The words unfroze the boy, and he scurried into the room, closing the door firmly behind him. “I would. Please.”
Nick hid his smile, instead watching his visitor in the mirror as he finished his toilet. He adjusted the sleeves of the linen shirt he wore before he smoothed its body along his torso. Lifting his cravat from where it lay on a nearby chair, he said, “Was there something you wanted?”
James shook his head, distracted by the sure, strong movements of Nick’s hands as he began the intricate collection of movements that would result in an elaborately knotted cravat. “How do you know how to do that?”
Nick paused. “I’ve known how to do it for a very long time.”
James crept closer, transfixed. “But … how did you learn?” Nick thought for a moment. “I suppose my valet taught me.”
“Oh.” There was silence as James considered the answer. “I shall have to learn to do that before I go to school, I would think.”
Nick turned. “Would you like me to teach you?”
The boy’s eyes lit up. “Would you mind very much?”
“Not at all.” Nick removed the strip of linen from his person and placed it around James’s neck. Turning the boy to the looking glass, he walked James through the movements until the cravat was a fair approximation of the knot Nick had created earlier.
James leaned into the mirror, considering the neckpiece from several angles as Nick moved away to don the rest of his dinner attire. “It looks very well.”
There was something in the boy’s pride that tugged at Nick’s memory. While he might not remember how he learned to tie a cravat, he did remember the powerful desire for approval, for acceptance as a man.
When Nick had been James’s age, his mother had deserted them—absconding in the middle of the night with little but the clothes on her back, leaving twin sons and a desolate husband in her wake. In the weeks following, his father had disappeared, as well, pulling further and further into himself, leaving Nick and Gabriel to fend for themselves—to survive the crushing blow of the loss of two parents. They’d been shipped off to school within a month, thanks to the intervention of a committed aunt who had been aware of the devastation their mother had wrought.
Nick had spent the first year at school working as hard as he could—eager to impress his father, convinced that if, when he and Gabriel returned home for the summer holiday, he had received top honors at school, somehow he could convince his father that his sons were enough.
He had learned quickly that nothing would ever be enough to assuage his father’s pain and guilt at losing his marchioness. But looking at this boy, the young, resilient Earl of Reddich, he remembered what it was like to try. And to believe that he might succeed.
And he wanted to give this boy what he had never had.
“Indeed, it does. You will have to practice to get it perfect, but it shouldn’t take you long.” Nick buttoned his waistcoat, watching the boy’s eyes light with pleasure as he unwrapped the linen from his neck and practiced in the mirror once more. When the tip of the earl’s tongue emerged at the corner of his mouth, and he screwed up his face trying to recall the movements he had just learned, Nick laughed and came forward to help. When the cravat was tied once again, James grinned up at him.
Who would have guessed that here, out on the Yorkshire moors, he would find such satisfaction as he did when he made the Townsend children smile?
Of course, there was nothing childlike about the elder Townsend.
As James destroyed his handiwork to try his new craft once more, Nick allowed his thoughts to turn to Isabel. One moment, she was pushing him away, telling him that she wanted him gone from her house and her life, and the next she was confessing her past, and her secrets and coming apart in his arms, sweet and sensual and splendid.
He’d never met a woman like her.
The way she had laid herself bare, confiding the story of her father’s desertion, of her mother’s desolation, of her own commitment to keeping what little family she was left with together, of keeping Townsend Park working despite the devastating blow of the loss of its master—Nick was entirely intrigued by this enigmatic female.
“Around the other bit once more,” he coached James as he reached for his topcoat.
James followed the instruction carefully. “I have been thinking.”
“Yes?”
“I think you should marry Isabel.”
Nick froze, coat halfway up his arms as he considered the boy’s serious countenance. “I beg your pardon? ”
“It is logical, really.”
“Is it?” Of all the things the boy could have said, this was not the one that Nick had expected.
James nodded once. “Yes. Isabel would make an excellent wife. Shall I tell you why? ”
“By all means.”
The boy took a deep breath, as though he had been practicing his words. “She is very good at running a house. She knows her sums better than anyone I’ve known. Also, she can sit a horse as well as a man. Perhaps when it stops raining you will see for yourself.”
“I shall look forward to it.” Nick was surprised by the truth in his words.
“Also, she is excellent at charades.”
“A quality any man should look for in a wife.”
“There are other things, too.” James tilted his head, thinking. “She is not ugly.”
Nick felt a smile tugging at his lips. “No, she is not. But may I suggest that you not say it in quite that way to her? ”
“I shan’t. But perhaps you could say it. Girls like compliments.”