Page 44 of A Sight to Behold
“Wendy notices everything, Pippa. I’ve never been able to hide much from her.” His mien fell and he looked out the window, avoiding Pippa’s gaze.
“Do you wish for me to take you back to your sister so you can order the cake?”
“No, no. It’s not that.” He forced a smile, but Pippa didn’t believe the gesture.
“Would she disapprove of me?” Pippa bit her tongue when she’d asked the questions Of course, she would.Stupid question.Everybody disapproved of the clumsy goose.
“Wendy is naturally curious. So much that she snuck away when my parents took the carriage to the market one day. My father was a carpenter and was on his way to offer his handiwork for sale.” Nick’s eyes searched Pippa’s as if he expected her to be appalled by a carpenter’s son. But she only asked another question.
“Where were you?”
“I had started an apprenticeship after my first term of university. I went to work with the local physician.”
“You studiedandworked?”
He shrugged. “Yes, the books, tuition, instruments… it was too expensive for my parents, and I didn’t want to use any of Wendy’s dowry. She was only fourteen then.”
“It’s laudable that you worked so hard to study for such a noble profession.”
“If I hadn’t chosen such an expensive course of study, my father wouldn’t have had to try to sell more than he had in his shop. If—” Nick heaved for air—“I’ve never told anyone about this Pippa. Let’s discuss something else. Where are we going?”
“Please tell me. Don’t you trust me?”
Now his eyes met hers. At the lower rim she could see some tears welling up. He wasn’t crying but his emotions were evident. “I trust you with my life. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be here with you. I wouldn’t risk being seen in a compromising position with the daughter of a duke. I could lose my business and so could Felix, Andre, Wendy, and Alfie.”
Pippa felt terrible. In all of her selfishness to seize a kiss from the handsome doctor, she’d toyed with his life. He was right. One word from her to accuse him, or any evidence of their liaison, and Nick could lose everything he’d worked for his practice. Itwas too cruel to think but she knew the peerage committee, her father’s friends, and the gossips. If they treated her, one of their own class, as a piece of rubbish, Nick had no chance. “I wouldn’t let it happen.”
“It’s not about me as much as Wendy. You see, my parents had an accident on the way home from the market. Villagers carried them home, but they succumbed to their wounds in Wendy’s arms that night before I came home from the apprenticeship.”
Pippa clasped both hands against her mouth. “We both know the pain of loss.” Pippa’s eyes burned with unshed tears over her mother’s death and with empathy for Nick. “I’m sorry.”
“By the time I returned, Wendy had soaked up their blood with towels and her own clothes. She’d washed them all night. And after the funeral, she never wanted to set foot in that house again. We sold everything and used the money to pay for my studies. Wendy has been with me since then. She’s under my care, and as a nurse, her prospects are meager. Not even the dowry I continued to save for her will do.”
“Why?”
“Because she knows too much about the human body, it’s unsettling for most men and compromises her. She helps all of us, Felix, Andre, and me. Alfie is an apothecary, but she knows how to administer the medicines he makes; she even knows how to make some of them.”
“And she’s lovely. I saw her.” Pippa thought she should reassure Nick for he seemed deeply concerned. “But I understand how it feels to be without prospects.”
“You? I cannot imagine.”
Pippa didn’t like the tone he’d assumed. As if he could even begin to grasp the pressure on a high-born girl. “It’s just balls, dresses, and offers, you know. They hate me and still make me go to the balls. Every time a distant cousin asks me to dance,it’s his pity I get. Or when it’s not that, then one of the titled bachelors lost a wager. Or they bet on whether they can survive me stumbling over them. I’m the clumsy goose of the Ton and all my wealth won’t protect me from being shunned.”
“But your livelihood doesn’t depend on it.”
“Of course, it does! I cannot access my inheritance without a husband and because of the size of my inheritance, I cannot trust any suitors to want me for me. No one would take the risk to have to my clumsy stumbling enter into their families.” Pippa’s voice wobbled with anger. She knew it sounded unfair compared to Nick’s sad fate, but at least that was substance to his sorrow. All of her trouble were founded in superficiality and gossip. Society’s scorn doomed her to remain alone.
“The day we met, on Monday, were you running away?”
“No, I was spending my father’s allowance before he could spend it on the charlatan he visits every day.”
“Matthews across the street?”
Pippa winced. “He’s terrible.”
“Yes.” Then Nick raised a brow. “But it hadn’t been for him, you wouldn’t have fallen into my lap.” He wrapped his arm around her. “I suppose I should thank him for bringing you into my life.”
Despite everything they’d just shared, and to Pippa’s utmost surprise, Nick seemed closer to her.
