That he had not returned.
Still, she could not stand here on the carriage step all evening. It would seem they were once more at an impasse. “Why would you want to accompany me?”
“Because I do not trust you not to flee.” He cocked his head to the side, studying her in that intense manner he had always possessed.
She opened her mouth to protest. “I—”
“Do not,” he interrupted, “pretend you did not already entertain the thought.”
Her cheeks went hot. She had, of course.
Damn him all over again.
“Do not act as if you know me, Needham,” she said coolly, entering the carriage at last, ever cognizant of the servants overhearing their tense exchange.
She had ceased caring what others thought of her a long time ago, but she hardly wanted to stand about arguing with him for the next hour. The sooner she got into the carriage, the sooner she could see Tom. And it would appear her husband had no intention of vacating the carriage so she could travel in peaceful solitude.
The door closed as she settled herself on the squab opposite Needham, settling her skirts into place and doing her best to pretend as if he were not there. An impossible feat to achieve, as it happened. Needham had always set her pulse racing and filled the very air with a pulse of electric awareness. As he had said, curse him, some things did not change.
“I know you, Nell.” His low voice interrupted her thoughts as the carriage swayed into motion. “Perhaps you have forgotten just how well.”
Heat unfurled, deep within her. Remembrance hit her. Laughing with him, kissing in the rain, sitting up all night in his massive bed, drinking wine and talking about poetry, the beautiful weight of his body atop hers, the slide of his tongue in her mouth, his cock inside her. Desire—hated, unwanted—returned.
She did her best to banish it, curling her hands into fists at her sides.
Reluctantly, she stole a glance at him. “You do not know me at all, my lord. Indeed, you never did. No one knows me better than Tom.”
Her words had their intended effect.
He stiffened as if she had dealt him another physical blow. “Sidmouth could not possibly know you better than I do.”
Of course he did not. She allowed no one near to her heart. Not after their disastrous union. Needham had hurt her too deeply. His betrayal had hardened her, leaving her jaded and hollow.
Empty.
But she would be damned before she would admit as much to the scoundrel. “Tom knows me better than I know myself. He is all I ever hoped to find in a husband.”
Lies.
In truth, everything she had ever hoped to find in a husband was Needham. Jack. Until he had betrayed her and ruined her world. But like so many other truths, she would never admit as much to him. He already had too much power over her. More than he supposed. Time, distance, and anguish had not dissipated the way she felt for him, much to her dismay.
She doubted it ever could, and his return had only underscored that pathetic truth.
“Pity I am your husband, then.” Needham’s voice was frigid. Angry, too.
She met his gaze, unflinching. “For now.”
His expression shuttered. “Sooner or later, you must cease persisting in this foolish belief you can put an end to our union.”
Extricating herself from their marriage was not impossible. Nor was it a foolish notion. If she believed that, all hope was lost. He was right that he had more power in the matter than she did. Divorce law, by nature, favored the man. But in the last few months, there had been one fact which had given her solace: that she might free herself from this untenable marriage and start anew.
She still wanted her chance at happiness. She still wanted to be a mother.
Tom could give her that.
Needham could only give her more misery, even if he could give her a child.
“It is not a foolish belief,” she defended, attempting to remain calm. “Why should you want to remain married to a woman who despises you, Needham? Your perversity defies logic.”
“Do you truly despise me?” His half grin returned. “I think not, darling.”
She did despise him—or rather, what he had done. To her. To them.
Her fingernails dug into her palms. “I do.”
“Hmm.” He looked away from her then, turning his gaze out the window at the slowly passing scenery.
His noncommittal response nettled her. She had no doubt that was what he had intended. She stewed in silence for an interminable span of time, the only sound between them the sounds of the carriage rumbling over the road. She told herself not to engage in further dialogue. Told herself that silence was far preferable to enduring more of their bickering and his infuriating insistence she would not have her divorce as she had been happily convinced—even yesterday morning—she would.
But his disinterest troubled her more than his intense regard did. More even than his continued arguments and assertions she would never be free of him. Because she knew him well enough—or at least she thought she knew him well enough—to know his silence meant he was quietly plotting.
And that irked her.
Set her on edge.
She tapped her foot on the floor of the carriage. Sighed. Bit her lip.
He turned back to her, his gaze as intense as ever in the fading light of the summer day. “What is it, Nell?”
How had he known?
“You are not as much a mystery as you would like to believe,” he added, his tone smug. “Not to me. You are fidgeting and sighing, just as you always do when you have something to say but are attempting to hold your tongue.”
“Do not do that,” she bit out before she could think better of her words.
They said too much. Revealed too much.
“Do not do what?” he returned, still calm, still measured.
Was this all a game to him? Was that all it had ever been?
“Do not continue to pretend as if you know me,” she elaborated coldly. “I have told you already, I am not the woman you left behind. There is no resemblance between that naïve girl and the woman you see before you now.”
That, too, was a lie. Good God, she was just as deceptive as he was.
In that sense, they were a match.
She shifted again.
