“In his cups?”
Now it was Mariana’s turn to pause. She liked Nick’s older brother Jamie, which was why she didn’t wish to speak ill of him. Still, her answer would be the truth. “It did appear so.”
“Have you heard any rumors of a courtship?”
She studied Nick closer. He looked strangely . . . vulnerable. “None.”
“That sounds right.”
“He won’t ever marry, will he?” She’d long wondered about Jamie’s seemingly solitary, even reclusive, life.
“Most doubtful, I would think.”
“But he’s the heir to the marquessate,” she countered. “Your parents must . . .”
Nick’s eyes flew up to meet hers, a fiery glow charging their depths. “Jamie owes our parents nothing,” he stated, understated ferocity infusing each word. “You were brought up by the sort of family who laughs together over the breakfast table. Only our surname binds the Asquith family together.”
“You love Jamie.” She’d never seen him like this.
A subtle wince crossed Nick’s otherwise impassive features.
Warnings about the Asquith family rose to the surface of memory. It was a good and noble family, a perfect match for her, but those parents loathed one another. On the night before her wedding, Olivia had even asked if she was certain she wanted to marry intothat family. A blithe, “I’m marrying Nick, not his parents,” passed Mariana’s lips, the question buried beneath dreams of future marital bliss.
Tonight, she saw reality, a Nick visibly rattled by the conversational turn toward his family. Here lay the largest danger. This was where she would be drawn in by him, if she allowed it. And, oh, how easily she could allow it. A known entity existed between them, one she’d done well to suppress.
But in a room located in a foreign country where a sense of unreality could prevail? It was here that she could allow herself to be seduced into his web and be undone. She didn’t want this.
She didn’t want to burn with an intense desire to know about him. It had taken her too long to extinguish that particular flame, to convince herself that she didn’t care, that she’d never really cared, that it was infatuation run its course. But, tonight, he’d revealed a concrete fact about himself: he was aspy. She yearned to know even more about this man.
She’d never felt more disappointed in herself. Hadn’t the last ten years made her stronger than this?
She shot to her feet on a surge of resolution, intent on showing Nick the door. “You’ve gotten your wish. I leave tomorrow. We haven’t anything more to say to one another until Geoffrey and Lavinia’s eleventh name day next month.”
He responded by settling deeper into his settee, and deep annoyance flared through her. His gaze raked up the length of her and held when it reached her eyes. She wouldn’t squirm. She wouldn’t remember the way that look used to snake through her until it reached the apex of her thighs. If she did, her legs might begin to quiver, much like they were now. That wouldn’t do at all.
“A plot is brewing to assassinate the French king’s heir, Charles, the Duc d’Artois.”
Mariana retreated a step and fell back onto her settee in a puff of skirts. Within Nick’s gaze, she detected a deadly serious light, and, just like that, she was caught like an impetuous grasshopper. “Why not assassinate the king?” she asked, at once ensnared by his web.
“The king is on his deathbed and has no heir except for his brother Charles, the Duc d’Artois, whose own heir was assassinated four years ago. With the death of Charles, the Bourbon line dies out, making—”
“Way for a new line,” she finished for him, unable to help herself.
He nodded. “And new ideologies.”
“The French rather have a history of that sort of thing.” It was a glib and sorry attempt to diffuse the tension his intense gaze stirred inside her.
“These aren’t revolutionaries, Mariana.”
“Then who is plotting, if not revolutionaries?”
“A rebellious minority of nobles who do not share the Ultra-Royalist vision for France’s future. These men fear Charles will turn back the clock as if the Revolution never happened.”
“Can he?”
“Doubtful, but that isn’t to say he won’t try. These men are emboldened by last year’s constitutional monarchist uprisings in Spain.”
“Shouldn’t we English support such a cause?” she asked. “After all, a monarchy limited by a constitution is our form of government.”
