by Louise Allen
‘You have to let me go home.’ Marcus was staring out of the window, hands thrust into his breeches’ pockets, seemingly paying her no attention. ‘I cannot stay here. I must earn my own living.’
‘Go home to that garret?’ he asked, swinging round. ‘To scrape a living working long hours while your fingers are still nimble and your eyes sharp? And then what? Where will you be in ten years, Nell? Twenty?’
‘I will manage. I must. Thousands of women have to.’ Nell tried to keep the desperation out of her voice, not to listen to the little voice, the one that kept her awake at night, the one that murmured about insecurity and poverty and a slow slide into destitution. You are all alone, it would insist. All alone.
‘There are alternatives,’ Marcus said.
‘Domestic service?’
‘You are an attractive woman. If you were not so thin, not so anxious, you would be a beautiful one.’ There was a note in his voice that reached inside her, a hint of husky desire that twisted a hot ache low in her belly.
‘You suggest I should sell my body?’ she demanded harshly.
‘Find yourself a protector.’
Nell made herself meet his eyes, her chin up. ‘Are you offering me a carte blanche, my lord?’
‘Perhaps.’ He moved closer, almost touching her knees. Nell gripped the edge of the chest and fought with herself.
Marcus Carlow was strong and powerful. He would protect her—for as long as she was his mistress. He would be generous, and if she was prudent, she could save. He was attractive. Oh God, so attractive. And that is why you are giving even a second’s thought to this insanity, she argued with herself. You are discussing selling your body, putting yourself in a man’s power. Ruining yourself.
But she was so tired of being alone, of fighting every day for food and respectability and some semblance of a decent life. ‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why me? I thought you had a new mistress.’
‘Not yet.’ Marcus moved a little closer, his thighs pressing against her knees as she perched on the high chest. ‘Why? I wish I knew. I tell myself I do not trust you and yet I read more fear than cunning in your eyes. You are too thin, you throw out no sophisticated lures to attract me—and yet, when I have kissed you, there has been a spark of such fire in you that I am in danger of burning up.’
As she stared back into the intent, dark gaze, her throat tight, her heart banging against her ribs, he nudged his leg between her knees, parting them. And then he was standing between her thighs, the heat of him soaking into her trembling limbs, the scent of his body filling her senses, the breadth of his torso filling her sight.
‘There is a kind of purity about you, Nell,’ he murmured as he lifted his hand to run the back of it down her cheek. She shivered, turning her face against his knuckles, trying to control her breathing as a primitive pulse began to beat where the heat of his body met the aching warmth of hers.
Purity. He thinks me a virgin. I can’t… I want him. Is this so wrong if I want him? But I must tell him.
‘Marcus.’ His hand slid round to cup her chin, turn her face up to him. ‘There is something… I am not a virgin.’
For a long moment he stood quite still, then he flung himself away from her, leaving her shivering with the sudden withdrawal of his heat. ‘Then I was right. You are his mistress.’ There was a curious kind of bitterness in his voice and, keyed up to tell him what had happened, she was thrown off balance.
‘Whose mistress?’ Then she saw what he was thinking. ‘You believe I am his whore? Salterton’s whore.’
‘Don’t use that word.’ Marcus swung round, his face dark with anger. ‘Don’t ever use that word of yourself.’
‘Why not?’ Nell slid off the chest, jarring her heels as she landed on the bare boards. ‘It is what you think, what you would make me, is it not? Or are you too much of a hypocrite to face it? You leap to conclusions, accuse me on no evidence, cannot wait one moment to let me explain—but of course, you are disappointed so you make wild accusations. You want a virgin, don’t you? That’s what men always want, after all.
‘Well, I am not a virgin, so you can go back to your expensive, skilled mistress and make her an offer and enjoy her expertise and her practised tricks. Not as titillating as fear and screams and pain, but I am sure it has its satisfactions.’
