Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Nicholas stretched his legs out at the gentleman’s club, the glass of scotch in his hand. Smoke twirled hazily about the ceiling, and ladies with rouged cheeks tried their luck with the other gentlemen, perching on their laps and enticing them with their promises of later.
Nicholas had already sent one such lady packing.
Perhaps things were not perfect with Isadora—even now, he could not help feeling as though a thin pane of glass stood between them, preventing him from being fully open with her.
She had almost all his secrets—almost. But that almost chewed on him in his quiet moments.
Uncertainty convinced him that things were too good to last.
He hated it.
Oliver sat beside him, eyes droopy. “I think I’ll do it soon,” he mumbled.
“Do what?”
“…Propose.”
Nicholas cracked an eye. “Are you asking for my permission?”
“Will you deny it?”
“Not in the slightest. I vanquished the right to deny Marie anything long ago, and if it brings her happiness as much as I see it in her, then I encourage you to pursue it as far as you will. Ask her to marry you. I suspect she’ll agree.
” Nevermind suspect—Nicholas was certain that Marie would have half of York deaf with her good old shrieks of excitement.
He took a sip of the scotch and might have brought up the subject of finally forgoing pugilism—if another gentleman hadn’t approached them.
At first, Nicholas almost didn’t recognize him—the man’s face was bland, almost to the point of being unmemorable.
A face he could walk past a thousand times and think nothing of.
But something about his self-satisfied smile made Nicholas sit up. This was not a stranger. They had met once before at the picnic.
“Oliver,” he said, doing his best to remain perfectly calm. “Please leave us.”
Oliver hesitated for a moment, then rose and moved to the other side of the room. The man sat in his seat, and Nicholas adjusted his hold on the glass of scotch so he wasn’t in danger of shattering it. “I have nothing more to say to you,” he muttered.
“Oh, but I have a lot I would like to say to you.” The man grinned, revealing gapped teeth. His only distinguishing feature. “You see, you have yet to act.”
“There is nothing to say. I have no intention of acting, and regardless of your claims, Sophia is my daughter. She was born under my roof, to my name, and I have raised her.”
“Ah, but blood is blood.”
Rage boiled in Nicholas. After Grace had died, he had come to suspect she had been unfaithful during the latter years of their marriage.
She’d been bitter and resentful, and had spent more and more time outside the house in York, often unable to fully account for her whereabouts.
His anger against her then had been immense, but ultimately she had died before anything could be resolved.
The letter had shaken things, but he had dismissed it—that she had been unfaithful toward the end of their marriage, he could believe, but before? Before Sophia was born? They had still been happy then—or so he had thought.
The doubt niggled at him; he could not with all certainty claim it was untrue. Grace was capable of it at one point, so what was to say she was not capable of it at an earlier part?
But all that didn’t matter. Men like him often raised bastards as their own to avoid scandal, or even unknowingly. So long as Sophia carried his name—his—then no one would question matters.
“What is your name?” Nicholas asked.
“You may call me Sherborne,” the man said, although that was not the question—Nicholas wanted to know who he was. He had obviously already made investigations into Sherborne’s identity, but thus far, had made no real progress.
“Then you should know something, Sherborne,” Nicholas started, baring teeth. “No matter what you offer me, or what you threaten, I am not a man who will bow to your demands. No matter your wealth, I have more. My influence is larger. I suggest you leave now while you still can.”
“She came to me first after a fight,” Sherborne began, his tone contemplative, as though he was recalling an amusing anecdote. “You had both argued, and she told me she could not imagine a life living in that big house with no escape.”
Nicholas could not remember the specific fight, but they’d had many like it over the years. He gritted his teeth. “Watch your tongue.”
“If anything, I believe she seduced me. You could call me her bit of rough, though that is a subjective term. Compared to a duke, any man is socially inferior. But not, I might say, inferior in other ways. She told me how much she enjoyed being with me. Someone who would rut her silly. You were always so restrained with her, Winchester. I believe it came to be a bit of a bore.”
Years ago, Nicholas would have struck the bounder down where he stood. Alas, his feelings for Grace had quelled over the past years, no more so than when Isadora had entered his life. Now, Sophia and Isadora were his only concerns. Nothing more. This blackguard’s brash-faced tales could go hang.
Nicholas sipped his scotch and then placed it down carefully on the table. “Coming to gloat over the affections of a dead woman is a trifle pitiful, is it not?”
He sneered. “She came to me many times over the next few months. I believe she loved me, but love is neither here nor there, because she told me the child was mine once she knew she was carrying. And she told me that she wished for me to raise the babe.”