“What do you want to say?” he coaxed once more, insufferably calm as ever.
Excruciatingly knowing.
That was something the distance and time had allowed her to push aside—the way he had always seemed to anticipate her needs, her wants. The way he seemed to read her mind.
“Why have you come back, after all this time?” she demanded. “Why, when I have found my happiness at last, do you seek to ruin it?”
Before he could answer, a thump rocked the carriage, and the vehicle rolled to a stop. Alarm went through her. Surely that was not what she thought it was?
“Remain where you are,” Needham told her grimly, before rising and throwing open the carriage door.
He leapt from the vehicle and landed with a stealthy grace some small, wicked part of her could not help admiring. Her husband had always cut a dashing figure. Indeed, it had been one of the qualities that had originally drawn her to him, back in the days when they had courted.
How long ago.
Her heart gave a pang at the memories she had kept buried.
He disappeared from her sight then, striding to the front of their carriage, presumably to find their driver and the source of the bump and their sudden stop, both. She waited impatiently for an indeterminate span of time before remonstrating herself.
Why was she listening to Needham? What was happening? Why had they stopped?
Her mind made up, Nell rose from her seat, moved to the door of the carriage, lifted her skirts, and leapt to the road below.
“Broken axle,” reported the driver as he bent before the front left wheel. “There’ll be no repairing it here. I will walk back if you and her ladyship want to wait, and b
ring a new carriage. I will just see to the horses before I go.”
Despite Nell’s insistence he did not know her, Jack had no doubt she would not wish to wait for anything. Indeed, he had a suspicion she was probably already about to leap from the carriage herself.
“Excellent plan, Gibbons,” he told the driver. “We will await you here.”
Acting on his hunch, he stalked back around the stayed horses just in time to find his wife lifting her gown to reveal striped silk stockings and red garters just above her knees. The sight was so arresting—akin to a fist to the gut—that he was momentarily speechless. He felt as if all the air had been robbed from his lungs. White-hot desire scorched him, from the inside out.
Her calves were so shapely. Her knees—by God, he had always adored her knees. There was a mole on her right one that had once entranced him. But these bold, vivid stockings…they affected him more than he wanted to admit. Because they were the sort of undergarments a woman wore when she intended to show them to another.
And that other was decidedly not Jack.
She launched herself into the air in the next breath, not bothering to wait for assistance or a step. He moved forward just in time to catch her against his chest, steadying her when she would have otherwise taken a vicious spill.
For the second time in as many days, he was saving her from breaking her beautiful neck. Her recklessness needled him.
“What the devil do you think you are about?” he demanded, clutching her to him, his heart thundering in his chest.
Lily of the valley hit him, mingling with the fresh scents of summer: grass, warm soil, wheat. The sun cast a warm golden glow over the landscape. The vibrant beauty of the verdant surroundings paled in comparison to the woman in his arms.
Her hat was adorably askew, her eyes flashing with unrestrained fire. “I was seeing what happened to the carriage and why we have halted.”
He did not release her. Now that he had her where he wanted her, how could he bear to let her go so easily? Behind her, Gibbons was already on his way back to Needham Hall by foot, leaving the two of them alone.
“There is a broken axle on the front wheel,” he told her. “We will have to wait here while the driver returns and fetches another carriage.”
“Wait here?” Her disapproval of such a prospect was evident, in both her tone and her expression.
“Yes.” Still, he could not seem to move away from her, to disengage. She felt so damned good in his arms. “The carriage cannot proceed as it is. Unless you would prefer to walk to the village, which I estimate to be a good two hour’s walk, or proceed back to Needham Hall on foot, we have no choice other than to await Gibbons’ return.”
She pushed at his chest. “You plotted this.”
Sadly, he was not nearly as nefarious as she apparently believed, for he had done nothing of the kind. The broken axle was fortuitous, however, as it would prolong the amount of time before she was once more reunited with her lover.
The thought had him taking a step back and putting some distance between them once more. “I did not tamper with the carriage, darling. Despite what you would like to think of me, I am not a conscienceless monster.”
“Just a disloyal one, then.” She stared at him, unsmiling.
The afternoon had been warm, and the evening was not nearly as stifling. However, the air was still humid, alight with the promise of summer. She was flushed, her cheeks blossoming a delicate pink, and he could not help but to wonder if she was overheated because of the temperature or because of her nearness to him.
Lord knew the combination of her stocking-clad legs and her lush body against his had his cock twitching to life. Until he remembered her accusation.
Yet again.
“How many times must I tell you I did not bed Lady Billingsley before you believe me?” he demanded.
“I will never believe you,” she said bitterly, giving voice to one of his greatest fears. “I saw you kissing her, Needham. She was in your bed. You were not wearing a stitch of clothing. Her hand was upon your—”
“Enough,” he interrupted, holding up a staying hand. “Damn it, I know what you saw. What I am telling you—what I have always told you—is that what you saw and what is the truth are two separate bloody things. I was asleep in my bed. So deep in my cups I was seeing double. I woke to a woman in my bed, and I thought it was you.”
