“Miss Milbanke, honor is a precious thing
—in that the baron was correct. It cannot be set lightly aside if a man is to hold his head up among his peers, believe me.”
“Then I ask you to think of Miss Townsend. Can you lightly set aside her future happiness because of honor?”
“Do you honestly imagine Augustine would think better of me for taking such a cowardly course? She would scorn me, of that you may be sure.”
She stared at him, tears pricking her eyes again. “I would not scorn you,” she whispered, “I would love you all the more for having the strength to refuse to be forced into something like this. No one questions your bravery, Sir Nicholas, least of all me. If Miss Townsend has an ounce of love for you, she will feel the same. If I were in her place I would thank God above for your safe deliverance from such a vainglorious and futile death!”
For a long moment he looked into her tear-filled eyes. “But you are not in her place,” he said softly, “And I am vainglorious enough to wish to continue with this. He said things about you which no man of honor, least of all myself, could allow to pass unchallenged.”
“Oh, how can you be so
calm
about it?” she cried, “He’ll kill you, he’ll make you his eleventh victim
—and for what? You hardly know me, you don’t even
like
me very much—and yet you are about to die for my good name!”
He smiled. “It is not true that I do not like you, Miss Milbanke; it is not true at all. Oh, I admit that my manner may have
—
did
—give you that impression, and for that I have already apologized. I thought you knew that I meant every word I said last night. Perhaps it will convince you if I ask you to spend the rest of this day with me.”
“Now you jest
—”
“It is hardly something to jest about. This may be my last day on this earth, and what better way to spend it than with you?”
There was nothing she would like more than to spend a day alone with him, but not like this
—not with such a dark and terrible shadow hanging over them.
“If my past conduct weighs too heavily still…” he began, seeing her indecision.
“No. No, it is not that. Please believe me.”
“What then? Will propriety be offended?”
“Propriety is offended already. It was offended the moment I left England alone, without a companion or a maid, and it is offended each time I speak to you when I have no chaperone to watch over me. No, Sir Nicholas, it is not propriety. What of Miss Townsend? How will she feel if she discovers not only that I am the cause of your predicament, but that you also spent a day with me? How will she feel then?”
“She is not here, Miss Milbanke. You are. I do not see that under these circumstances there is anything else to consider, do you?”
She met his gaze. “No, I suppose not,” she answered. Oh, dear God, how easy it would be to fall in love with this man. With a glance and a soft word he could melt her heart, make her forget everything but the pleasure of being with him. She had been drawn to him from the outset, and each moment with him now merely made her admit to herself that she was dangerously close to loving him already.
“Then it is settled. Shall we go?” He offered her his arm.
Slowly she slipped her hand over the rich stuff of his sleeve.
“Besides,” he murmured lightly, almost to himself, “who is to say that this will indeed be my last day on earth? I am not exactly cross-eyed and palsied, you know, as many a Frenchman found out to his cost at Waterloo. It could be that the baron is
my
first victim
—that would be a turn up for the proverbial book, would it not?”
She felt an absurd desire to laugh as they walked from the room.
The gondola was pushed away from the hotel steps, sliding out from the shadows to the dazzling blue water. There was magic in the air; diamonds flashed in the wavelets and the sky was the color of pale sapphires; even a barge piled high with red apples seemed to be carrying rubies. Color was sharper, sounds more clear, and Laura herself more acutely aware of Venice, of Nicholas, and of life itself than she ever had been before.
He leaned back on the black leather seat beside her, smiling just a little. “Did you know that in Venice the occupants of a felze are always assumed to be lovers?”
“No.” She hoped that she wasn’t blushing.
He laughed. It was an easy laugh, quite unforced and natural. She looked away toward the Rialto Bridge. He was treating her with an intimacy that only the night before would have been unthinkable. It was as if they had known each other for a lifetime, not merely for a week or so, and the feeling was good. She had so longed to know him like this, but even now she knew that it was only circumstances that brought about this change. How he must be longing for his Augustine and wishing that
she
sat with him, not Miss Laura Milbanke.
