She nodded. “I promise.”
Nell was once more absent from dinner.
When Jack inquired with her lady’s maid, he was told that her ladyship was feeling bilious and requested a tray. But Jack was feeling rather bilious himself after allowing his wife time alone with Sidmouth earlier that day. And he was not inclined to allow her to continue hiding from him.
With that in mind, he rapped his knuckles sharply on the door joining their chambers. “Nell?”
“Go away, Needham.” Her voice was muffled, as if she were on the opposite end of the generously sized apartments.
The devil he would.
“Why were you not at dinner?” he asked, trying the door and finding it unlatched.
“My feet are too painful for me to move about too much.” A creak in the floorboards on the other side of the door belied her words.
“Then I shall come to you.”
“No.”
This was rather becoming a pattern between them.
“We need to speak,” he pointed out, attempting to appeal to her sense of reason. “I gave you the time you requested with Sidmouth earlier. The least you can do is return the favor and give me your ear.”
The door opened, revealing Nell in another dressing gown, this one pale-pink silk accented with blonde lace ruffles. Her hair was unbound around her shoulders, a riot of flaxen curls tumbling down her back.
She frowned at him. “Say whatever it is you wish to say, Needham. I am weary.”
She was not going to dismiss him that easily, the stubborn minx.
He dropped his gaze to her feet, which still bore the bandages he had tied around them this morning. “I need to check on your wounds.”
She crossed her arms over her chest in a defensive posture that only served to plump up her delectable breasts. “Did you become a physician in your travels?”
So suspicious, this new Nell.
“No,” he said calmly, “but I am a man who cares about his wife.”
She laughed, but the sound held little, if any, levity. Nor did the laughter reach her eyes. “Save your lies for your next wife.”
He had forgotten how beautiful her laugh was, had forgotten the way it made her scrunch up her nose, the manner in which her eyes glistened. He longed for it now, with a desperation that took him by surprise.
“There will be no next wife, Nellie,” he said, bracing his arm on the doorjamb and leaning forward. “I already have the only wife I have ever wanted.”
Her lips thinned. “Pity she does not want you.”
“Pity I do not believe you.” He studied her, taking note of the freckles, the sun-reddened flesh now visible. “You washed your face.”
Her brows snapped together. “How do you know?”
“Your pearl powder is gone.” He reached out, gently tracing the curve of her proud cheekbone with his thumb. “Still no aloe, my love? Why do you insist upon being so stubborn?”
She swallowed, and he absorbed the vibration of it. “For all I know, your concoction will make the burn worse.”
Did she truly believe him that much of a heartless villain, or was she just attempting to nettle him? He could not tell.
His eyes settled back upon hers. “I would never want to hurt you, Nellie.”
She made a sound of distress. “I told you not to call me by that name.”
“Why?” He could not resist caressing her cheek before tucking a wayward tendril of hair behind her ear. “You are still Nellie to me. You will make me wild with wanting you.”
Her lips parted, and the jet discs of her pupils grew larger. “Cease this madness.”
But she did not move away, in spite of her words. Instead, she remained still. He traced his thumb over the whorl of her ear, then gently caught the plump lobe and rubbed it. “Do you remember when I would play lady’s maid for you?”
Remembrance flared in her eyes. He saw it, and he knew she recalled, just as he remembered. After an evening’s revelry, he would go to her chamber, take down her hair, brush it out. Remove her earbobs and necklace, strip her bare. It had become a sensual game of theirs.
“My feet ache and I am tired,” she snapped, then jerked away from his touch.
But she did not fool him. Each day he spent back in her presence brought with it a waterfall of remembrance. Memories he had tucked away because carrying them close had been too painful. Being together again did the same for her.
Their marriage had never been cold, nor chaste.
It had been a blazing, passionate fury.
Little wonder they had nearly burned each other down, like flaming houses.
“I need to check on your feet, Nellie.” This time, unlike the others, his pet name for her emerged all its own.
His defenses were scattered around his feet. It occurred to him that this was one of the reasons he had remained abroad for so long: being near her made it impossible to forget.
“Why?” she whispered.
And he knew her question referred to so much more than merely his need to tend to her blisters.
“Because you are a part of me,” he told her, giving her the raw truth. “You always have been, and you always will be. Because I want to make certain you are healing properly. Because you are mine. Because I love you.”
There. He said it again. Those three, terrifying words.
She flinched. “Pray do not attempt to charm me. It is futile.”
“Why do you not like to hear it? It is the truth.”
“Jack. Stop.” Her voice was hoarse. Raw with emotion.
At last she used his name. He had not heard it on her lips since he had caught her in his arms the night he had arrived. Hearing it now filled him with a sense of rightness. He bloody well hated the way she insisted upon referring to him as Needham. So stilted, so cold, as if they had never known each other with such vivid intimacy.
“Stop what?” he persisted, knowing he needed to push her. To prod her.
If he had a hope of winning her back, he needed to tear down her walls. Every. Last. Stone.
