But his words from last night returned to her, mocking. Taunting. Tempting.
Look at the man who loves you.
No. She could not afford to believe him. She could not allow herself to fall beneath his spell once more. Yesterday had left her dangerously close to the edge.
He dismissed the servants dancing attendance upon the loaded sideboard, leaving them alone. She watched as he retrieved a plate and began filling it for her.
“How do you presume to know what I want?” she asked him, forcing herself to speak.
“Bacon, a poached egg, and fresh fruit from the orangery, no?” he returned blithely.
He was right, damn him.
Part of her wanted to contradict him, but then she would be the one suffering through a breakfast of food she had no desire to eat. Instead, she fixed herself a cup of tea. “That will do.”
He turned back to her, bearing a plate laden with far too much food. “Do you remember the morning not long after we were wed? We had breakfast in bed, and the raspberries were in season?”
He had placed them on her nipples and then eaten them off.
The reminder made her cheeks hot. She clenched her thighs together to stave off a wave of longing. “I do not recall it.”
Jack settled the plate before her, leaning close, his lips grazing her ear. “Liar.”
Of course she was a liar.
“How would you know what I remember and what I do not?” she asked primly, leaning away from him.
“Prickly as ever this morning,” he observed, seating himself once more before his newspaper, which had been neatly ironed and laid out for his perusal.
“Irritating as ever,” she quipped. “You do realize your cheer is misplaced, do you not? Last night will not be repeated.”
He flicked her a glance. “Hmm.”
His noncommittal response nettled. “I was deep in my cups and out of my head.”
Jack raised a brow. “Strange. I did not taste any spirits on your tongue when it was in my mouth.”
She gripped the handle of her teacup with enough force to snap it off. “You are vulgar.”
“Yet, you still want me.” He returned his gaze to The Times, as if he found their conversation uninteresting. “There is no denying it, Nellie.”
Think of Tom, she urged herself.
Safe, comforting, familiar Tom. Tom would never break her heart. Nor would he betray her. Tom loved her. She must not forget that. And she had repaid his love by giving in to her lust for Jack.
What a wretched creature she was. She had confessed the kiss to Tom, but how would she explain she had gone far beyond mere kissing? And on two separate occasions, no less?
“I also want wine and chocolate and copious amounts of cake,” she countered calmly, cracking the shell of her poached egg with a spoon. “But none of those are good for me.”
“Are you comparing me to a cake?” he asked, sounding amused. “Truly, Nellie. Methinks you doth protest too much.”
How calm he was. How sure of himself. Naturally, she had given him every reason to be so. She had given in. She had been weak.
“I am merely suggesting you are not good for me in much the same vein.” She took another calming sip of her tea.
“I would disagree, but you are wearing your stern governess look, and I daresay it does not bode well for my winning an argument with you.” He speared a hunk of pineapple with his fork and raised it to his lips.
Oh, what lips.
Even the common act of eating fruit was alluring when Jack did it, curse him.
She watched him chewing, heat flaring within her. Unbidden, thoughts of last night returned. Kissing him in the lake. Kissing him in the bath. The way it had felt for him to be deep inside her, the warm water cocooning them as they frantically sought their pleasure.
“My governess was a beastly woman,” she said, shaking herself from this mad need to watch his mouth.
“Miss Richards,” he said.
Her eyes flicked back to him, surprise pricking her. “You remember her name.”
He gave her one of his half grins. “Of course I do. How can I forget your story of having gotten even with the wretch by pouring ink into one of her boots?”
She smiled back at him before she caught herself and forced her countenance to become grave once more. “She deserved it and worse.”
“Do you not think the earthworm in her bed was worse?” he asked.
Damn his hide, did he have to remember everything?
She frowned at him, much aggrieved. “What has happened to your whiskers?”
His grin deepened as he rubbed a hand over his sharp jaw. “Gone in the usual fashion. A shave from Denning. I reckoned it was time for a change. Do you like it?”
She loved it. Moreover, she loved him. And those were two increasingly problematic facts.
“The beard suited you better,” she grumbled, looking down at her plate, although it was not true.
Jack was beautiful with whiskers or without, his hair shaggy and wavy or cropped close. He was beautiful in the dark moonlit night and in the light of the morning sun. He was just beautiful, the rotten devil.
“Hmm,” he said again.
She glanced back at him once more, but he had returned his regard to the newspaper spread before him.
“What does that mean?” she asked at last, losing her inner war to remain quiet.
“It means I do not believe you, my darling wife. Your lips say one thing, but your eyes say quite another.” His tone was confident.
He was doing a fine job of burrowing beneath her skin this morning. Indeed, he had been doing so ever since his return now that she thought upon it.
“Wishful thinking on your part, perhaps,” she suggested tartly. “Do not keep me from your account of the goings on of the world today, pray. I find being forced to carry on a conversation with you over breakfast renders me quite bilious.”
She was being beastly to him, but she did not care.
“The Times is ever a font of information.” He sounded amused.
