“Walter seemed to believe the Countess von Kirchen is your mistress. Is she?” Chase threw out the question after they slowed their horses and walked them along the riverbank west of town. Nicholas had not accused him of betrayal outright when he revealed the Home Office inquiry, but the wait for his horse had been very silent.
“I suppose she is.”
“You don’t know?”
“‘Mistress’ implies an arrangement. There isn’t one. At least I have not willingly agreed to one.”
“Might you have, in a weak moment, agreed to one unwillingly?”
Nicholas laughed, more to himself than at Chase. “Possibly. There were a few weak moments in the last few days.”
Chase remembered how the countess had shown an aggressive side at Nicholas’s dinner party. When he foisted her off on Nicholas himself, he had not anticipated an entanglement. If he had been thinking about anyone other than Minerva, and how beautiful she looked when Nicholas brought her over, he might have guessed that the countess would make her own arrangement with the new duke, and quickly.
That was the problem with inappropriate women of a certain class. They had expectations, even if those did not include marriage.
“Speaking of mistresses, how is Miss Hepplewhite?” Nicholas asked.
“She is not my mistress.”
“Forgive me. Speaking of lovers, how is she?”
“Doing quite well. Sanders informed her that some of the funds were being released, and she availed herself of a few pounds. Also the valuation of that business came in handsomely high.”
“That complicates matters for you, I expect,” Nicholas said.
It was not a turn in the conversation that Chase had expected. “Somewhat.”
“In the least you do not have a clear field anymore. Word will spread fast. Every lord with more privilege than money will consider her a catch. If not for your interest in her, I would myself.”
“They will be wasting their time. She has no interest in marrying.”
“And here I thought I might be hosting a wedding breakfast soon. She doesn’t seem fitting for the inappropriate woman category either. I assumed she was your lover, but that things were moving to a more formal arrangement.”
“It is complicated, as you said.”
“Perhaps not as much as you think. It isn’t like you are a fortune hunter. She probably knows that your vocation is by choice, not necessity.” Nicholas turned a big smile on him. “Why not propose, and see just how uncomplicated it might be?”
Because she has said, bluntly, that she will never marry again.In light of her first marriage, he understood that. He would like to think she knew she could trust him to never be like Finley, ever, no matter how provoked or how drunk or how angry, but he wondered if she could believe that about any man.
He had not weighed marriage in a specific way because of that, but he did not want to lose her either. He certainly did not want to watch other men pursuing her, even if he did not think she would change her mind about marriage.
“My thinking on finding some semblance of a formal alliance has taken other directions,” he said.
“You had better finish that thinking soon. I give you a fortnight at best before the calls start. She met enough people at my dinner for a few families to have a foot in the door.”
“I was expecting to annoy you today, not have you annoy me.”
“You annoyed me plenty. I’m just getting revenge,” Nicholas said. “I am actually enjoying myself. Say, are you going to tell me why uncle gave her that legacy?”
“No.”
Nicholas shrugged. “I suppose it was another example of his eccentric generosity. I have received letters from some other recipients. They are hoping, I think, that I am just as peculiar as he was and will continue the tradition of passing out gold coins on impulse.”
Chase stopped his horse and grabbed at the harness on Nicholas’s. “Now I am truly annoyed. You might have told me about this.”
“I assumed you knew. You asked about the gold. You were correct, by the way. There was another hoard in Whiteford House.”
“Not about the gold, about his eccentric generosity of giving out those coins.”
