Miss Isabella Thaws a Frosty Lord(38)
As though being given permission freed them, his words flew swiftly then. “Althea personified perfection in our mother’s eyes. I adored her as well, which might have been counted a surprise, given the disparity with which we were regarded. My sire confided to me years later that Althea had been conceived on the wrong side of the blanket while he was away.” Isabella felt a tug and realized she still held tight to the silk sash; now Nicholas held tight to it as well. “After delivering the requisite son on her first attempt, she banished Papa from her bed…but I digress. Althea was the only living person Mother had any affection for. Actually, it was an unreasonable attachment my mother showed her second born. For Althea did all she could to escape the confining clutches of her governess and Mother, plastering herself to my side any time I was home from school.”
His fingers slid up the sash until they intertwined with hers.
“During one such visit, I transferred the cough going round Harrow, and before I knew it, Althea was gone. Mother blamed me and in her grief exiled me from Frostwood. I was eleven at the time and didn’t realize how cruel a woman she could be, simply accepted the punishment as my due.”
“But what of your father? Why did he not step in and take her to task?”
“My father?” Nicholas squeezed her fingers and gave a snort of something that could possibly be taken for laughter. “Because that would have involved exerting himself. He wasn’t a bad man, just indifferent most of the time, more interested in fox hunting and ferreting out pheasants than dealing with what he considered petty household squabbles.
“It was easier to relocate himself to his favored hunting lodge and me to school. He told me once, when we were grouse shooting and he’d taken to avoiding his wife by choice, that he thought I was better off not having to listen to Lady Miserable shriek her cutting insults any longer. I think in some ways he may have been right. I’d learned by then it was safer to rely only on myself. Easier that way—no chance of rejection. I refused to allow anyone close save a comrade or two until…you.”
Isabella ached for the little boy he’d been. “Nicholas, tell me you realize what happened with your sister was not your fault, none of it.”
“I do now, from the vantage point of more years and, alas, more wisdom. It was Christmastime when I last returned home…and played with Althea. Ever since, at the first hint of the season, I shove away the memories, attempt to regard the holidays as nothing…nonexistent. Which, until this year, meant denying memories of Althea as well.” As if noticing the intensity with which he spoke, his voice gentled. As did his grip upon her fingers. “With Mother gone, I wanted to spend this Christmas at Frostwood Hall but just the merest reminder of the holiday froze me in place. I couldn’t fathom going…alone.”
“Then we’ll go together.”
A clock chimed somewhere in the room. “Midnight,” he murmured, stroking one hand up her arm. “January 6th, the day of Epiphany…and I do believe I’ve had one myself. It wanted your presence, your love.” His fingers gripped her shoulder. “I wanted your presence and love, did I but know it. That’s what was missing before I could return home.”
Feeling more secure—in his presence and love—than she would’ve believed possible a fortnight ago, Isabella confidently vowed, “You have both, my scoundrel. My Nicholas…”
He went on to explain how after selling his commission, he resided in London, not having enough fight left in him to challenge his mother and have her bodily removed to the dower house. “My solitary visit to the estate was greeted with a barring of the door and orders, via a lowly footman no less, to never show my face again. After being subjected to bloody battles abroad, I didn’t see the need for causing one at home. Which isn’t to say I haven’t made other attempts at reconciliation for I have, especially since Papa died. Coming into the title I felt a sense of responsibility to put the past to rights. Yet just as they’d been twenty years ago, my letters were rejected—all returned with the seals unbroken. And there you have it, why I’m accounted a horrid son—a combination of her preference and my own stiff-rumpled pride…”
“Pride? Another foible?” Isabella turned in his arms and kissed his whiskered jaw, running her fingertips over his cheek—sans dimples, she couldn’t help but discern. “Well, Nicholas Michael…was it Harry? Winten, I think you are the very best of men and would have made the very best of sons, had she allowed you.”