Nicholas snorted. “You mean that you have lacked companions prepared to carry you home after your revels. I am certain, Haynesdale, that you have gained some weight in my absence.”
“Perhaps you possess only a fraction of the strength of your youth,” Damien retorted.
“Perhaps I shall leave the two of you to your nonsense,” Eliza interjected and the pair bowed to her politely. It was clear they wished her to leave.
Undoubtedly, they had plans to make for this night’s debauchery.
“Perhaps you might accept my aunt’s invitation to tea today,” Nicholas said when Eliza reached the door. “She has a schedule for Helena that she wished to share, if you could be persuaded to undertake this favor.”
“You spoke to her of it already.” Eliza had the unwelcome sense that she had been granted a responsibility that Nicholas did not desire, simply so that he could enjoy himself instead.
There was nothing worse than being considered useful, in her view.
He winced. “There was a decision pending. I sensed as much last evening so I offered your assistance, if it could be won.” He saluted her with his glass. “My aunt was most gratified by the suggestion.”
Eliza wondered at this. Lady Dalhousie once had been a rival of her mother’s, but that had been decades before, in their debut season.
Surely such an old feud had been put to rest?
Perhaps not.
Eliza thanked Nicholas for his trust and agreed to visit his aunt, then left the room. She heard their voices when she reached the hall, just before she pulled the door closed behind her, and paused to listen.
“She seems quieter,” Nicholas commented as glasses clinked.
“It has only been nine months since Frederick died,” Damien said, his tone more somber than it had been. “I expect it takes rather longer than that to recover from the loss of a great love.”
“I expect so,” Nicholas agreed.
Eliza grimaced in her frustration. The situation was entirely her own fault, but there had to be a way for her to repair what she had done. There had to be a way for her to become a temptation to Nicholas Emerson.
The Ladies’ Essential Guide to the Art of Seduction was the solution to her woes, Eliza knew it.
She merely had to locate that volume or its author.
Somehow.
She would ask at Brisbane’s Emporium before visiting Lady Dalhousie. The proprietress Sophia de Roye, once Sophia Brisbane, knew everyone and everything. Eliza had relied upon Mrs. de Roye’s knowledge in the past.
Indeed, she felt a sudden and most desperate need for a new pair of gloves.
Chapter 2
Captain Nicholas Emerson was beginning to suspect that the more matters changed, the more essentials remained the same.
Miss Eliza DeVries had always been able to enflame his soul, though she was as beyond reach as the sun itself. He had become certain since buying his commission and leaving England’s shores that this effect had been a result of his youth. Other women possessed only a passing allure—he had noted time and again how ladies could only fascinate him for a short while. They became predictable, if not worse; they began to pale in comparison to his memory of Eliza, and invariably, his interest faded.
Eliza, he had assured himself, remained an icon of female desirability because he had not spent sufficient time in her company in recent years. On the one hand, he welcomed that the end of the war would provide the opportunity to return home and diminish her power over him; in another, he had dreaded the loss of yet another reliable lodestar. He had dallied on the Continent, delaying the inevitable in a failed effort to concoct a plan for his own future. On this morning, Nicholas had entered the breakfast room of his best friend, confident of results.
Only to be astonished by the vigor of his response to Eliza’s welcoming smile.
Despite the passing of time, her influence had not diminished a whit. Nicholas had recognized the magnitude of his error with a single glimpse. Eliza was every measure as alluring as she had always been, perhaps more so than he recalled. She had always been pretty, but not conventionally beautiful. It was the glint of intellect in her eyes and the impish curve of her smile that enticed him. He admired that she could surprise him and often did. But now there was a confidence about her, as well as a sense that not all of her thoughts were readily declared. She had become mysterious and intriguing, a riddle he yearned to unfurl, and that was perilous to his hopes, indeed.
The girl had become a woman, he supposed, though Eliza was only twenty-eight years of age to his own thirty-five. He felt immediately that they were on a more equal footing than when she had been a maiden—though that made no sense given that he possessed little more than his own name. Nicholas was as smitten as ever, and in even less of a position to act upon his interest.
If that revelation had not been cause for a drink, he did not know what was.
The first brandy had gone down easily, perhaps too easily, but then he was still feeling the influence of the night before. Alcohol might not be good for a man’s wits or his future prospects, but it was ideal for ensuring a dreamless sleep.