“You know.” She made the breathy little half sigh she always did whenever she was agitated.
All these little pieces of her he had pushed from his mind. They returned to him now.
“Tell me, Nellie,” he dared. “What has you so flustered? I have not seen you this upset since the day you climbed the apple tree and you had no drawers on.”
Her cheeks flushed a pretty pink. “You are a cad to remind me of that day.”
“It is a fond memory of mine, along with so many others.” His gaze dipped to the fullness of her pout.
God, he wanted to kiss her again. To feel her lips. To taste her. To make her curl her body against his.
Had she kissed Sidmouth earlier?
He chased the unwanted thought. He had given them little time. Not enough… Hell. It could have been enough. He chased that thought as well.
“You were the reason I had no drawers that day,” she said then, shocking him with her willingness to fall into the memory. “You were also the one who suggested I climb the tree.”
He found himself grinning, reliving that long-ago day, late summer, not long after they had wed. “You boasted of your tree-climbing prowess from your girlhood days as I recall it. I merely challenged you to a demonstration.”
They had been madly in love. Ridiculously happy. Everything had been golden—the sun, her hair, the air warm and thick and redolent with late summer and the scent of the apples ripening on the branches.
“I have not climbed a tree since then.” She smiled back at him, wistfully.
“You have limited yourself to dancing upon tables?” he teased.
“Yes.” Her smile died abruptly. “You are making this far more difficult than it need be.”
“I will not stop fighting for you,” he warned her.
Her frown returned. “You stopped three years ago. As they say, the ship has set sail. Let me go, Jack.”
“Is that what you want?”
The question was ripped from him, from deep within, from his heart, from his gut, his soul. “Is that what you truly believe, that I stopped fighting for you? I left because you asked it of me, Nellie.”
“You left because you betrayed me,” she countered.
He shook his head. “Not the way you think.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, as if grappling for control over her emotions. He well knew the sentiment. “What do you want from me?”
Everything.
Her heart.
Her love.
Her body.
Her kiss.
The freedom to touch her whenever he wished. Her in his bed when the sun rose high and warm in the sky. Her bearing his children. He wanted his wife back. He wanted his home. He wanted everything they had been denied.
“Another chance,” he said baldly. “That is what I want. I want to prove to you I am worthy of being your husband. I want to prove to you that I am not the man I was three years ago. That I have changed.”
She stared at him, her gaze assessing. Piercing. “You may see to my blisters. That is all.”
He could not contain his smile. “I want to see to your sunburn as well. A bit of aloe before you go to sleep for the night, and I promise you will feel much more the thing in the morning.”
Her jaw tightened, but she nodded and took a step back so he could cross the line of demarcation separating them. “That is all, and then you must return to your own chamber.”
“Of course, Nellie,” he agreed easily, tamping down his smile as he made his way into her chamber.
After all, it would not do for her to see how pleased he was.
Siege, he reminded himself. This was a slow and subtle campaign. He would endure. And win the bloody war.
Chapter Eight
Nell grasped a handful of cracked corn from the basket hanging in the crook of her elbow and then threw it to the grass before her. A male and female duck waddled toward her offering. She inhaled a deep breath of sweet, summer’s air, trying to calm her frayed nerves.
This was her morning ritual whilst in residence at Needham Hall, feeding the ducks and swans on the vast manmade lake. But in the madness which had descended in the wake of Needham’s unexpected return, she had neglected her duties for several days in a row. The male duck quacked as his beak worked frantically over the cracked corn, almost as if he were chastising her for her absence.
She hardly blamed him. She had been wrong to lose herself so easily.
Wrong and foolish, too.
Last night had been no different, she thought with a frown as she grabbed another handful of corn and tossed it toward the swans alighting from their swim. She was woefully unprepared to manage a husband who had abruptly returned from the Continent. Hating him had been easy when he had been absent. Her anger had been nourished by time and distance. Resentment had spread, like the unchecked flames of a fire.
She had allowed Needham into her chamber last night. He had been tender and concerned. He had tended to her blistered feet, and then to her sunburn. And he had gone, leaving her feeling oddly bereft as she watched his retreating form returning to his apartments.
She shook her head at herself and continued her walk on the gravel path, which circled the lake. Flowers were in rich bloom, great clusters of them. Sweetbriar, syringas, roses. The day promised more sun. More warmth. And yet, she felt as if a rain cloud were following her about. She felt grim and tangled and woefully confused.
Tom wanted to marry her. He had asked her to run away with him. He worshiped her. And yet, she was not prepared to simply throw herself into his arms. If she had truly wanted to, she had no doubt she could have followed him the day before when he had left Needham Hall. She could have accompanied him, forced the divorce.
She could have bedded Tom, or a dozen other men had she wished.
She had not.
Because she did not want to. Because the awful, horrible, wretched truth was that there was no man she wanted in the way she wanted Jack. Nor, she feared, would there ever be.
