“I won’t allow you to redirect the conversation.” The agent paused, choosing his next words. “Has it ever occurred to you that your marriage wasn’t doomed from the beginning?”
A familiar sliver of dread snaked through Nick. “I don’t catch your meaning.” Although he did.
And in the next moment, the agent confirmed it. “Just because your parents’ union combusted into a ball of flame—”
Nick took an aggressive step forward, stopping the agent mid-sentence. Only their shared history prevented him from doing bodily harm to this man. Instead, he stated in a controlled voice, “This topic isn’t open to speculation or discussion. My family have naught to do with—”
The agent held out his hands in a conciliatory manner. “You know better than I, to be sure.” Nick chose to ignore the hollow ring of disbelief in the words. The agent continued, “This is about you and Mariana. Go home. You’ve done enough for England. It’s time to reclaim your life.”
“Ridiculous. She doesn’t want me in her life.”
“Tonight, and last night, I saw the way you watched her. Shall I describe it for you?”
“I think not.”
“Anyone with eyes can see that you’re not as immune to her as you would like to believe,” the agent pressed.
That showed how much this man understood. Nick understood on a fundamental level that he had absolutely no immunity from Mariana.
Instead of correcting the agent, he tried a different tack. “Why don’tyougo home and reclaimyourlife?”
“I have no home and no life to reclaim. I gave up both when I followed this path. Don’t make the same mistake. There is a chance for you, Nick.Thatis what I saw in your eyes tonight.”
“You don’t know Mariana—”
“I know a bit about Lady Nicholas Asquith. I knew her when she was Lady Mariana Montfort, if you’ll recall.”
Nick held his tongue. Of course, this man knew a bit about Mariana. He gave a single brisk nod. “If that is all for tonight.”
The agent poured another whiskey and silently toasted Nick before tipping the bottom up to the ceiling.
Nick vacated the room without a word of farewell and quickly found himself outside, bracing against a sudden north wind. Daggers of sharp, clean air were what his disordered mind needed at the moment. He must lay out his thoughts singly before they made a stew of his brain.
Bertrand Montfort presented the most danger, well beyond the Comte de Villefranche. Blast the man. What was he playing at? It was Montfort who had recruited him to the Foreign Office in the first place. Now, Montfort was hiring thugs to attack him in his hotel? The two didn’t jibe together.
And then there was Mariana, Montfort’s niece and Nick’s wife. Of course, it was through Montfort that Nick had met her. Oh, Mariana . . .
All rivers led back to her. She was his inevitable destination, no matter how he tried to influence fate otherwise. He’d been running from it these last ten years.
The agent’s words echoed in his mind.It’s time to reclaim your life. His insides had done a flip at those words. It was a reaction worthy of a green boy. It was a reaction born of hope. Hope? To what end?
The answer lay hidden in the potential of the force connecting him and Mariana. It was a force he’d never squarely faced, because he’d insured that he never had to. How convenient it had been to convince himself that the Foreign Office suffered no competitors. That by abandoning his wife, he’d ensured her safety. He’d convinced himself that all these years were worthy of his sacrifice.
Deep below that surface lay another reason for denying the connection between him and Mariana, one he’d carefully kept hidden . Until tonight when the agent had hinted at its root.Just because your parents’ union combusted into a ball of flame—
Nick hadn’t allowed the agent to finish that sentence. It was clear the man had never watched a marriage combust from the inside.
Nick had.
He’d just reached his fifth year when his older brother, Jamie, had gladly abandoned the ancestral pile in Suffolk and claimed his rightful place at Harrow, the boarding school that had been educating Asquith sons since the reign of King James I.
Left to his own devices, Nick spent the next five years mostly in the company of house servants and an ever-changing series of governesses. One after the other, the governesses replaced each other three or four times a year. The next was always the same as the last: young, pretty, and timid. Nick had blamed himself for their desertions and tried to be better, but better had never been good enough to make any of them stay. Only later did Nick understand about his father’s predilection for young, pretty,vulnerablegirls.
Worse than the parade of governesses had been holidays when his mother deigned to leave her beloved London and visit Suffolk. Unable to control their mutual animosity, his parents spent the entire time sniping at each other and attempting to rip each other to shreds over one or the other’s latest infidelity.
And this was in the privacy of their home. Their public bouts were the stuff of legend.
As soon as Nick came of age and was finally, blessedly, old enough to have himself shipped off to Harrow, he’d joined Jamie amongst the ranks of the student population, and he never looked back.
