Tremaine's True Love by Grace Burrowes Read Free Book Online

Vicar going on about,” Nick asked, “with all that ‘the Lord will provide for the less fortunate according to their deserts,’ and ‘the laborer is worthy of his wage’?”
    Leah rested her head on Nick’s knee, a rare gesture of weariness.
    “He was referring to Addy Chalmers,” she said. “Nita likely prevailed upon the vicarage for some charity. Addy has a number of children and her family turned their backs on her years ago.”
    “Five children now. Five living,” Nick said, for Nita had reminded him of the total rather pointedly. According to Nita’s clipped recitation, the oldest was eleven, an age at which Nick had been haring all over the shire on his pony, his half brother Ethan at his side, and nothing more pressing on his mind than whether to put a toad in the tutor’s boot or in his bed.
    “Five children,” Leah said, “and winter is only half over. I’ll send a basket. I should have sent one by now. Children must eat, despite the sins of the mother or the father. I, of all people, know this.”
    More old business, for prior to their marriage, Leah had endured her share of scandal and heartbreak. Nick had his spies in the stables though, and knew Nita had already seen to the basket.
    “Addy Chalmers doesn’t sin in solitude,” he said. “My most enthusiastic sinning was ever undertaken in company. To the extent that Nita’s charitable, she has my admiration, but she has no regard for her station.”
    Leah patted his thigh, then straightened, which was prudent of her. A man married less than a year was prone to certain thoughts when private with his wife, particularly when that dear lady was in need of comfort, the door was locked, and the brazier giving off a cozy warmth.
    Alas, Leah had also recently become a mother, and restraint was still the marital order of the day.
    And the night.
    “I have endless admiration for Nita,” Leah said. “She’s been very helpful acquainting me with the household matters, but, Nicholas, I don’t think galloping off at all hours to tend to the sick and the dying is making Nita happy.”
    “It’s not making her married, you mean. Perhaps she can find a younger son who’s turned up medical.”
    Though where Nick would find one of those for Nita, he did not know. This medical younger son would have to be a forward-thinking chap with some means. Nita needed somebody with a light heart too, not full of death or Scripture, and it wouldn’t hurt if the fellow were inclined to have a large family.
    Nicholas’s father had maintained that women with large families were too busy managing their own broods to wander into mischief. Nita didn’t wander into mischief, she charged at it headlong.
    “Come spring, we’ll open a campaign to see Nita settled,” Leah said. “Kirsten, Susannah, and Della will abet us. I think Della has taken an interest in Mr. St. Michael.”
    Of all the burdens Nick shared with his dear wife, the burden of being head of his family was the one he most appreciated her counsel about—even when she was wrong.
    “Della isn’t out yet, lovey. She shouldn’t be noticing any gentlemen.” Besides, Nick had St. Michael in mind for Kirsten, who, like St. Michael, suffered no fools and didn’t put on airs. “Why do you think Della is considering St. Michael?”
    Leah hopped off her stool and took her stack of papers to the brazier. One at a time, she fed her menus to the flames.
    “When was the last time Della stirred from her rooms before late morning, Nicholas?”
    Well, damn. “When your handsome, desirable, and ever-so-widowed brother Trenton came to call over the summer.”
    “Your strategy to have the family breakfast together isn’t working, you know.”
    Denying the Haddonfield siblings breakfast trays in the hope they’d at least start their day from the same table had been Nick’s strategy, and Leah had been against it. She’d given the staff the appropriate orders, however, and thus she bore the brunt of the