Nicholas' Bargain Ch. 02

So saying, the two men left the secrecy of the library before heading to the study with Hampton wasting no time in pandering. He seated himself at his table, directly opposite Nicholas and gestured to Cole.

"This is my solicitor, Mr Morely. I have brought him here as witness-"

A short bark of laughter interrupted and Hampton's face flinched. Nicholas was sure the old man would start crying soon, and quietened down before the pathetic blubbering could begin. He nodded for the man to continue.

"I wish to tell you here and now, with a witness, that I have agreed to fulfil my part in the bargain. I thereby..."

Nicholas nodded in encouragement. "You need only to say it aloud," he cajoled.

Hampton swallowed, his stomach rolling. "I thereby hand over my daughter."

Nicholas exhaled deeply, leaning forward in the chair as he did so, his body rocking slightly. It had been done. His bones seemed to vibrate within him, the bond between himself and his slave finally forged. He could feel the attachment cementing and it was delicious. Curiously, it feel more potent that usual. Perhaps that was because his last successful bargain with a mortal had been some eight years ago and the sensation had dulled in his memory.

After a few moments, Nicholas righted himself with effort and dampened his elation. He met the look of the grieving man squarely. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Burying his face in his hands, Hampton wept. The solicitor looked utterly bemused and not a little wary and stared from his employer to the dark man. Not knowing what to do, he comforted Hampton as best he could, which was with a gruff pat on the back.

"Now, go," Hampton looked up at Nicholas, his eyes red. "Go and never return. It is over. God, tell me it is over."

Nicholas eyed the man with mild pity and the transgression irritated him. But he collected himself and said in level tones, "God is of no use to you now. But I would not be so precipitate in your dismissal of me. For one, we shall surely meet again when the time comes. There is only one place for you now when you leave here, Hampton."

The older man's throat appeared to work hard, but no words emerged and Cole glanced at him uneasily. His employer seemed to accept the cryptic message from this visitor, but with difficultly.

"My Lord, I shall call someone for you. Your valet perhaps or -" Cole said now but was interrupted when Hampton merely gasped a demand for brandy.

"I need her," Nicholas said, "She needs to come to me; you need to be here. It needs to be now," Nicholas confirmed the next step quietly.

"What – I – but you can't, not here-" Hampton looked at the door quickly. His mind worked fast. Resignation set in as he glared at Nicolas with pleading eyes and received no reaction from the creature. He turned to his solicitor slowly, his actions those of a weary old man for he had expected this in his deepest fears and had planned ahead.

"Tell Cecilia to visit my aunt in Hampstead to drop over the thank you gift for Amelia's debut. She will not question you but will hurry over happily and should be there for the rest of the day. Next, tell the servants to take the rest of the day off, with pay. I want them all out within the hour. And then – and then bring her in and tell her what I told you if she asks questions." He looked away as the boy disappeared, heartsore.

*

The silence in the room was painful. The creature appeared to be content to sit as still as stone and stare unwaveringly. Minutes past. Hampton rose from his chair on shaky legs, unable to bare the sight of Nicholas' face any longer and a feeling of unreality settled over him. After what felt like hours, the house at last quieted. There were no scurrying steps of footmen, no giggling from passing maids. A knock on the door caused Hampton's heart to spasm and he rubbed at his chest idly before settling into his chair with dismal acceptance, calling out a command.

"Uncle?" Lara stepped around Cole and into Lord Hampton's study, bemused.

When she saw the other occupant, her heart sped up. Could it be that Nicholas – Lord Armel, she corrected properly - had asked for her uncle's permission for her hand? But then her uncle regarded her with an expression of such gravity that her fanciful thoughts vanished.

"Is - something the matter?" she asked warily, glancing from Nicholas to her uncle. Her eye paused on the younger man. His body appeared immobile, his face almost... almost stunned.

"Sit down, Lara," the strained tones in her uncle's voice made her stomach flip in uneasiness.

Something terrible must have happened judging by her uncles manner. Something to her mother? Her father? She sent a silent prayer to God

'I know I complain of them fiercely to you, but I love them in my own way. Mother has never been unkind in the way that truly matters and fathers only fault is that he is over-stern and unaffectionate. I can forgive these slights, but please let them be safe.'

