“You only have yourself to blame for feeling I hid my strangeness from you,” she quipped. “No sane woman would recruit a man like you to lie to her landlord. You should have known from the first what I was.”
“I knew you only to be desperate.”
“A thin line.”
“Hm.”
Seeing no reason to denounce her—least of all to incriminate himself—Nicolas assented at last. “If you do not wish me to involve myself for the time being, then I will not. But I would heartily recommend you—”
“You need not say another word, sir, for it would be spoken in vain.”
Knowing he was defeated—knowing he should not have cared anyway about this woman he barely knew—he extended hishand for her to take, lifting her to her feet. She stumbled slightly forward, colliding with him again. Softly, this time.
“Mad,” Nicholas whispered, looking down at her. She could not have been mad. Not with eyes like hers. “I...”
He did not know what he had planned to say, and it did not matter. The moment his lips parted, the doors nearby creaked open and laughter flowed therefrom.
Panic flashed in Miss Tate’s face as she quickly stepped back. She looked helplessly toward Nicholas, who edged toward the balustrade, prepared to jump over and run. Being caught together, no matter the circumstances, would only result in calamity.
He shot into a stand as the door whined open, confident that Miss Tate would lie about their meeting under dark.
But the moment he sought to leave, he caught movement from Miss Tate in the corner of his eye.
Her face, no longer panicked, was frozen in terror. Her hands clutched at her chest, and suddenly, her body convulsed.
Nicholas’s blood turned to ice in his veins as she fell toward the ground, spasms wracking her body. He had never seen anything like it in his life, but jumped quickly to action.
“Miss Tate,” he cried, catching her before she hit the ground. “Miss Tate!”
“Amelia?” a shocked voice said from behind him.
There were more bodies, then, closing in on them. Hands and fingers reaching for the convulsing form of Miss Tate. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and a woman screamed.
“Fetch Papa!” someone ordered. “You must fetch himnow!”
Nicholas held on to Miss Tate fiercely as the door opened and closed behind him. He froze in fear, brushing the hair out of her face.
“What is the matter with her?” he asked. “Miss Tate, please—”
“The Duke of Avon...” the woman beside him gasped. “But it isyou...! What were you doing with my cousin?”
A more complicated question had never been asked.
Nicholas glanced at the woman beside him—his eyes leaving Miss Tate for only a second. She resembled Miss Tate somewhat. A relative...
A relative who had seen Nicholas with Miss Tate. Who, despite the agony her cousin suffered, smiled at the sight of him.
CHAPTER TEN
“The chances are not nil that she merely feigned the attack to ensure you would be caught with her. I could pretend such a thing, need-be. And I reckon I would be rather convincing at it too. Shall I show you?”
Samuel waved his spoon around with authority, then returned it to his porridge.
Nicholas, for his part, glowered at him from across the table inside Riverside Court’s breakfast room. The sun streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, striking him painfully in the eyes. He pressed them shut, having barely slept an hour that night after his return from the Bodleian party.
“Truly, I cannot tell whether you are being facetious for your own amusement or simply cruel, as you know no other way to be. Let the matter rest, Samuel,” Nicholas warned, turning his face from the sun. “The woman does not deserve to be spoken of as a matter of gossip. She is not well.”
“Yes, that much was plain when she fell at your feet.” He took another mouthful of his porridge. “But you really had no idea about the mother? EvenIknew about the mother!”