“You do still feed them. You lied.”
The statements, issued in that deep, delicious baritone she knew so well, nevertheless took her by surprise. With a start, she spun about to find Jack approaching her with easy, masculine strides. He moved with such lethal grace. Just watching him was devastating.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked instead of greeting him.
He was unfairly handsome, a smile curving his lips, a dashing hat shading his face, and dressed informally, wearing only his shirtsleeves and a waistcoat with buff trousers. “I looked out the window.”
His response was strangely deflating. He had not been looking for her or inquiring after her, then. She was not sure why that ought to bother her, but somehow, it did.
“I see,” she said simply, striving to keep her disappointment from her voice.
His grin deepened. “Did you imagine I was spying on you? Or that I had tasked the staff with keeping me informed of where you are at all times?”
Yes.
Why did he have to know her so well, the blighter?
She turned her attention back to the ducks, who had nearly finished their corn. “Of course not.”
He stopped at her side, so near their elbows almost brushed, and the warm day was suddenly hotter. “How are your blisters this morning?”
“Healing,” she said, taking another handful of corn and tossing it as another duck couple joined the first.
“And your sunburn?”
His query had her thinking about the way he had tended to her last night. He had applied his aloe cream to her face with gentle care, checked her blistered feet, and then he had given her a kiss on her cheek and left.
“It is feeling better today, thank you.” She cast him a glance. “It was kind of you to fret over me.”
His regard was warmer than the rays of the sun. “You are my wife, Nellie. It is my duty to fret over you.”
He had told her he loved her yesterday. Twice.
She did not dare believe him. If he had loved her, he never would have kissed Lady Billingsley, no matter how deep in his cups. He never would have had her in his bed. Nor would he have left to travel the world for three blasted years.
“I will not be your wife for long,” she reminded him as much as she reminded herself.
His smile faded. “Stubborn as ever.”
“Determined.” She glanced back to the ducks. The swans were swimming from the other end of the lake, taking their time.
“Why?” His soft question had her turning toward him once more. “Do you not think of how good we were together?”
“Until that night,” she said pointedly. “Until I discovered who you truly are.”
“Did you, though, Nellie?” He cocked his head, considering her. “Truly?”
Irritation rose within her. He had no right to return and make her question her decision. “Of course I did. Do not think tending to my blistered feet will banish the memory of that night. Nothing has changed.”
“I have changed. I am not the same reckless drunkard I once was.” His expression, like his voice, was serious. Intense. “Having spent the last three years without you, I appreciate you in a way I did not before.”
She could not deny that he was different. He was more somber than he had once been. She had not seen him drink a drop of liquor. However, that did not abate his culpability either.
“It is too late, Jack.”
“It is never too late,” he countered. “You are still my wife, and I am still your husband.”
Agony sliced through her. Because part of her wanted to forget what had happened three years ago. Part of her wanted to believe he had changed for the better and that she could trust him, that what they had once shared had not been a lie. But she could not go through that much pain again.
She could not afford to believe in him. The first time had nearly proved her ruin.
She tore her gaze from him, looking back
to the ducks. “In name only.”
Nell reached into her basket for more corn, then scattered it pell-mell in the grass.
“That, too, can be changed.” His low voice sent a frisson down her spine.
The sensual promise could not be ignored. Nor could her traitorous body’s reaction to him. She could not keep the memories of the passion they had once shared locked away any more than she could cease breathing.
She steeled herself against it, against her reaction to him. “No, it cannot. I am marrying Tom.”
“Have my children.”
His words sent a jolt straight through her. Had she not hooked the handle of the basket over her arm, she would have dropped it.
She glanced back at him, her heart pounding. He was not laughing or smiling or teasing. His ordinary, unflappable charm was absent. He was serious.
A pang of longing tore through her. Once, she had dreamed of having his babes. “Jack, please stop.”
“Why?” He took the basket from her and placed it on the grass at their feet and then took her hands in his. “You act as if I am the most ridiculous man in the world, wanting to remain married to my wife, wanting her to bear my children. You told me you wanted to become a mother. I want to make you one. I need an heir. You want a child. We are already wed. Nothing makes sense more.”
How dangerous he was. His hands on hers were warm, reassuring. She could not seem to summon the desire to extricate herself from his grasp. In more ways than one.
“You hurt me, Jack,” she admitted, hating herself for the tremor in her voice, the way it broke. “I trusted you once, and you took that trust and you crushed it into a thousand pieces the night you allowed Lady Billingsley into your bed. I want to become a mother with a man I trust when he tells me he loves me.”
And she did trust Tom. Tom had waited for her, patiently, sweetly, for so long. He was waiting for her still.
Jack’s fingers tightened on hers. “I am sorry, so sorry for that night. I wish to God it had never happened. I wish I had not been so deep in my cups that I kissed her back. But I have not made love to another woman since we married. I have been faithful to you, aside from those godforsaken kisses.”
Her Missing Marquess Page 9
