It was for the best.
But it felt like a knife in his gut.
He had been startled to hear George Fitzhenry apologize to Mira for the situation in which he had placed her, stunned to hear the man offer her money so that she might leave. Nicholas had not thought George had the courage or the honor to do either.
He had been so surprised he had almost laughed out loud. Then he had heard Mira accept the money, thanking George in a voice thick with emotion, and Nicholas had felt a burning loss unlike anything he could remember, a grief every bit as intense as the grief he had felt when his mother had died.
In that sense, Mira’s leaving was nothing like Olivia’s.
Nicholas threw open the door of the tower room, startling Pawly in the midst of stirring the dust about the floor with a broom. Nicholas made his laborious way across the room to the fireplace, and shot Pawly a dark look before sinking down into his chair and propping up his leg.
Pawly dropped the broom where he stood and came to sit across from Nicholas, the difference in rank between them fading in the wake of Nicholas’s obvious need.
“And?” Pawly prompted.
Nicholas stared into the fire, watching the flames licking the logs in a frenzied passion. A passion that destroyed with its fervor.
“She is leaving.”
“Who?”
“Mira,” he snapped. “Miss Fitzhenry.”
Pawly leaned forward in his chair, barely balancing on the edge of the seat. “What do you mean, she is leaving?” he asked, outrage mingling with the confusion in his voice. “Where is she going? And why?”
“Where, I do not know.” Nicholas focused again on the fire, anchoring himself in his concentration of its violent beauty. “Why? Because she can. She only agreed to the marriage and came to Blackwell because she had no choice. But now her pathetic uncle has finally found his backbone, and has given her the means and his blessing to leave.” He kept his voice carefully neutral, but he could not help the faint tremor that betrayed him now. “And so she is leaving.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Nicholas could see Pawly shaking his head slowly. “No,” his friend insisted, “it makes no sense. I saw you two together yesterday. She was holding on to you like you were her own soul.”
“That was gratitude. I did save her life, after all.”
Pawly snorted. “So did I, if you want to be particular. But she didn’t cling to me like a limpet. And there was more than gratitude in her eyes when she looked at you. No, my lord, that girl is in love with you.”
Nicholas shook his head firmly. “I just saw her. The only thing in her eyes when she looked at me was fear. And I heard her take the money from her uncle. She is leaving.”
Pawly jumped to his feet and began pacing. “If she is leaving, then it is because something has changed. When she left Dowerdu this morning, she seemed anxious and upset. Maybe something there is sending her off.”
“I cannot imagine what.”
Pawly stopped in his tracks and faced Nicholas squarely. In an uncharacteristically sharp voice he took Nicholas to task. “Well, my lord, something in that cottage scared the girl. And you better be thinking what it might be, or you are going to lose her.”
Nicholas met his friend’s eye and raised one brow in challenge. “Perhaps I scared her off,” he shot back, memories of their passion taunting him. He had thought the passion shared, but perhaps he had frightened her somehow with his intensity. Perhaps he had bungled it all.
He shrugged. “It does not really matter. She is leaving tonight, and I will not stop her if she wishes to go. Besides,” he added, letting his gaze drift back to the fireplace, “besides, it is really for the best.”
“It is not for the best,” Pawly muttered.
An uneasy silence filled the room, but Nicholas had no interest in breaking it. He continued to stare hard into the fire, letting everything else melt away until he had recovered a sense of cold, empty calm.
When Pawly spoke again, his voice was hushed, but earnest.
“You are not a child anymore, my lord.” Pawly ignored the thunderous rage that clouded Nicholas’s face. “You could not have saved your mother, but you have the power to stop this.”