Elizabeth gently pulled the door closed. Miss Tidings was tucked up for the night. More importantly, she had agreed to stay confined to her room for the duration of the house party. She’d agreed so readily, in fact, Elizabeth was certain the woman had more secrets than a badly timed situation, as Shepherds so delicately phrased it. She wasn’t the only one.
As she padded up the corridor toward her own bedchamber, Elizabeth called the evening’s somewhat subdued dinner to mind. She’d shared many meals with these three gentlemen. Their families’ estates were less than half a day’s ride from each other and not far from Sterling Manor. Winterbourne, Delacroix, and Nicholas had attended school with her brother, and they’d often dined at Sterling Manor during holidays from school. Suffice it to say, meals in the company of her brother and his three closest friends had been described in many ways. Quiet had not been one of them.
As it was Christmas Eve, tonight’s menu was replete with each man’s favorite dishes. Indeed, they’d eaten heartily. They’d complimented Elizabeth and Cook with exuberant sincerity. And said little else. The teasing and insults of the afternoon had disappeared. Even Winterbourne chose his words with care, to be sure one of the signs of the Apocalypse. And Elizabeth knew why.
Marriage. The one topic guaranteed to turn His Majesty’s finest officers into mute, coughing ninnies had been broached before she fled the room to deal with Miss Tidings. Apparently the conversation after she left had been frightening enough to turn three of the bravest men she knew into wallflower debutantes, stammering their way through such scintillating subjects as the weather, the quality of the mince pies, and the relative warmth of coal versus wood fires. She’d almost wished a footman would crash through the ceiling to give them a more entertaining subject on which to converse. When she rose to leave them to their port, they’d nearly pushed her out of the room.
She mused on it for hours. They’d decided to manage her. Misplaced loyalty to her dead brother had them feuding over her like a stray dog they’d taken to feeding at some tavern. Her slippers slapped a brisk tattoo against the burgundy Aubusson carpet. Her hands folded into tight fists at her sides. “I’ll be dashed if I need Lord Winterbourne and Major Nicholas St. Gabriel to drag Delacroix to the altar like a felled deer. I am perfectly capable of—umpf!”
Elizabeth had turned the corner and run into a solid wall of well-dressed muscle. A pair of strong arms came around her. She perused the black dinner jacket, black waistcoat, fine lawn shirt, and neatly tied neck cloth until she came to the dimpled chin and sharply angled face of the last man she needed to see whilst dressed in her nightdress and dressing gown.
“You are capable of a great many things, Miss Sterling.” Nicholas stepped back and inclined his head. “Reading minds must be one of them. I was looking for you.”
She executed a brief curtsey. “Were you looking for Miss Sterling or Elizabeth?”
“Are they not one and the same?” He didn’t smile. Something very like amusement glinted in his eyes and softened the stark lines of a countenance redrawn by injury and loss.
“That depends. Are you Major St. Gabriel, my lord the Earl of Leistonbury, or just Nicholas?” All her worries about scandal and gossip and here she stood flirting with her betrothed’s closest friend in her nightclothes, no less. And it was wonderful.
“Touché, Elizabeth.” Her name rumbled from his lips in the dark baritone that had haunted her dreams for years. “For you I am Nicholas. Just Nicholas.”
Snow spattered against the window at the end of the corridor. One floor below a door slammed. The house creaked in protest of the storm battering its walls. And Elizabeth marveled at the thrilling comfort of the sound of a man’s unsteady breathing as he gazed into her eyes.
“Was there something you wanted? Nicholas?”
He swallowed and cleared his throat. “Yes. I wanted to talk to you about Estelle.”
A familiar pang thrummed her heart at the memory of his invalid sister. “Come.” She took his hand. “We can talk in the blue sitting room.”
She led him to the sitting room adjacent to her bedchamber. She’d taken to spending an hour or two in this room every evening—reading or going over her lists and plans. The fire had been allowed to die, but it wasn’t completely out. Nicholas stirred it to life and bent down awkwardly to add several logs from the wood box. Elizabeth sat in one of the high-backed armchairs on either side of the hearth. She tucked her feet beneath her, indicated the chair opposite hers, and waited for him to speak.
He worked with the fire a bit longer and finally settled into the chair. For a few moments she simply watched him. He stared into the flames as if in search of words or answers. She’d done the same many times after her brother died. Nicholas had lost his father to consumption over a year ago. Smallpox had taken his older brother and his sister a month before Waterloo. His sister, Estelle. Made an invalid by a virulent fever at age ten. Dead at nineteen. Elizabeth’s dearest friend.
“You were her favorite person in the entire world, you know,” she offered softly.
He turned away from the fire, his face sad and not yet at peace with fond memories. “And she was mine. They told me she did not suffer long. Mama said she just slipped away in her sleep.”
“Yes. Your mother wrote me the same thing. I wish I had been there.”
“I am glad you were not. I— We might have lost you as well.”
Elizabeth fought the burn of tears. It wasn’t fair to cry in front of him. Men weren’t allowed to weep no matter how great the loss. “I miss her letters. She wrote to me at least twice a week.”
“To me as well. She was an excellent correspondent even if she did scold me in every letter for not writing more often.”
Elizabeth laughed. “She believed you to be perfect, but I will admit she addressed your parsimonious letter-writing skills to me on more than one occasion.”
