Chapter 1: Nikolai Whitclair
“He wants nothing of a god but eternity and a heaven to throne in.”
CORIOLANUS 5.4.22-24
NIKOLAI WHITCLAIR
BLOOD. There was blood everywhere.
Dripping off of Aliana Ashford along with the rainwater, making her formerly white gown cling to her body like a second skin. Soaking in her chestnut hair and spattered across her face like freckles. Pooling at her feet as she cradled something heavy-looking and decidedly revolting in her slender arms. Upon further inspection, Nikolai saw that it was an oblong shape, wrapped in an equally blood-coated burlap sack.
“Duchess,” he greeted her. “I must say, this is not the greeting I expected from you.”
She was silent. After a moment of observation, he saw that her chest was heaving, that the blood on her face now had tear tracks in it. Her mouth was trembling, those full lips aquiver. Was the unbreakable, impenetrable Aliana Ashford... crying? Somehow the sight was more terrifying than the vision of her threatening him or plotting schemes against him.
Her lips moved. He strained to hear the word that fell from them.
“Could you repeat yourself, Duchess?” he asked.
“I said, I am a countess,” she corrected him. A blank look covered her face beneath all the blood. “I am not a Duchess.”
He raised his eyebrows at her, too shocked by the second statement to question her first. “You mean to say that the wife of a duke is no longer called a Duchess? I know you think highly of yourself, Lady Aliana, but you cannot go changing the titles of English nobility as you wish.”
“I did not marry a duke, and hence I am not a Duchess.” Some of the fire was coming back into her eyes, and he savoured the sight. His rival, his enemy was beginning to look familiar once more.
God, he savoured the very words she spoke. I did not marry. Aliana Ashford was not married to Seth Martell. The phrase sounded too good to be true.
“Did the poor Duke not make it to the altar, then?” Nikolai leaned against his doorframe and watched Aliana shiver in the rain as sleet pounded down on the grounds of the Whitclair’s manor—its size significantly reduced, of course, since half of it had been carved out and given to the Count of Markham so many years ago. “I am certain that your current appearance would have scared off any man, let alone one with so weak a constitution as Seth Martell.”
She opened her mouth—then closed it. It was this, out of all the things about her tonight (showing up at his door covered in blood and announcing that she had not married the Duke of Rothford) that made him stop in surprise. She always had a witty quip or epigram at hand, her ability to make any crowd laugh and gravitate around her something he had always envied. He himself was only eloquent when he spoke to her or one of his family members.
“Nikolai.” The rain was washing more and more of the blood off of her face, revealing hollow eyes with dark circles beneath them and plastering her chestnut hair to her collar. “I, I...”
“Aliana,” he found himself saying. “I ought to have asked you this the moment you appeared on my step. What in thunder are you doing here?”
“Nikolai Whitclair, I wish to God that I knew.”
And then she was marching past him, much to the chagrin of his servants, and throwing the door open as if she belonged there and was mistress of the place. Her long hair was further cleaving to her back, undone from its usual chignon with its pins and pearls, and dripping pink-tinged water onto the white tile. The poor maids were scrambling to mop it up as he heard the door shut behind him with a bang! in the wind.
“My lady,” he heard his butler, Jasper Atkinson, greet Aliana. “Should I prepare a room for your... guest, my lord?”
He sighed, trying to compose himself, trying to rearrange the situation around him into some semblance of order. Aliana ought to be at her wedding night to Seth Martell. She ought to be wearing a white dress and dancing in a castle somewhere, not showing up at his home, bloodied and dishevelled and looking like she had just been hunting through the wilderness. Yet she was not. And he would have to accept that and adapt to it.
“Yes. Prepare a room for Lady Aliana, and send someone to fetch towels to dry her off. We will be in the...” he tried to think of the room that his mother would least hate for her to drip all over.
“In the green drawing room,” Aliana interjected. “Thank you, Jasper.”
Bloody hell, she even spoke as if she lived here already... and how did she know his butler’s name?
As if reading his mind, she added, “Your mother invites me over for tea more often than you would think. Most of the time, it is because she is so disappointed by her son’s absence.”
Nikolai remained nonchalant, ignoring the slight twinge in his heart at her words and offered her his arm. It was, after all, the gallant thing to do, and if nothing else he was a gentleman. “To the green drawing room, then. And Jasper, bring us a spot of tea.”
Aliana tucked the sack under her right arm and pressed her hand into the crook of his elbow. She was freezing, her body feeling like a block of ice against him even through his layers of clothing. He had the insane urge to wrap himself around her thin frame and care for her. Why on earth was he having such impulses toward Aliana Ashford of all people?
She was the woman who had done nothing but give him grief ever since she had come into this world five years after him. She was the daughter of the man who had cunningly stolen Nikolai’s father’s property right from beneath him. She was engaged to a man whom he utterly despised. He had absolutely no reason to care for her!
Except that... he’d seen her cry tonight. She was clinging to him like he was a lifeline in a storm. She had obviously been through some ordeal and had for some reason come to Nikolai of all people for help. She was now unattached from that dreadful Seth Martell. She wasn’t a Duchess. She could be... she could be...
Stop. She will never be yours.
“You can put down the sack, you know.” He nodded to the burlap sack she still cradled protectively in her arms.
And for some reason that made her cry even more, a fresh flood of tears wiping away the blood. He passed her his pocket square. “Thank you,” she said.
It was perhaps the first time they had been cordial to each other in their years of enmity and the barely-civil series of jabs, weaponized words, and petty jokes they had launched at one another.
“Why are you here, Aliana?” He stood, pacing the room.
Nikolai couldn’t sit, not now, not when there was too much energy coursing through his body and demanding release. He could scarcely look at her, not when she was sitting there dripping blood onto his furniture without a care in the world. Not when she had shown up in such a... such a vulnerable state, one that rendered his usual slings and arrows pointless and broken. One that made it impossible for him to even think of treating her as harshly as they usually treated each other.
“Should you not be on your honeymoon right now?”
She was still silent. He went on, trying to provoke some reaction out of her.
“I’m sure you ought to be having a splendid time in Paris, wrapped up in the arms of your loving husband, trying not to laugh at his pathetic, impotent attempts to consummate—“
“My father’s head,” Aliana snapped, tears still glittering on her face like moondust. “My father’s head is in this bag, and if you speak one more word yours might roll too.”