She flicked him an irritated glance to discover he was grinning at her, the blighter. “What is so bloody humorous, Needham?”
His levity only seemed to double. “Needham, is it? Last night I was Jack.”
“Last night, I allowed my baser nature to overwhelm my rational mind,” she snapped. “Do not fool yourself into believing I will conduct myself with such precipitous stupidity again.”
“Nellie, do you remember the day we met?” he asked then, his expression softening.
Of course she remembered. She would never, ever forget.
“I fear I have stricken it from my memory,” she told him just the same, lowering her gaze to her plate.
She would never be able to consume this much fruit—fresh orange slices, pineapple, strawberries. Her appetite was conspicuously absent this morning. All she felt was ill. But she forced herself to take great care in cutting a strawberry into bite-size quarters all the same.
“It was at Cowes,” he said softly. “A ball. You were wearing a pink gown with silk rose clusters on your skirts and the most delicate lace flounces, rather like gossamer. You had a matching ribbon and roses woven into your pretty curls. When I first saw you, you were dancing with Lord Whitby. You laughed at something he had said, and I was smitten. I begged Falkland for an introduction after he laughed at the way I could not take my eyes from you.”
No, no, no.
She did not want to hear any of this. Nor did she want to relive that day, which had once seemed so charmed. The best day in her life. How wrong time had proven her. Nor did she want to know he recalled the details of the dress she had worn or what gentleman she had been dancing with when he had first seen her.
She ignored him, continuing to eat her breakfast in silence, her gaze firmly trained upon her plate.
But Jack was not finished.
“We danced Le Moulinet, and I was so bloody frustrated because it seemed as soon as I had you w
ithin reach, you were swirling away again. I asked you if I could call upon you afterward, and you said that I could. But I could not wait, because the hours between then and the next day seemed interminable. I caught you in an alcove and you gave me the ribbon from your hair. I wanted to kiss you then, but I was trying to act the gentleman, so I settled for the ribbon.” He paused in his lengthy recitation. “I still have the ribbon, you know.”
Nell steeled herself against his words, which were like a poison dart directly to her heart. She speared a strawberry with so much force, she left it macerated on her plate. Pink juice pooled on the fine bone china. She swallowed against a rush of unwanted emotion.
“I carried it with me everywhere I traveled,” he continued softly, “along with your picture and all the letters you had ever written me when we were courting.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip against a rush of tears. She would not cry before him, she told herself. She would remain impervious. She would ignore him. Ignore the memories.
“Do you know that everywhere I traveled, I kept expecting to see you?” He laughed, the sound bitter. “It was a foolish habit, I will own. In Paris, I saw a petite woman with golden hair in the streets, and I had myself convinced she was you. She turned just before I could reach her on Rue Notre Dame des Victoires, and I saw her profile. She was not you. No matter where I was, whether in Cologne or Rome or Constantinople, you were never anywhere but in my heart.”
Damn him to perdition. Her fork dropped with a clang to her plate. At last, she forced her gaze back to him.
“What is it you expect from me, Jack?” she bit out. “You betrayed me. You betrayed us, our marriage, everything we shared. You broke my heart. You were gone for three years, and now you expected to return with all this, this unwanted sentiment, and have me what? Fall at your feet? Do you want my heart handed over to you like victory spoils? Am I supposed to feel badly for you because you only realized what we had when it was too late and you had already invited another woman into your bed?”
Fury had her trembling. She was angry, so angry. Angry with herself for making love with him yesterday. For wanting him the way she did. Angry with Jack for the way he had returned as if he had never been gone, all teasing smiles and charm and protestations of love and innocence.
“Nellie,” he began, his expression pained, “please—”
“No,” she interrupted, rising suddenly. “No more. If you will excuse me, I have lost my appetite.”
Without waiting for him to respond, she fled the dining room.
But most importantly, she fled Jack and all their shared memories, along with all the temptation to fall headlong into him again. Because she knew just how ruinous it would prove.
She had already planned her future, and the Marquess of Needham was nowhere to be found in it.
Chapter Thirteen
Jack could not find his wife.
He had looked for her everywhere since she had fled breakfast earlier that day.
No bloody luck aside from learning she had taken a horse from the stable. And so had he in response, determined to find her. She could run, he had reasoned, but she could not hide. Not from him. Not forever.
But he had been riding for hours, stopping to change out his mount and return to Needham Hall to see whether or not his wife had come back from her sojourn twice, only to be disappointed each time. He spurred his horse on now, scouring the horizon for any hint of her.
Already, she had been gone for hours. He had pressed her hard at breakfast, and he knew it. Her emotions had been high—as much as she liked to believe he could not read her, her countenance was as expressive as it had always been, giving her away. He had shaken her. Instead of bringing her closer, however, he had chased her away.
Their connection yesterday, though primarily physical, had been undeniable. The desire between them was just as it had always been. Electric, raw, carnal, and all-consuming. Even more so now, since they had spent so much unnecessary time apart.
