In a drawing room he was as likely to crush a china teacup merely by lifting it in his large hand or, worse, stumble when he tried to make a proper bow. Nick had long since foregone bows. He merely nodded his head.
As a boy he had suffered the usual teasing and taunting from the sons of the peers whom his grandfather introduced to him. They called him a barbarian to his face. When Nick efficiently dispatched one such name-caller by wielding a nine-inch knife, apparently from nowhere, to the youth’s throat, his grandfather confiscated the weapon and told him he must never carry one again. Nick had never gone without a blade before. He had purchased another, but learned its usage must be discreet. To this day, the earl carried a blade in his boot, strapped to his calf.
And so the boys had only called him names when his back was turned.
Patricia had had no such compunctions.
It was an arranged marriage. Nick had stayed with the Union army until the winter of ′65. He made one brief, last stop home, which was completely unsatisfying. There was a wall between him and his father now, due to his knowledge of his own tainted origins and his anger that Derek had lied. Yet Derek, always so open, had not mentioned the change in Nick’s attitude. Nick knew both his parents thought that the long war had changed him.
He arrived in England the following spring, and one year later married the Clarendon heiress. Nick had been smitten at first sight. Patricia had rich, dark-gold hair, almond-shaped green eyes, and a voluptuous figure a man would kill to possess. She was a stunning beauty—and she knew it.
They spent very little time together before their marriage. He was disappointed with her coolness toward him, but assumed she was merely acting “proper,” as the English were wont to do. He was afraid to kiss her—he who had been kissing women since he’d been fourteen. Yet he did, upon two occasions before their marriage. The first time she had let him, giving nothing back, her lips as cool and smooth as marble. The second time she had expressed her displeasure, reminding him that she was a lady and they were not married yet. She had said it so imperiously that Nick’s ears had burned from the set-down. He didn’t touch her again until after the wedding.
There were no fires to tap, at least, not for him.
Patricia submitted to him passively. It was a stunning disappointment.
Nick was not just virile, he liked sex. It was probably partly due to how he was raised. His parents were very open about their love for one another, and his father was very open about his love for his wife—and how much he liked having sex with her. Derek’s hands were constantly on Miranda, sometimes teasing, sometimes not. If he could, he’d drag her off to their bedroom or behind a haystack in broad daylight. The children, Nick, Rathe, and Storm, had heard Miranda cry on more than one occasion: “Derek! The children!”
Nick had foolishly thought that he and Patricia would have such a marriage.
When Patricia became pregnant, the truth came out. She denied Nick access to her bed, bluntly telling him she hated his touch. She even shuddered as she spoke. Nick was deeply hurt— but he refused to feel it. Without betraying his feelings, his face a mask, he had turned on his heel and left her, vowing never to touch her again.
But after Chad’s birth he had broken his vows. He loved her. He wanted her. She was his wife and it was her duty to obey him. He came to her, she submitted. He tried to break down the wall between them afterward, by talking to her. She only wanted him to leave her bed and her room so she could sleep.
He had been stupid in revealing the truth to her. One day, half drunk and aching for just a touch, or even a kind word, missing Texas, his parents, God damn it, missing his father—who wasn’t his father—missing their closeness, he’d gone to Patricia. She didn’t deny him, but as always, making love to her was as exciting as fucking a board. After, looking at the ceiling, eyes closed, feeling about to burst with despair, he started to tell her the story of Chavez. He only got as far as explaining he was one-quarter Indian. Patricia was repulsed.
She began weeping hysterically, accusing him of being a liar and a cheat. She wept over Chad, whom she had shown little interest in, moaning that she had given birth to a “breed.” She had tried to attack Nick with her hands clawed like talons, hatred in her eyes. Nick had restrained her physically, then left. Because of her horror and shame, she told no one of his heritage.
Eight months later she ran away with her lover, the Earl of Boltham.
If Nick had any feelings left for her, they died when she abandoned him and his son.
But she was his wife. She was, more important, Chad’s mother. He went after them. He found them easily enough, at a tavern in Dover, about to flee to France. Boltham he challenged to a duel. Although handsome, the man was so inept Nick could not kill him. He only shot off his kneecap and crippled him for life. “A reminder,” he told Boltham, “never touch what belongs to me.”
Patricia he dragged back to Dragmore, ignoring her hate-filled glances and her sullen refusal even to speak with him. She would not appear with him in Society, fine. He hated Society. They would stay at Dragmore. He would never touch her again, he promised. All he demanded from her was that she be a good mother to Chad. Patricia refused.
She hated their son as she hated him.
If Nick hadn’t hated her before, he hated her now.
But he did not kill her. Nor was he sorry she was dead.
She refused to leave her rooms. Nick did not care. Six months later there was the fire in the south wing. It was completely destroyed, except for the walls and the tower. Patricia’s body was found, charred beyond recognition. All the staff had been asleep in their own quarters near the stables, alerted to the inferno only when it was too late. Her screams would haunt them a lifetime. Nick had not been home that night.
The earl’s relationship with his wife was no secret. That she had left him, that he had crippled Boltham, that he had forced her to return to Dragmore, their savage fights, were all common gossip. Yet Nick never expected the local sheriff to arrest him for murder.
The trial rocked England to its very bones.
The small county courthouse was packed every day, like a circus. All of London’s finest came to see the most shocking trial of the century of one of their own peers. There were witnesses every day for the prosecution. All of the Earl’s “strange” habits were brought forth—and it soon became clear he was no Englishman, and never had been.
He drank immoderately. He smoked. He gambled. He cursed openly. He was an avowed, unrepentant atheist. He was a profligate rake—and had not been faithful to his wife.
Most of these charges were true, but in the face of this character assassination, Nick did not try to defend himself, not even on the question of his fidelity—for he had been faithful to Patricia before she had left him. He sensed uncannily that any defense would not matter. Society wanted to believe what they were hearing; they wanted his nonconforming blood.
His relations with his wife were aired publicly. Servants testified that she had hated him from the day of their wedding. That it had not been a marriage like any other. That he hated her, threatened her. That recently the countess had been confined, or locked up, in her rooms. Witnesses even said they’d heard he’d beaten her up. Of course these leading statements were overruled, but the damage was done.
He was violent. He had coldly, calculatingly crippled the Earl of Boltham in the duel. He carried a knife, and used it with the dispatch of an assassin. Even as a boy he had plied the knife in violence against another young boy, who, now grown, enthusiastically testified to that long-ago day when they had been fourteen. That his wife had been so appalled by him she had run away from him was noted. The prosecution’s observation that Patricia had run away in terror for her life was objected to by the defense and overruled.