“I can imagine.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his thighs. “Your letters and friendship meant a great deal to her, a very great deal.”
“I am glad.” Elizabeth drew in a breath to calm the tremor in her voice. “I loved her dearly.”
“And she loved you.” Nicholas reached into his jacket pocket. When he extended his hand, an exquisite gold locket and chain rested on his palm. “Estelle wanted you to have this.”
“Oh.” She blinked violently to no avail. She stared at Estelle’s most prized possession through a watery veil. “Oh, Nicholas, I can’t.”
He tucked a handkerchief and the locket into her hand. “I’m afraid you must. It was her dying wish.”
“Not fair, you horrible man. Not fair at all.” Elizabeth hiccupped two sobs and swiped at her eyes with the handkerchief.
“Have you ever known my sister to play fair?” This time he did smile, a small one, but a smile nonetheless.
“Never.” Elizabeth closed her fingers around the locket. “She cheated at whist unconscionably.”
“She cheated at chess too. The little minx even cheated at snapdragon at Christmas.”
Elizabeth gave a watery laugh. “She would deny your charges were she here.”
“Your letters brightened her life, Elizabeth.” He clasped his hands together and pinned her with a look of such torment and sweetness she nearly cried out from the turmoil it stirred inside her. “You will never know what those letters meant. Never.”
If he said another word, she’d have no choice but to kiss him. And more. Which would only make a painful circumstance worse. He wanted her to marry Delacroix.
“It is fortunate we had each other to write to as her brother and my brother scarcely put pen to paper from the time they bought their commissions to the time …” Elizabeth blinked back more tears. Christmas pudding. Hoisted on her own petard.
“Sterling loved you dearly, Elizabeth.” He moved to the oversized footstool in front of her chair and took her hand.
“He loved me and he even loved Mama, but not enough to stay out of the fight.”
“He felt he had no choice.”
“A man’s logic. Papa left us with nothing, and joining the cavalry was the way Michael chose to provide for us.”
“Unfortunately a man’s logic and his pride tend to point him in the same direction.”
“The voice of experience, Major?”
“More often than I care to remember.”
“You were a second son. It was expected of you. Winterbourne had no reason, save his rage at this father. Dukes’ heirs don’t go to war.” Anger fueled her words. They’d risked their lives for pride. Her free hand tightened into a fist beneath her dressing gown. “We needed my brother at home.”
“He did it for you, Elizabeth, for you and your mother.”
“I would have less trouble believing he did it for us if I didn’t know the price of commissions in His Majesty’s cavalry.”
Nicholas released her hand and turned to look into the fire once more. He made her no answer.
Elizabeth suppressed a sigh. “It is over and done now. I know he didn’t take the money from the estate because there was no money to take. He either gambled for it or someone gave it to him. I know he loved me, Nicholas, but I often wonder when he had that money in his hands if he gave a thought to using it at home.”
“You did well with what he sent you from his pay. He said you did far better with it than he would have.”
“I had little choice but to do well, did I?”
Nicholas flinched. What was she doing? He’d come to her to talk about his sister. She had not meant to lay her useless grievances at his feet. She touched his shoulder. He turned back to her and shook his head.
“The thing I regret most is I was never able to visit Estelle more than once a year.” A less than graceful change of subject, but Elizabeth’s grace tended to desert her when Nicholas was near. “Mama refused to permit it. She said she could not do without me.” Elizabeth snorted at the ridiculousness of such a notion.
Nicholas offered a snort of his own. “I understand Delacroix has delayed her arrival here with a shopping expedition in London.”
“A temporary reprieve, but a much-needed one, for me at least.”
“But Delacroix has freed you from your mother. You are safe now.” There was an unasked question in his voice. Elizabeth didn’t understand.
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
“You do not seem happy. Sterling would want you to be happy.”
“You and I both know Delacroix only proposed to save me from Mama. Not even Napoleon deserves Mama.”
Nicholas struggled to his feet. “You are wrong there, Elizabeth. Delacroix is very fond of you.”
“Fond?” Elizabeth wanted to scream at the unromantic nature of men. It was a miracle the human race survived at all. “You are right, of course. He is fond of me. And that is more than most marriages have.”
“Yes. It is.” He took three steps toward the open sitting room door, but turned back to search her face almost desperately. “There is nothing wrong between you and Delacroix. Is there?”
Elizabeth unfurled herself from her chair and loosed her most brilliant, girlish laughter on him. The sort of laughter a woman practiced to assure a man all is right in her world. “Nothing a little moonlight and mistletoe wouldn’t fix.”
“Let us hope Delacroix doesn’t recruit some poor footman to hang the moon now the mistletoe is done.” He gave her a wicked wink.
“All the ladders are broken. No danger there, my lord.”
He crossed the room in three strides. Somehow the locket was in his hand and then it was around her neck, pressed over her heart with the heat of his palm like a brand.
“Someone should hang the moon for you, Elizabeth. You deserve the moon. The moon, the stars, and more.”
She stared at him—bubbling on the inside, frozen in place on the outside. No sound save their breathing and the music of the wind against the window panes. Then with a muttered curse he was gone.
Elizabeth’s knees wobbled. She sat down, missed the chair, and landed in a heap on the sitting room floor. “Drat you, Nicholas St. Gabriel. What the devil just happened?”