‘Nell, for God’s sake!’ Marcus reached for her as she stood there, panting with anger and the terrible relief of pouring it all out at long last. ‘Nell, come here.’
‘No.’ She lashed out at him, hitting his face more by luck than intention. They stared at each other as the sound of the slap echoed against the carved panelling of the little room, his eyes so wide she could see her own tiny reflection in them. ‘No.’
Fear and screams and pain… The words buzzed in his head, more painful than the sting of Nell’s fingers on his cheek or the ache of unsatisfied arousal in his groin. She had been forced? Had the ferocity with which she had fought him in the carriage, the rejection in the Long Gallery, had those been terror and not the sudden recollection that she was betraying another lover?
‘Hell!’ he said out loud into the empty room as the echoes of the slammed door died away. What had he done? But he knew. He had raked up a past that was agony to her. He had offered a sexual relationship when that was the last thing she needed. In his male arrogance he had crowded her with his body, his strength, blocking her escape, reminding her, inevitably, that he had the power to do with her what he wanted.
Marcus strode to the door and then stopped. Nell did not need him pursuing her all over the house. She needed, he was certain, another woman to talk to and there was no one here but strangers she could not trust. As he had shown her she could not trust him.
Nell ran up the stairs, scrubbing at her face as if she could stop the tears by brute force. Damn him! Now he knew what had happened to her and he would despise her for it. It was always the woman’s fault, of course, the woman who was ruined as a result.
By dint of sheer willpower, she stopped crying, got the hiccupping sobs under control and looked around. She was somewhere on the first floor, but in her distress she had missed the turn to the wing where her bedchamber was and now she was lost. The old house rambled like a living organism. Passages led off from corridors, doors might open onto chambers or stairs or more corridors. Small flights of steps appeared for no apparent reason.
At random she opened a door and found herself in a small library. There was a desk in the window, a fire in the grate and a pleasant smell of apple-wood smoke and leather. A book—that would help her compose herself. Nell walked across and began to examine the shelves, taking slow breaths as control returned.
It was a very masculine selection, she decided, opening a copy of the Racing Calendar for 1810 at random, then replacing it. Heavy bound editions of the Classics did not tempt her either. There was a glass-fronted bookcase on one wall. She tried the handle as she peered in. Locked. The books inside did not seem particularly valuable: a row of matching volumes, each with the date in gilt on the spine. Diaries, she supposed.
With a sigh Nell dragged her sodden handkerchief out and blew her nose again.
‘If you want poetry and novels they are in the main library downstairs, Miss Latham,’ said a deep voice behind her.
‘Ah!’ She jumped and spun round. ‘Oh. Lord Narborough. I do apologise, I had no idea this room was occupied, I was just—’
‘Looking for somewhere to hide?’ He put down a book, rose from his deep winged chair and held out a large white handkerchief. ‘Here, take this.’
Beyond trying to pretend nothing was wrong, Nell took it and applied it to what she was certain was her very red nose. ‘Thank you, my lord.’
‘Homesick?’ She shook her head. ‘Marcus?’
‘Yes. He does not trust me and I am afraid we…argue. I have just slapped his face,’ she admitted in a rush.
‘Do him a world of good, I’ve no doubt. Pull the bell, would you be so kind? What we need is a cup of coffee. Now, you
sit there, my dear.’
‘But, Lord Narborough, you do not understand.’ And what was she going to tell him, exactly? That his son had offered his protection and she had hesitated for long, betraying minutes before refusing him?
‘Have you got anything to do with that rope or the rosemary at breakfast?’ he asked her abruptly.
‘No!’ Nell bit her lip. ‘I have things I wish to keep secret and Lord Stanegate can tell that. It makes him suspicious. But, I give you my word, my lord, I do not know any more about why you have been sent these mysterious objects than I have said.’
