“What are you doing here, Aunt Ellie?”
“And is that any way to greet me?” His expression did not soften. She sighed. “If you must know, this house is so big I thought Regina could use my company. It wasn’t right, your wife living here alone.”
“I left her at Silverley!” he thundered.
“Don’t you dare shout at Ellie!” Reggie shouted at him. “Andyougo live at Silverley with Miriam. I like it fine right here.”
“I think we will both return to Silverley,” he said in a cold voice, “now that I have no reason to avoid mymotheranymore.”
“Unacceptable.”
“I wasn’t asking your permission. A husband doesn’t need his wife’s permission—for anything,” he said harshly.
She gasped at the meaning. “You have relinquished all rights,” she said fiercely.
He smiled. “Not relinquished. Just refrained from using…until now. After all, your family has gone tosomuch trouble to bring us together again,Icertainly don’t want to disappoint them,” he said cruelly.
“Lady Reggie,” an older woman servant interrupted from the doorway. “It’s time.”
“Thank you, Tess.” Reggie dismissed the nurse with a nod, then turned to James and Conrad and said, “I know you meant well, but you will understand if I don’t thank you for your trouble.”
“You did say you could manage very well, Regan,” James reminded her.
She smiled for the first time since their arrival. It was her old impish grin, and she gave both men a hug and kiss. “So I did. And so I will. Now if you gentlemen will excuse me, I must see to my son.”
James and Conrad burst into great gales of laughter as Reggie left the room. Her husband stood stock-still, rooted to the floor, his mouth open, a look of complete stupefaction on his face.
“What did I tell you, Connie?” James roared. “Is the look on his face worth all the trouble he put us through or is it not?”
Chapter 27
NICHOLAS downed his third brandy in twenty minutes and poured another. James Malory and Conrad Sharpe, his shadows for so long, had just left his house, and he was still stinging from the amusement they had derived at his expense. Even so, he told himself, he had more important matters to simmer over.
He sat in what had so recently been his study, now a small music room. A music room! If that wasn’t a piece of malicious spite, he didn’t know what was. A man’s study was sacred. And she hadn’t just changed the study, she’d eliminated it entirely.
Had she expected him never to return? Or had she hoped he would? Damnation take her. His sweet, beautiful wife had turned into a vengeful, hot-tempered woman in the same mold as her two younger uncles. Damnation take them too.
Eleanor paced the room, casting disapproving looks at Nicholas every time he raised the brandy glass to his lips. He was stewing in his resentment.
“What the bloody hell did she do with my papers, my desk, my books?”
Eleanor steeled herself to be calm. “You just learned that you have a son. Is this is all you can ask about?”
“Are you saying you don’t know where she put my things?”
Eleanor sighed. “In the attic, Nicky. All of it is in the attic.”
“You were here when she turned my house upside down?” he accused.
“I was here, yes.”
“And you didn’t try to stop her?” he asked incredulously.
“For heaven’s sake, Nicky, you took a wife. You couldn’t expect to keep a bachelor residence after getting married.”
“I didn’t ask for a wife,” he said bitterly. “And I expected her to remain where I put her, not trespass here. If she wanted to redecorate, why the bloody hell couldn’t she satisfy herself with remodeling Silverley?”
“Actually, I believe she liked Silverley the way it was.”