Still, none of that mattered if he could not bloody well locate her, speak to her. And the longer she was gone, the more his frustration turned into fear. Needham Hall was a massive estate. She could be anywhere. If she had ridden recklessly and been thrown from her mount again as she had confessed to him had happened in the past…
Grounding his molars, he spurred his mount on, toward a forest that eventually gave way to a small natural stream. As a lad, it had been one of his favorite places to visit. Far enough away from the main house that no one could find him. Peaceful enough that he could relax, wade in the water with his trousers rolled to his knees. Escape his parents’ endless matches of bickering and hatred.
He had taken Nell there once, and though it seemed foolish indeed to suppose she would be there now, he was willing to look for her anywhere. His desperation where she was concerned knew no bounds, it would seem. He was, as ever, her fool.
Doomed to be so, from the moment he had seen her dancing in the arms of another.
His heart would always be hers.
But he was beginning to realize a more desperate truth: if she could not move beyond the past, he would lose her forever, and his pride would force him to let her go. He could not make her love him. Could not make her be happy. And a life with an unhappy Nell, though he loved her so, would be worse than a life without her. He could not bear her pain.
And Nell? She still did not believe him. She doubted his word. Doubted his faithfulness. And whilst he could not deny Lady Billingsley had been in his bed that night, and although it was no excuse, he had never betrayed Nell aside from being too deep in his cups when the wrong woman had slid into his bed, naked and ready to seduce.
He reached the edge of the trees and slowed his mount. The old path remained, wide enough for a horse to pass. And there was only one way that was possible, after three years of his absence. Nell had been coming here.
Hope rose, sharp as a knife, within.
Slowly, carefully, he guided his horse along the shadowy path leading to the stream. After a time, he saw what he had been waiting for, what he had been hoping for. Nell’s horse was tethered to a tree, nosing at a clump of grass sprouting in a slat of sunlight between the massive old oaks.
Relief hit him.
She was here. Somewhere. He just had to find her.
Jack reined in his mount and tethered her to a tree not far from Nell’s mount. And then he set off on foot down the trail, where it grew narrow and twisted and rife with old tree roots rising from the earth, making it treacherous indeed for equine travel.
Strange how he could have been absent from a place for so long, and yet he knew every bend in the path by heart. He knew were moss grew thick, where a massive old quartz rock protruded white and sparkling from the earth, where wild flowers sprouted like old friends every year. And he knew the precise moment he would hear the gurgling of the stream.
One step, two.
There it was. The stream.
And there she was, his Nellie.
She was seated, her back to him, skirts billowing around her, on a bed of forget-me-nots. The sun was shining down on her through the break in the trees overhead, making her appear as if she glowed. As if she were an angel, sent from heaven.
Neither was true.
She was all too human, all too real.
As he neared her, he realized she seemed to be poring over something in her lap.
“Nellie,” he said softly, hating the way she stiffened at his voice.
She cast him a frigid look over her shoulder. “Why are you here, Jack?”
He settled down beside her, taking note of the book cracked open in her skirts. “I was worried about you. You have been gone for hours.”
She sighed. “Intentionally. I want to be alone.”
It seemed he was forever chasing her, at a bitter stalemate. Would he ever catch her, hold her, keep her?
“Do you despise me that much, Nellie?” he asked, holding his breath as he awaited her answer.
“I despise what you did,” she said at last.
“On that, we are in agreement,” he said softly.
One night had been all it took to ruin his marriage and destroy his life. One moment.
She glanced at him, her expression hardening. “You are admitting it now?”
He met her gaze, unflinching. “I am admitting the truth, as I always have. I was soused. Lady Billingsley came to the wrong bed. I thought she was you. I kissed her. I never bedded her.”
“Even if what you say is the truth, I saw you kissing her, Jack. How could you mistake her for me?” There was such anguish in her face, and he hated himself for being the one who had put it there.
For being responsible for her pain.
For being the one who had torn them apart.
“There is no excuse, Nellie. I was a drunken fool. Stupid and reckless and selfish.” He had learned a great deal about himself in the last three years. He could own his sins. “I wish to God that night never happened, that I never hurt you.”
“Why did you devote it to me?” she asked suddenly.
Her question threw him. He frowned, trying to make sense of it. “Pardon?”
“Your book.” She held up the volume abandoned in her lap, and recognition slid over him. “Why did you devote it to me?”
She must be speaking of one of his travel memoirs. But he had dedicated each volume to her, which meant she had only read one thus far.
“Penance,” he said truthfully. “And love.”
Her lush lips tightened. “It is an excellent account.”
Her praise sounded reluctant. He could not help but to smile despite the seriousness of the moment. “You are surprised? Mayhap you hoped it would be drivel or dry as dust?”
“No.” She shook her head, her expression turning mournful. “You have always been dreadfully adept at anything you try, Jack. I am not surprised in the least that your travel books were so well-received.”
Her Missing Marquess Page 15