He glanced at her. “I hope that you do not really mind me asking you to spend the day with me, for on reflection it does seem rather a lot to ask of you.”
“No,” she said quickly. “No, I don’t mind at all.”
“I thought you seemed a little reserved
—”
“I was only wishing that I could be your Miss Townsend for today.”
He looked away then. “Well, maybe it’s just as well that you aren’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I came here to think about decisions I have to make, decisions which will not meet with her approval in the slightest.”
“Forgive me if I appear unduly inquisitive
—but why will she not approve?”
“Do you really wish to be bothered with my financial adversities?”
“I shall not mind at all if you wish to talk about them.”
The breeze ruffled his hair as he removed his top hat and tossed it on to the seat. The wash from a passing barge made the gondola sway and he reached out to take Laura’s hand, steadying her for a moment until the gondola was level once more. Studying her face for a moment, he released her hand. “Perhaps you are right, Miss Milbanke; it would do me good to discuss my problems. My difficulties stem from one thing
—my estate, King’s Cliff in Somerset.”
“King’s Cliff? When you introduced yourself to me the name meant nothing, but now it seems familiar…
.
”
“No doubt on account of the famed King’s Cliff hunt.”
“Yes, of course, that is it! Even my Uncle Hazeldon extolled its virtues!”
“Oh, that damned hunt is quite the thing with the
beau monde,
from royalty down.”
“You do not like hunting?”
“It does little for me, I fear
—is that not an admission from a gentleman? It is tantamount to high treason, I fancy. But I am no rakehell, no demon of the gaming hells, no devotee of luxurious vice, and certainly no hunter, shooter, or fisher! I believe there is more to life than that. Oh, do not think I wear a halo, for I have indulged in my fair share of riotous living and will never aspire to sanctity, but I will also never see the point of an existence which leads inevitably to ruin.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have but recently inherited King’s Cliff, Miss Milbanke, and years of mismanagement and extravagance by my foolish father, Sir Jasper Grenville, and similar years of avaricious aiding and abetting by my disagreeable cousin, James, Earl of Langford, have left me with accumulated debts which put King’s Cliff on the verge of bankruptcy.”
“Surely not
—”
“The estate is vastly overstaffed; it has been run on a lavish scale which it cannot support; its farms are poor and mostly unproductive as they have been managed to suit the hunt and little else. And on top of all that, my father raised mortgages, acquired monumental gaming debts, and resorted to one of the most notorious moneylenders in London. In short, he has left me well up to my elegant neck in difficulty. With his shining example before me, it is small wonder I have no desire to emulate his ways.”
The gondola slid beneath a bridge and the water echoed around them in the gloom before they emerged into the brilliant sunlight again.
She smiled at him. “So it is not like father, like son.”
“Most definitely not. To be honest, my cousin is more my father’s son than I have ever been, and indeed he worked tirelessly toward that end
—seeking to have me disinherited and taking my birthright. There is very little love lost between James Grenville and me, Miss Milbanke, very little indeed. We tolerate each other, and that is all. James is a very wealthy man, and his tastes ran parallel with those of my father; hence they got on extremely well together. But James was in a position to live as he did; his wealth supported him more than adequately; my foolish father could not, or would not, see that his own finances were so appallingly managed that he could not possibly hope to match James. I could see what was happening, and my continuous argument against what they did eventually left me in the cold where my father was concerned. I left King’s Cliff and took a commission in the army, serving with Wellington in Spain and eventually at Waterloo. I fully intended the army to be my life, for I had little doubt that I would be disinherited and that my cousin would have King’s Cliff.
