Jamie winked at her. “So help me to understand, Nicholas—you held a pistol to her head?”
Nicholas’s rich baritone voice sounded in her ear. “Aye, I did.”
“You held a pistol to the head of a woman ripe with child?”
“Aye, and clearly she found it charming.”
Bethie gaped at him in disbelief. “You’re daft!”
“Is that normally how you seduce women, Nicholas—with cold steel?”
“Of course not. To seduce them, I use hot steel.”
Bethie gasped, shocked by the lewdness of his comment, felt her face flush.
“I’m sorry, love. Did I say something wrong?”
“My apologies, Bethie, dear. Clearly my son has spent far too long in his own company.”
The carriage rounded a corner, drew to a halt.
Alec glanced out the window. “Ah, here we are. Are we agreed, gentlemen? One of us is to be at Bethie’s side at all times, and under no circumstances is she to be abandoned to the vicious company of women.”
Jamie and Nicholas responded with a single, “Aye.”
Feeling more cosseted and protected than she’d ever felt before, but nonetheless terrified, she accepted Nicholas’s help alighting from the carriage and stared up at the large, three-storied brick house before them. A friend of his father’s—a man named Benjamin Franklin—had agreed to host a dinner party to welcome Nicholas home and to introduce Bethie into society.
“When they see my affection for you, it will curb their tongues,” Alec had explained the night before.
After dinner last night, Nicholas and Jamie had taken turns teaching Bethie what manners and etiquette she would likely need. Though she’d been horrified at the thought of a party, the two of them had made her laugh until she’d quite forgotten to worry. But now, as she stared up at the grand house and its many glass windows, her fears returned.
They had agreed to tell a simple version of the truth: Nicholas had encountered Bethie, a widow living alone, far west on the frontier and had fallen in love with her, claimed her as his wife, and helped her and little Isabelle to escape to Fort Pitt, where they had survived the siege. That they had not been married in a church was a fact they had saved for the ears of the priest, who was set to marry them in a private ceremony on Saturday—only two days hence.
Of course, Bethie had not yet agreed to marry Nicholas, but it didn’t seem to matter to him. Everyone, including Nicholas’s father, seemed to believe the question of their marriage was settled. Whenever she pointed out yet another reason why Nicholas should take a more fitting bride, the men cast aside her concerns and reassured her that everything would be fine. But Bethie wasn’t convinced. Nicholas had done so much for her. She did not want to repay his kindness by becoming a source of shame or embarrassment for him and his family.
“Shall we?” Nicholas slipped his arm around her waist, gave her a reassuring smile.
Her heart swelled with love for him. Though she fancied him in leather breeches—or none at all—the sight of him dressed as a gentleman made her belly flutter. He wore a matching coat and breeches of dark green velvet with brass buttons. His waistcoat was of ivory satin and matched his ivory silk stockings. But he looked more manly than the other gentlemen she’d seen on the street—broader in the shoulder, more muscular in the thigh with no need to wear pads on his well-defined calves. And his hair, although tied back with a black ribbon, still hung to his waist.
She adjusted Belle’s weight in her arms, let Nicholas guide her up the steps and through the doors, Alec and Jamie before them.
“Good to see you as always, Ben.” As Bethie watched, Alec shook the hand of a heavyset older man with a balding head, large, kind eyes, and a firm mouth. “Thank you for hosting this tonight. I am in your debt.”
“Nonsense, Alec. Come in, and make yourself at home. Welcome, Jamie. You’re looking well. Now where is Nicholas? I’ve a mind to take a switch to his backside for worrying us so these past years.”
Nicholas chuckled. “You can try, old man, but I doubt it will reform me.”
Bethie saw surprise and a touch of sadness in Master Franklin’s eyes as he measured Nicholas against the younger man he remembered.
“My God, a boy rode to war, and a man has returned.” He shook Nicholas’s hand fiercely. “I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see you alive and whole.”
“Thank you, sir. Allow me to introduce my wife, Elspeth Stewart Kenleigh, and our daughter, Isabelle.”
At the sound of her name, Isabelle buried her little face shyly against Bethie’s breast, but Bethie forced herself to meet the kindly man’s gaze. “’Tis a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
“The pleasure is entirely mine.” Master Franklin took her free hand, kissed it. “You make me wish I were a young man again, my dear.”
Bethie heard Nicholas click his tongue in disapproval. “What would your wife say, sir?”
