandmother had predicted, her oddly dark, cold eyes taking in Nicole's poor father, her disgust undisguised. He was quiet before her.
"If you take Nicole back on that cursed ship with all those filthy sailors, you can assure yourself that by the time she's to find a husband, a husband good enough for her station, her reputation will be so shredded that no member of the nobility will want her. Not to mention the fact that she has already turned into a little savage."
Lassiter had looked as if he might argue--Nicole remembered wanting him to--but he seemed to draw deep from some inner well of patience. "I can't let her go just yet," he said, his voice toneless. "She is all I have left of Laurel. I have to keep her with me."
"Selfish as always, I see." They both turned toward the portrait of her mother above the fireplace. Laurel had been a lovely, fair-haired young woman. In the painting, she would look forever merry, as if she'd just been told something humorous and couldn't be trusted not to erupt into peals of laughter at any moment. The skilled artist had captured that happiness beautifully...as well as the hint of stubbornness in her mien.
"Why she ever gave up all this"--the dowager waved a hand to indicate her opulent town residence--"I will never understand." Then to herself, she added in a low voice, "The threats...the pleading...all useless once that girl made up her mind to be with you."
She rose in her extravagantly wrought day-dress to move toward a window, the rich satin gown making a muted, rustling sound with each step. Turning on him, she accused, "Staying in England wasn't good enough for you, so you dragged my poor daughter all over the world, never slowing your pace."
Nicole had watched, fascinated, as pale sunlight caught the few jewels that adorned her grandmother, throwing tiny, brightly colored prisms on the papered walls.
"And now she is...gone. But Laurel did as you wished." She returned to her ornate desk, her movements slow and dignified.
"Damn it, you know that she loved sailing with me," her father bit out, his voice hoarse. "She craved that excitement and she never regretted the life we lived...even in the end."
Her grandmother narrowed her eyes shrewdly. "How can you be sure the same thing won't happen to the girl? What if she were to die--"
He'd shot out of his chair to loom over her desk, his large hands knotted into fists. "You listen to me--I will never let anything happen to her. Do you understand me? She is a strong child, raised at sea. I will always protect her."
"I understand that you think you will." She looked up at him, unbowed even by the fearsome picture he presented. "But even if she were to live to be ninety," she continued, "Nicole will be doomed to spinsterhood, because she must marry a title before I'll give her Laurel's estate. And titled men do not marry female sailors. And were you to disregard her inheritance and think to marry her elsewhere, perhaps to some oafish American such as yourself, who will have her? She'll be more man than woman, with no grace, without the charms or the dowry to attract a decent husband."
She shook her head as if revolted at the image. "She'll be aged before her time with sun-and wind-roughened skin and hands. Do you think society will smile on such a one as she? No!" she cried as her flat palm slapped the desk, her heavy rings rapping. "Nicole will be alone because you will not do the right thing now."
"What would you have me do?" he asked, waving an arm. "I can't give her up, so what do you suggest?"
She leaned forward slowly and pinned him with her dark eyes. "You will send her to me on her twelfth birthday, and not a day later. She must come to me before she becomes a woman so that I will have time to undo all that you"--she looked him up and down with a sneer--"and your degenerate life have done to her. I will prepare her to assume her birthright as a leader of the nobility and marry accordingly."
Her father sank back down and exhaled slowly. "Very well. I'll give her to you then, but you must promise to marry her to a good man."
"Of course, you fool! If you do as you're bidden."
Neither of them knew Nicole was just outside the door. Nor did they know that from as early as Nicole could remember, her mother had instilled in her a powerful lifelong belief. Just as Laurel had been, Nicole must be prepared to fight for control of her own destiny.
Nicole had done the best she could. When her father ordered her to wear a hat and gloves every second she was outside, she minded him. She understood his fierce over-protectiveness and obeyed his fear-driven demand that she learn navigation in case an accident befell him at sea. Learning language after language, having to beg to get the crew to teach her even the mildest of curses--she accepted all that because she was otherwise free. And when the time came for her to leave, she'd had years to plan.
She'd been about to turn twelve when Lassiter declared she was to go to England and live with her grandmother. Nicole wasn't wholly proud of what she'd done, but she'd been desperate. "Very well, Father," she'd conceded with a sniff. "I'll do as you say. But you must know that my only worry is that we would be so far apart. What would happen if you got sick? It might take me months and months to find out. I wouldn't be there to take care of you. And if something were to happen to me, if I got sick, or hurt, you might not be there...."
That had taken care of any nonsensical talk about finishing school for about five years.
Up until this rainy night, Nicole had thought she'd done so well--she'd sailed continuously for eighteen of her twenty years and had seen the world. But as she gazed out at the docks, oily from the rain, she wondered if it wasn't all just a matter of time--if she was fooling herself by believing she had power over her own fate. She had been, Nicole decided, and resigned herself to giving up that fight.
Just not quite yet.
When Nicole arrived at the vast Atworth House after nearly sixteen years, she was unexpectedly composed, although the house before her was meant to be daunting. Rich marble steps led to a bold projecting entranceway, flanked by towering scroll-like columns. The wings on each side recessed from the front in too-perfect symmetry. Yet a lush cold-weather garden battled the severe effect by subtly beckoning.
Although she associated this place with painful memories, she made herself remember that her mother had spent much
of her youth in this home. Had probably laughed upon these very stairs. She smiled softly at the thought. She was smiling when Chapman, the elderly butler she fondly remembered from her sole visit here, answered the door, and even when he showed her to the salon. Her grandmother awaited her there, sitting beneath a large Palladian window that dominated the room and lit her tasteful furnishings becomingly. It also highlighted her pinched face.
"Good morning, Grandmother," Nicole intoned politely as she trudged over the dense Brussels rug to face the woman. The dowager was still soberly dressed in black, her collar choking. Unhappiness limned her features. Two pug dogs had risen at Nicole's arrival and now sauntered back to their place--not at her grandmother's feet, but under a table across the room. Smart pugs, she thought.
"You're late," the dowager snapped, not even asking her to sit.
Nicole had chosen to wear one of the day-dresses her grandmother had sent to her school, hoping to soften the old bird, but obviously it'd take more than a polished appearance to get her within the bounds of civility. Nothing new there. It was as if her grandmother, and this whole house, had been frozen from the time Nicole left until this return.
"I am indeed late," she responded sweetly, bravely taking a seat across from her.
"Eight years late!" The dowager studied her with a disapproving expression.
Nicole comprehended then that the woman before her, whose dark eyes were so oddly like hers, would make her crawl across glass to get money for her father. But this race would decide their future, so she'd do what she must. "I am very pleased to be able to visit with you--"
"Balderdash! Cut through the frippery, girl, and tell me what you want."
Chapter 6
F rom atop his mount, Derek watched Nicole Lassiter absently wind through people on the street. She clutched her cloak tighter to her neck and hiked her thick navy scarf up to her chin to battle the crisp wind whisking over the Thames. Without seeming to notice, she sidestepped a loud man hawking steaming meat pies and an intense young woman imploring her to buy a secondhand coat.
He caught glimpses of her face, and her sad expression made him react with a bothersome intensity. He gathered the reason for her mood, of course. She was walking from the direction of the jail and had probably just learned that her father's bail had been denied.