But her uncle did not look at her again after she had seated herself.

"You cursed fool, what game do you play with me?" Nicholas' command was so abrupt and violent, so disturbing to the prior ambience of the room that Lara flinched, Cole leaned farther against the wall he was standing by and Lord Hampton cowered.

"I play no game," her uncle breathed. "None at all."

Before anyone could react, Nicholas had crossed to the other side of the table in a single stride and Hampton was bodily dragged from his chair with Nicholas' hands so tight around his neck that the older mans eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible. Calling out, Lara jerked into belated action, fleeing to the two men and wondering in anger why Cole stood there paralysed, useless.

At the touch of the tugging, warm hand on his arm, Nicholas' shrank back and dropped the man. He panted and took a step back from Lara. And another.

Lara murmured apprehensively as she knelt before her uncle, shaking his inert body. He didn't open his eyes but muttered quietly.

"Call someone to help rouse him," she demanded of Cole.

"I wouldn't advise it," a quiet voice intoned.

Lara looked at Nicholas with confused anger before turning back to Cole and cursing him aloud when he only shook his head and said:

"I am sorry."

She dismissed the pathetic man from her mind. Her uncle appeared to have roused himself and sat blinking up at the ceiling before recognition came into his eyes.

Nicholas looked at the scene before him as if from a great height. Finally, he collected himself enough to direct the situation. Turning to the solicitor, he ordered; "Haul him up, get a drink in him. I want to hear it all. Now."

*

Brimming with Brandy, Hampton sat propped on his chair.

"Lara, you are my daughter. Child – it is so complicated-"

"Then edit," Nicholas snarled.

Hampton's eyes seemed to move quickly. "Shortly after my marriage to Cecilia I had a brief affair-" he stopped and looked at Nicholas like a guilty child, "alingeringaffair. The woman fell pregnant and threatened all manner of things when I refused to submit to her demands to leave Cecilia – how could I?" he implored of his audience.

Lara sat, stunned, as she listened to her uncle's shattering confession. Her mind felt sluggish, slow.

"I had thought her gone from my life and the baby too," he looked away, ashamed.

"But then she turned up again, presenting and abandoning a daughter and since Cecilia was in Bath visiting her fevered mother, she was never to know ...we were both living with David and Elizabeth at the time – my sister in law and brother in law - as we were hard up on funds. I had decided to have the baby - " he could not say her name, refused to look at her, "sent to a Home for the Unwated's but here David and Elizabeth intervened. They always wanted a daughter, they said and Elizabeth had been overjoyed at the news. She had become barren following the birth of her boys and felt that such a gift from God should not be abandoned, that the child must be raised by loving hands. So they left for the country with the child and when they returned, easily presented her as their own," he stopped and wept.

Lara shook her head as tears trickled from her cheeks to her clasped hands.

"Lara-" Hampton rose clumsily and skirted the table to her side.

Crying out, Lara rose from the chair and held out her arms in rejection.

"Then, you did not lie. She is mine," Nicholas' wondrous musing bled into Lara's misery.

"What?" she asked, looking from the two men with confused pain. "What does he mean? What does he mean!" she demanded of the man who proclaimed himself as her father.

A vicelike grip on her arm made her loose her footing as she was jerked close to a hard body. Lara glanced up at Nicholas' contorted face looming above her. She knew, then, that she had not imagined the stretched, cruel façade of his that she had thought she had glimpsed in the garden, the night of the ball. She had merely tried to ignore it.

She struggled violently then, knowing him not to be human but something fearful. "Let me go – you're hurting me-!"

Her arm was dropped like a hot coal and she rubbed it, tears blinding her vision.

"Not so fast!" Nicholas whipped round and pointed at the figure creeping to the door, Cole. "I am not finished with you."

"No, master," Cole hung his head.

Nicholas turned once more to the girl by his side, answering her previous question.

"What your uncle – ah, your father – means is that he bargained with a demon with your life some twenty years ago. In exchange for money and power – not to mention a few other additions to get him out of his pathetic scrapes – you were the sacrifice. And I have come to collect. You belong to me now."

"I knew there was something about you," she looked at him with a hard mouth but her eyes were distraught. "But how can such a thing be true?"

