Chapter 20 #2
“Mind your manners, Tim,” the viscountess said, and Tim paused.
“Please?” he asked Cordelia, and then she reached for it and handed it to him.
As for Olivia, she sat between Danae and Emma and looked pleased as punch as she received her own piece of cake.
Cordelia locked eyes with her mother for a moment.
Yes, her new little family was a nice thing but still, there was so much left to be resolved, healed, and unraveled.
She lifted a cup of tea with one hand while she kept another hand on Tim, eager to think of nothing else but her family, the children, and a hot cup of tea.
* * *
“You are going to wear a hole in the carpet if you keep pacing like that,” Darren said from the office door as Nicholas paced.
He had come to do work, but instead, he found his mind jumbled. The surprise visit from the children in his study had unseated him. Why should they wish to see him when he’d done what he could to build a wall around his heart and to keep at a distance? He couldn’t work it out.
“I’ll pace as I please. There’s the matter of dealing with last night’s winnings and keeping the dealers happy. I’m thinking of solutions,” he said with a nod to himself as he kept moving.
“Sure. You tell yourself that. I only came up to get the interview for the new dealer scheduled.”
Nicholas nodded, his mind in a frenzy. “What about the cooks? Have they been given the new menu?”
“Yes, yes. All is in hand. You know I’ve been running the place all right without you. Your cousin’s been by a number of times too, offering assistance here and there.”
“Oh.” Nicholas paused to look at Darren. “How uncharacteristically kind and helpful of my cousin.”
He went to sit behind the desk, and he pulled out an unopened letter. Yes, business matters would settle him. They always had in the past.
Darren chuckled, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed. “You don’t like your cousin?”
“I do, but he’s usually only focused on his own pleasures, bedding as many women as he pleases and drinking as much champagne as he possibly can in an evening.”
“That sounds like someone else I know.”
Nicholas scoffed. “Whatever happened to being able to find good help these days? All I’ve got now is an employee mocking his own boss.”
Darren laughed, his eyes sparkling with mirth. He was a good man to have around. Thick skin, and Nicholas was in no mood to be placating anyone. He felt like he was going to burst out of his own skin; his mind couldn’t settle on one logical thought.
“Leonard said he spotted you and that pretty wife of yours at the earl’s ball the other evening. He’s made another bet with me that you’re already deeply in love with her and just don’t know it.”
Nicholas felt a little flip of his heart, but he kept his eyes down, pretending to peruse his letter. “What a fool he is. He always was a romantic. And you bet against it?” he lifted a brow and looked up.
Darren shrugged. “I said that if you really loved a woman, you wouldn’t let anything stop you. That isn’t your way. You want something; you race after it until you have it. You’re bold like that.”
Nicholas blinked, surprised at Darren’s compliment. “Yes, well, that’s not what’s happening,” he said, even if something rang true in Darren’s words.
He stood. “I think I’ll mingle with the customers instead this evening. Too much nonsense in this office for me.” He grinned at Darren. “But you’re right. When I want something, I do go after it. And right now, I should like to have a large whisky.”
Down amongst the customers with said whisky in hand, Nicholas felt his tension fizzing out a bit more.
He was friendly, chatting to a few here and there, making sure people had their drinks and food and were enjoying the new menu.
He shook hands here, laughed at a bawdy joke there, and wandered about the room, doing what he usually did as the proprietor.
And yet, his mind kept wandering back to the excitement of the children as they came into his office to find him.
He found himself smiling at Olivia’s question of cake, and the feel of them in his arms had lifted his heart in a way that it had not lifted in many, many years.
Fool. You will only lead them to trouble if you get close.
And yet it seemed they would come to find him nonetheless, even though he had tried to stay away.
Still, something in him resisted giving in to the tender feeling for the children beyond the fact that they were David’s progeny.
Then, there was the matter of his wife. She was another puzzle entirely.
They argued like two wildcats, but when she kissed him, she pulled him close as if kissing him was the only thing giving her life, as if she didn’t want to be anywhere else but with him.
That is a dangerous feeling to give into as well. What if…?
Marianne interrupted his thoughts. “We are out of wine, Your Grace.”
“What? I just ordered some,” he said, his brows drawing together.
She shrugged. “It seems it has not yet arrived. Darren is handling it now though and said that you should go home. He has it well in hand.”
Nicholas sighed and looked at Marianne. “He’s gotten to you too, has he? With his foolish romantic ideas?”
She grinned. “I was already a romantic, even though a lot of these toffs make me think otherwise,” she said with a narrow gaze around the room. “You are still newly married and have two children. Go home and enjoy yourself.”
“But I –” he was about to argue but then saw Lord Marylebone, the oldest and dullest man on the planet, lumbering towards him from across the room.
He was a valued customer, yet would pull Nicholas into one of the side rooms and prattle on for hours and hours about nonsense.
He was also an investor in the club, and therefore, Nicholas could not shoo him away as much as he would like to.
“I suppose that’s my cue to get out of here,” he whispered to Marianne. She glanced back at the old lord and chuckled. “Yes, take your chance and go.” He threw back the rest of his whisky and handed the glass to Marianne.
“Thank you,” he said, moving away quickly towards the door and out into the street.
As he waited for his carriage, he thought of what his evening could bring.
Dinner with Cordelia and the children in front of the firelight and perhaps a late drink with Cordelia as she lay in one of the lovely nightdresses he’d gotten her as a gift.
His body found that to be a brilliant idea, but his heart tensed and did not agree. As usual, his body won out in the end, and he jumped into the carriage and awaited the ride home.