“However, when my father died last year it immediately became apparent that James had not succeeded, for it all came to me after all. I resigned my commission and went home
—to find that things had reached such a sorry pass that I was faced with either bankruptcy—or making such severe cutbacks and changes in order to put King’s Cliff into profit once more that I could only be vilified in the county.” He smiled ruefully, the jeweled pin in his cravat glittering in the sunlight as he lounged gracefully back in the gondola. “Venice is a luxury I can ill afford, but I decided to allow myself just one small extravagance before attending to the unpalatable task of confounding Somerset with my remedies for ruin.”
She smiled. How strange it was to hear him speak of his visit to Venice in words that could so easily have been applied to her. Was not she too guilty of unwarranted extravagance by coming here? “Sir Nicholas, it seems to me that you have no choice, you
must
carry out whatever plans you have in mind. Why then do you believe Miss Townsend will not approve?”
“To explain that I must tell you a little of family history. Augustine’s family were once the owners of King’s Cliff; indeed it is named because one of their ancestors held the cliff on which it stands for the king at the time of Monmouth’s rebellion. His reward was a grant of the land, and part of Sedgemoor which it overlooks. It remained in the Townsend family until they were in difficulties and my great-grandfather, Sir Henry Grenville, purchased it from them. Augustine still in her heart regards the estate as belonging to her family, and maybe she is not to be blamed too much for that, but she believes too that the house will go on forever as it now is, which has become an impossibility with me as its master. Throughout her life she has seen brilliance all around her, glorious wealth on a scale which even the Prince Regent could envy. There were endless house parties, the guests were royalty and nobility, and they stayed for week after week sometimes. The marsh at King’s Cliff offers the finest waterfowl and good fishing; the hunting season meant more guests, expensive balls, routs, masques, and so on. As my father’s ward she lived like a queen; she saw nothing of the huge debts accumulating.”
He took off his signet ring and handed it to Laura. “My family emblem is ‘the sun in splendor’, and by
God
did Father live the role of sun! The term
bon vivant
takes on new magnificence when applied to my sire. That is why Augustine will not understand when I tell her what must be done to her beloved King’s Cliff. She will not understand that and she will not understand me. She wants things to remain as they are, and I cannot do that, not even for her. If my cousin had inherited, then King’s Cliff would have continued
—”
“But he has not.”
“No. He wanted to, though
—and it was because he coveted the house, and he coveted Augustine. If he had owned the house, then he would have seen a chance of winning her.”
“So many
ifs,
Sir Nicholas? He hasn’t won her; you have.”
“Yes, that is true
—or is it? Has she accepted me because she loves me, or because through me she will gain King’s Cliff?”
“Oh, surely you misjudge her
—”
“I pray so, for I love her very much indeed. I am painfully uncertain, however, of how much she loves me.”
Laura could only look at him. How could any woman in her right mind not love him?
He gave a short, embarrassed laugh then. “Dear God, I have confessed my innermost soul to you, and yet until yesterday I had not even granted you a kind word. I could not have told Augustine herself what I have just told you. Why am I so unguarded with you, Miss Milbanke?”
“Perhaps it is simply that I am not involved; I am not the object of your love.”
Would that I were
….
“Whatever it is, you certainly seem to have a profound effect upon me.”
She smiled a little. “Maybe it’s just Venice.”
The gondola glided on to a stretch of silver water. The city shimmered ail around, the atmosphere pale and tenuous, a gamut of greens and blues which turned the palaces and churches into a strange, mirage
-
like fantasy. The air was still and yet it moved. Everything seemed so unreal, as if it would flee if touched.
“Miss Milbanke,” he said at last, “can you even begin to imagine the shock which will greet the news that the King’s Cliff hunt is to be sold? Can you imagine the noise in Somerset when I set about draining my portion of Sedgemoor, called King’s Cliff Moor, thus depriving a vast army of poachers of their livelihood and another vast army of wealthy gentlemen of their shooting and fishing? I shall turn out tenants who will not comply with my new ways of things and I will rid myself of land which is useful only for hunting and cannot be turned into rich pasture or crop land. I am about to become notorious. That is, if I survive tomorrow
—”