He wanted her. He liked her. He was falling in love with her.
What was he going to do about it?
“I know what you meant to ask me earlier,” he murmured.
She had settled against his side, her hand on his chest. At his words, she sat up a little straighter. “Oh—never mind it. I shouldn’t have—”
He held her back when she started to move away from him. He pulled her down with him until they were lying together on the blanket, his arm around her as she rested against his side. She laid her cheek on his shoulder and Nick felt a surge of... not pleasure, not triumph, just overwhelmingcontentment. As if everything was right in his world, for the first time in ages. Certainly for as long as he could remember.
Perhaps it was, here on the still, secluded grounds of his very own estate, with his family safe and secure and Emilia next to him.
“You wonder,” he said, “why Charlotte has a personal guard.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-EIGHT
Emilia went very still.
She barely remembered what she’d started to ask—a half-formed question that slipped out before she could stop it. Everything in her life now felt like a half-formed question, though. She no longer knew what their relationship was. She had resigned her position as governess, and he had accepted it, but she was still caring for Charlotte and Lucy and still hoping to spend her nights making love to Nick.
It was a risky plan, long term, but for now it made her ineffably happy in a way she couldn’t remember being happy before, and it was so lovely to feel that way, she didn’t care to contemplate how or when it would end.
But now that he brought it up,yes,she did wonder about Charlotte—though not as much as she wondered about Nick. His aunt took him in and changed his name, leaving him her fortune. He said he had no family other than Charlotte, who had been a stranger to him. Why had he not met his sister until she was old enough to have nightmares? Why had he thought a pistol beside her bed was necessary?
So she lay perfectly still in the warmth of his arm, her head resting on his shoulder, and listened.
“To explain about Charlotte, I have to tell you about my father,” he said. “Our father.”
Emilia hadn’t learned very much about Samuel, although it must be admitted that once she found out he was dead and had left a son, she hadn’t cared. She’d been tracing a line, and cared only for the man at the end. But Charlotte had said Samuel Sidney was the reason Nick would never get married, and Emilia suddenly found herself deeply interested in his story.
“You found him through birth records and marriage registers, and Grantham says it’s all correct. I never knew or cared much for my family history. I suppose we were much too far from the viscount’s line to gain any benefit from it, and that’s the only thing that would have motivated my father to speak of it. The truth is that by the time my grandfather came around, our branch of the Sidneys was rather humble.” He glanced at her. “You know. You told me what their positions were. Vicar. Naval officer. Ship captain.”
“Yes,” she murmured, when he paused.
“My grandfather, whose naval career was less than glorious, realized his fortune did not lie in the navy. He married into a prosperous family in Liverpool and captained some of their ships.”
Emilia nodded, searching her memory. “Yes, Mary Blake.”
Nick exhaled. “The Blakes.” He said nothing for several minutes. “They traded between England, the West Indies, and the American states. They had family connections in Bristol and Manchester, and a large percentage of their cargo was cotton and sugar from the plantations, which made them wealthy. I suppose that’s what drew my grandfather, and why my father followed in his footsteps.”
Emilia was beginning to wish she had found out more about the Blakes, but she’d been so frantic to find a living heir, she hadn’t paused to investigate everyone she discovered along the way.
“My father ran into some trouble with the Royal Navy over his trading with the Americans—Horatio Nelson himself boarded his ship and threatened to impound the ship and its cargo. A merchant in Antigua, who desired a closer relationship with the Blakes, spotted an opportunity. My father was not a Blake, but a Blake cousin, which was apparently near enough for him to offer up his natural daughter as a prospective bride.” Nick paused. “I understand that in the West Indies, society is a bit different. Illegitimate children are often accepted and acknowledged by their fathers. The merchant intervened with the governor, and my father married his daughter. That, and a dowry of two hundred pounds, were all it took to win Sam Sidney’s cold heart. I was the result.”
A faint smile touched his lips. “My mother and I lived in Antigua for my first few years. I’ve only faint memories of her,” he said softly. “I’ve been told she was beautiful and merry, and that we had a small house on her father’s plantation, where my father appeared only infrequently and never for long. I had a miniature of her, once, but it was lost in a storm at sea years later.”
Emilia thought of the miniature of her own mother, safely tucked in her wooden box with her most prized possessions. She put her hand on Nick’s chest without a word, and he clasped it.
“When I was five, my mother died of a fever. My father returned to Antigua a few months later and decided to take me with him. He had recently acquired an indentured servant, a girl called Sally. A Philadelphia merchant had been unable to pay his bill, and he traded the indenture contract for his goods. She was only twelve or so, but she was put in charge of me and we sailed with my father for the next five years.”
“Only twelve!”
“Sally’s father indentured her when she was ten years old, for no less than ten years.”
Emilia gaped at him.
“That wasn’t the worst for Sally,” said Nick. “The worst was that my father purchased her indenture.” He was gazing up at the stars again. “You would have liked Sally. She was put to work on the ship, just as I was, but she was clever, and witty, and unafraid of anything. She told me stories from mythology and sketched the fantastical creatures on the wall by my berth. She taught me how to read, from nautical almanacs. When I fell overboard, it was Sally who flung down a rope to me. She mended my clothes, until she showed me how to do it myself. She taught me how to sense my father’s dark moods—I barely knew him—and she helped me find little crannies in the hold where I could hide.”
That sounded dreadful to Emilia, but his voice had grown softer, even warm, with affection. “Why did you need to hide?”
