“Me?” He jerked his head. “What on earth for?”
“You were not yourself, and I was worried.” In their melancholy, some men downed laudanum to excess. And he had looked tired and agitated, as if he’d needed to escape the world. “I paced the corridor because I was too afraid to peer inside the rooms.” Too afraid she might catch him in a clinch with a mistress. “It occurred to me you might have arranged an assignation. Mrs Ingram—”
“I sought solitude, nothing more.”
“At a ball?” Getting information from him was like getting a lame man to give up his crutch. “Why did you not go home?”
His shrug meant he knew the answer, but was unwilling to say. “Why did you not ask me what was wrong?”
“Because you collect secrets like ladies collect buttons. And I suspect you have a varied selection.”
He smiled, and her heart leapt to her throat. She became aware of the mattress beneath her, that he was without his coat, and that this was how her midnight fantasy always began.
We shouldn’t be alone together, Helen, but I can’t help myself.
What she would give to hear him say those words.
To be wanted by Nicholas St Clair was beyond a dream.
“Can I trust you, Miss Langley?”
His question pulled her from her reverie. “Of course.”
“Trust you not to say anything to your friends or your brother?”
What? He had a secret he had not told Sebastian?
“Nicholas, you may tell me anything in confidence.”
He came and sat on the edge of the bed.
The mattress dipped.
Lord have mercy!
After a lengthy silence, he said, “Most people believe my parents married for love, although after having only one child, rumours spread that my father couldn’t bear to sire a spare.”
“I know your mother suffered from long bouts of melancholy, so I assumed she didn’t want more children.” That was literally all she knew.
He closed his eyes briefly against some inner pain. “I cannot recall a time when she wasn’t so dreadfully sad.”
She itched to console him. “It must have been unbearable.”
“I would have scaled the highest mountain, dived to the dark depths of the ocean if I thought it would have helped. No man wants to feel powerless.”
“No. We felt much the same when Michael died,” she said, but this was not the time to discuss her troubles. “Oftentimes, what one sees does not reflect the truth.”
A short silence ensued, whereby he bowed his head and sighed. “My father loved my mother more than life itself. He assumed she would come to love him in return and spent many years trying. Seeing his desperation … it’s why he died of a broken heart.”
She knew his father had been fit and healthy. Then one morning after his wife’s death nine years ago, he failed to wake from his slumber.
“It was perhaps a blessing,” Nicholas said.
“Unrequited love lasts because it has its roots in hope. Despite the strongest winds, it is immovable.” Indeed, she doubted anything could change how she felt about him. “How is it related to your gripe with Mr Holland?” She didn’t want to rush him, but Sebastian might return at any moment.
He faced her, his blue eyes darkening with despair. “Charles Holland has a country estate in Bedford, which he inherited from his father, Robert Holland, last year. My mother spent many summers at Roxton House, her friend’s family home in Bedford.”
“Your mother knew Robert,” she surmised.