The color in her cheeks heightened. “Am I so indistinguishable from other females that you cannot tell the difference?”
It was the same argument of three years ago. The same as hours before, too.
He removed his hat, all but crushing it in his hand. “Of course you are not. You are incomparable, Nell. You always have been, and you always will be. There is no other like you. Do you not think I tried to forget about you? Three years with nary a word from you, three years of keeping my distance, giving you time to heal as you had asked, even as word reached me of your endless parties and your string of lovers, and still I could not forget you. I could not replace you, and so I did not even try. Because there is only one you.”
He stopped himself before he said more, aware his voice was trembling and he had already revealed far too much. He had promised himself he would not be vulnerable to her. That he would proceed with calm rather than wounded rage. That he would take a different approach. Nell was like a wild horse that needed to be slowly tamed. And yet one day back in her presence, and he was falling into the same old patterns.
What was the matter with him? Had he not learned anything in his time away?
Nell was staring at him now, lower lip quivering, her countenance stark. “If I truly believed any of that, I would be a bigger fool than you are, Needham.”
And then she turned on her heel and began stalking away from him.
Vexing woman.
Defiant creature.
Beautiful, dazzling, reckless, wounded angel.
She was all of those things. And he had underestimated how badly he would want her. How much being in her presence would affect him. Time had a way of fooling a man into believing he was healed.
But now, he knew just how very wrong he had been.
He stalked after her just the same, admiring the flounce of her skirts as she moved in the direction of the rapidly disappearing silhouette of Gibbons. He caught her in three strides, and he took her elbow, forcing her to halt and face him.
“Believe what I am telling you, Nell,” he told her then, taking a chance. “You asked me why I have returned. There are many reasons. I never should have stayed away as long as I did, but I thought that the day would come when you would respond to my letters, asking for me to return. When you at last replied only to ask me for a divorce, I realized just how wrong I had been, about everything. I cannot forgive myself for what happened that night. For kissing her back. For becoming so sotted that I could not even discern my wife from another woman in my bed. If you hate me for what happened that night, rest assured your loathing pales in comparison to my own. But I did not make love to her.”
She shook her head. “You are lying. Afterward, I heard from other ladies who told me of your flirtatious ways. Countless ladies who you asked to join you in bed. All while professing to love me. Do you think me stupid? Do you?”
“Tell me their names,” he demanded. “They are lying, every bloody one of them. I was true to you, Nell. Aside from kissing Lady Billingsley that night, I have never kissed another since the night we met. Can you say the same?”
He knew she could not.
But her sudden pallor filled him with ice, all the same. “You expect me to believe you have been celibate as a monk the entire time you were traveling the world, writing your travel reminiscences?”
He ground his molars. “Yes, I do. Because it is the truth, Nell.”
“The truth according to you.” She jerked her elbow from his grasp and resumed walking.
“It. Is. The. Truth.” He bit out each word as he followed. Damn her, why did she have to be s
o bloody wrongheaded? So determined to believe him a heartless scoundrel?
Part of him could not blame her, for if he had discovered her in her cups, kissing another man, he would have torn that man limb from limb. He did not know how easily he would have forgiven. But he liked to think he would not have banished her for years, and then gone on with his life, happily kissing and bedding whomever he liked, getting cupshot every night and dancing on the goddamn tables.
She stopped, swirling about to face him. “Why should I believe a word you say? I saw what happened that night. You were kissing her back—”
“Shut up,” he growled.
And then he hauled her to him and lowered his lips to hers, silencing the ugliness she had been about to remind them both of. The past was where it belonged. The present was here. It was now. It was Nell and Jack. He needed her to remember that, just as he needed to recall it, too. Just as he needed to recall her, this woman he loved. This woman who had somehow become a stranger to him.
The first touch of his mouth to hers was like a spark turning into flame. For a moment, she was frozen in his arms, unresponsive. He inhaled deeply, breathing in her scent, trapping it in his lungs. Here was the sensation he had been chasing at the bottom of every bottle so long ago—that rush, that intense surge of feeling.
Bliss.
Joy.
Whatever it was, Nell gave him that. He should have kissed her yesterday. He should have never gone away. He should have spent every day for the last three years laying siege to her with poetry and seduction. But he had been prideful and hurt and stupid. And young, as they both had been. He liked to think himself wiser now.
Certainly, he appreciated this woman in his arms in a way he had not. He was like a starving man laid before a banquet, and he could not get his fill. Her lips were soft. The sweet, surprised mewl of acquiescence she made sent a bolt of lust to his cock. And her arms looped around his neck then, instead of pushing him away.
It was glorious.
Incredible.
He deepened the kiss. She opened for him, her tongue gliding against his.
Time had passed, but this, the connection they had always shared, had not changed. She kissed him back with a furious, ravishing intensity. And he kissed her with the same voracious fervor. He was ravenous for her. Feasting upon her lips and tongue. His hands were on the small of her back, anchoring her to him.
Her Missing Marquess Page 5