"You don't want to know," Cole murmured.

Nicholas laughed sharply at that. "Right you are, man. Right you are."

He moved close to the girl's side again then, brooking the small distance between them and cradled her stiff face in his hands before freeing her hair of its constraints and clips. As it fell to her shoulders, he buried his left hand between the glossy, wavy locks. "What I am to you, is master. Say it, let me hear it on your lips," suddenly, his hand was a claw. His lips were tight, his eyes flashing.

She was his slave. Nicholas accepted the truth with difficulty. He glanced quickly at Cole. Had the boy known all along and not told him? With no way of knowing his thoughts as he was still bonded to him, Nicholas cursed internally.

Cole had been dispatched to Hampton as spy some years ago. He had become Nicholas' property for life after he had refused to hand over his own offspring and Nicholas had been hard pressed to think of ways to punish him. This was mainly due to the fact that Cole had sought his services not for greed or personal interest but because of a deep devotion to another which was unusual for a human. And as the boy had already lost his love to childbirth that option of punishing him for failing to carry out his part of the agreement was out. It was not such an uncharacteristic show of mercy, for Nicholas derived little internal pleasure and contentment from needless spitefulness. It was also not the first time in all his years dealing with humans that had proven unselfish and sincere and Nicholas had always known a degree of reluctant respect for such humans.

Eager to return to his own world, Nicholas had therefore delayed Cole's punishment and incidentally – though not purposefully - allowed Cole a respite. Eventually, however, a purpose for the boy had arisen quite nicely and Nicholas had summoned him to keep tabs on Hampton. Nicholas had thought he had done the job well but now he was not so sure.

"How long have you been fucking the blonde daughter?" he inquired of Cole now, his tones casual.

Cole shook his head, a vein throbbing near his temple as anger coursed through him. "I-"

"Do not lie."

"A year. Almost a year to this day."

"But how long have youwantedher for? Did you hear, Hampton," Nicholas paused and said in almost conversational tones, "Your solicitor has been rutting with your daughter right where we stand, I would imagine. Well? Did you enjoy her here?"

"Yes," Cole bit out.

"Not on the old man's table!" Nicholas shook his head and chuckled with laughter at the sheer seediness of it all.

"You swine – you've been this creature's mole, you've been serving him-" Hampton charged up to Cole and swung at him.

"This gets better and better," Nicholas muttered, turning around and leaning against the table to better view the show.

But out of the corner of his eye, he surveyed Lara. Inside, he was not so self-assured. As his slave – as his possession – she was doomed. As rules dictated, the girl was to be sacrificed on earth - her blood consumed - before her soul rejoined him in his own world. Once there she would be useless. Hampton had certainly got one over on him. But there was something Nicholas could do about it; he could make her his mate and gift her with a life of immortality by his side instead.

But such a decision would be eternal and he could not come to it lightly. Yes, he desired her. To a perturbing degree that he still refused to fully consider. But was that enough for lifelong partnership? He had been alone forever; in all of his millennia of existing he had never once craved partnership. Some of his own kind argued that there was a single mate out there for every demon and that one could either relent and accept their fated mate or turn their backs on them. And thereby say goodbye to their only chance at an every-lasting bond - a kind of bond, the mated demons smugly claimed, that went beyond any mortal-demon bargain based satisfaction.

Nicholas knew he desired her and also knew too well that she could very possibly sway him and led him around by the nose if he allowed his defences to weaken but what of her? Could the same be said for her when it came to him? Sexual compatibility aside, could she now pledge her devotion to him knowing what he was? For if there was thing he was firm about in a mate, it was that she would yield to him completely and submit to him without question – that she would accept him as master, owner, lord and lover.

With a sense of purpose, determination and motivation he had not felt in centuries, Nicholas determined to present Lara with that single question: an eternity with him or an end to her life as would have been the case. Regardless, she belonged to him now as the unbreakable vow had been made by her father. But he would leave her fate in her own hands.

His thoughts were suspended then as a thudding sound caught his attention. Glancing ahead, he saw that the two braying and scuffling men had both tumbled to the ground from the force of the study door opening and unsettling them. Entering on unsteady legs was Amelia, her face tear stained and pink and apparently, she had heard quite enough.