Whatever the truth of Grace’s faithfulness, Nicholas knew she would never have made such a request. Even had she loved Sherborne—and he doubted she had, for Grace’s affections seldom survived their usefulness—she would not have wanted Sophia raised in his house.
Grace loved people according to what they could provide, and Sherborne had never been capable of changing her position.
Nicholas, regrettably, had been a duke.
Grace was never the kind of woman who would have exchanged a ducal nursery for sentiment.
“So, you see,” Sherborne said, spreading his arms, “I only follow her wishes. She died… though some might conjecture… was killed, before she could ever act on them.”
“On the contrary.” Nicholas did his best to keep his voice calm, though he felt his cursed temper rising now at the man’s grotesque implications.
“She had ample time to act on those wishes herself, had she chosen to. Sophia was two when her mother died, and she breathed not a word of wishing for Sophia to live in another household, or be claimed by another man.”
He fixed Sherborne with a cold stare.
“In fact, Sophia’s future was perhaps the sole aspect of her life that Grace felt content with. So you have no grounds to make any claims.”
“She is mine.”
Nicholas rose so abruptly he almost knocked over the armchair. “She is not. Whatever her blood, Sophia is a Skeffington. She is my daughter, and your belated interest will not change it.”
“I could tell the world of how your wife chose me over you. I know she has a mole between her breasts, right here.” He pressed a finger to his chest. “And a birthmark on her upper thigh the shape of Italy. Do you recall?”
Of course Nicholas recalled—he remembered the blemishes; he thought them charming, once
He’d also thought—for a long time—that Grace would never let another man see them.
There could be no doubt now: Sherborne had not just been his wife’s confidante, but he had also seen her naked.
Unfortunately for him, that was all Nicholas would allow the man to hang over him.
“Spread your rumors,” Nicholas snapped, leaning over the other man, his fists clenched.
He was a hair away from striking Sherborne and being done with it.
“Tell the world your little story, and see how many people you can convince. What do you think you can do to me? Grace is dead.” He spat the words, and for once, they didn’t wrench something free from him.
Grace was dead, and it was not his fault.
And Sophia was—
Damn it, Sophia was his.
Sherborne’s eyes gleamed as he looked up at Nicholas.
“Hit me,” he whispered. “You know you want to. You hate me for siring the daughter you love, and you will look at her differently from now on. You know it—we both do. No matter what you try to claim as honorable, you won’t ever stop yourself from hating her just a little. ”
“Lies!” Nicholas’s fist connected with Sherborne’s cheek before he could prevent himself. There was such a rush of rage inside him, so much anger that he felt his reason drowning under the tide. Sophia is mine. The words pounded in his chest, in his head, all down through his body.
She was his, but this terrible doubt ate away at him. If he had confirmation, would it matter? Would he look at Sophia differently merely because of Grace’s infidelity?
He wanted to say no, but he couldn’t be sure. An ache grew in his stomach, tightening and sharpening into a pain so acute, he could hardly breathe. All he knew was he needed this man to pay for the hell he had put him through.
“Winchester!” Hands grabbed his shoulders, hauling him back. Oliver stood between him and Sherborne, his face very pale. “Have you gone mad!?”
Awareness slowly filtered back into red fog.
Sherborne stared back at him, his expression emptied of everything but shock.
His nose sat canted grotesquely to one side, and blood streamed over his upper lip.
The habitual smirk had vanished. In its place was the pallor of a man who had looked directly at death and recognised the person standing behind it.
Nicholas had done that.
“Cool yourself,” Oliver muttered by his ear. “There are places for that.” He held Nicholas’s gaze until Nicholas finally understood.
Yes, there were places he could let off some of this simmering anger before it came too much. Isadora had made him promise not to go back—but she knew nothing of this, and Nicholas couldn’t tell her.
She believed so completely in the happiness of their household, in the family she had gathered and guarded with both hands. How could he place the truth before her and become the reason for its destruction?
No, he couldn’t.
But he could bleed some measure of anger from himself before returning home. If he exhausted it elsewhere, perhaps he could look upon Sophia without betraying what had happened. Perhaps he could pretend their world remained the same.
She is mine!
Nothing else mattered—not what Grace did, not what other men claimed. No doubt it was merely a ploy for money, anyway. Anyone with a brain would have known Nicholas would never give up his daughter; the only conclusion was that the bastard wanted to blackmail him for money.
He turned on his heel and strode from the room.