‘Well then, we have no need to speak of it any more. Ah, Andrewes. Coffee and biscuits if you please. And, Andrewes, should anyone—anyone at all—be enquiring for Miss Latham, you believe you have not seen her since breakfast.’
‘Very good, my lord.’
‘Now then.’ He settled back in his chair, steepled his fingers and regarded her benignly. ‘Tell me how to make a hat.’
‘But you cannot want to know that, my lord.’
‘I most certainly do. Have you any idea how much I pay for hats for three ladies in a year?’
‘One hundred guineas?’ Nell hazarded.
‘Nearer three. Now, I want to know what is involved in making a hat. I would like to know where my money goes.’
By the time the gong sounded for luncheon, Nell had forgotten Marcus, her distress, even who the man she was so comfortable with was. They drank coffee, ate all the biscuits; he asked questions about hats, teased her, told her about the latest litter of hound puppies in the stable. She asked about the history of the house and found he was an authority on it.
‘Really? A priest hole?’ she gasped, wide-eyed.
‘A hidden room, certainly, and it was used during the Civil War—we stood for the king, you understand.’ George Carlow regarded her with a smile. ‘You know, you remind me of someone. I wish I could remember who. There’s something when you smile…’
‘Oh.’ Mama. She had always been told that she was the image of her mother, except for her colouring, which was her father’s. If Lord Narborough had been so close to her father, she realized, the realities flooding back, he would have known her mother well also. ‘Listen—wasn’t that the gong for luncheon?’
The elusive memory escaping him, Lord Narborough got to his feet. ‘So it is. Shall we go down?’
Nell stuck to his side on the way downstairs, then took refuge between Verity and Honoria at the table. But Marcus was absent. After half an hour, when she felt physically sick every time the door opened, Honoria put her out of her misery by remarking, ‘It’s too bad of Marcus, going off to Aylesbury like that without stopping to see if there’s anything we want from the shops.’
‘He’s gone to the bank, darling,’ her mother remarked. ‘And then he’s dining with the Wallaces. You cannot expect him to trail round haberdashery counters for you.’
‘Well, if he was going to the Wallaces, he could have taken me,’ Honoria persisted. ‘It is an age since I spoke to Georgina.’
‘I believe it was a last-minute decision to go. He is just dropping in on them to take pot luck,’ Lady Narborough said. ‘We will invite Georgina and Harriet over next week if the weather holds.’
So, Marcus had made an unplanned trip, just to avoid her. Nell shivered, anticipating the look she would see in his eyes next time they met. Pity? Or disgust?
Nell retired early that evening, the puzzle of her feelings for Lord Narborough driving her back to her mother’s box. She liked the man, she trusted him instinctively. Could she be so wrong about him?
The diary lay at the bottom of the box. Nell stood, twisting her hands together for several minutes before she reached in and lifted it out. The red morocco cover was scuffed and dull and a brown pressed flower fell out and crumbled into brittle fragments as she opened it.
Resolutely Nell began to read, the earl’s big handkerchief tight in one hand.
An hour later she laid the book down, dry eyed and drained. In 1795, her father, William Wardale, Earl of Leybourne, had been convicted of the murder by stabbing of Christopher Hebden, Baron Framlingham, in the garden of the Carlow’s London house. He had been found, literally red-handed, by Lord Narborough. The woman he had been having an affair with had been Hebden’s wife, Amanda. And almost worse than anything, her mother had written on the tear-blotched pages that he had been suspected of spying for the French, although that had never been made known publicly.
Somehow that, and the name of his lover, had been kept a secret. He was stripped of his title and his lands by Act of Attainder, meaning her brother, Nathan, could never inherit. And so he was hanged.
Stunned and shaking, now she could see it all laid out so clearly, Nell put the diary back in the box and locked it. No, it was impossible that her unwitting involvement in this was coincidence. Someone had deliberately implicated her in their plot against the Carlows. But why? If her father had been guilty, then he had paid the terrible price for his crimes. His family had all paid it with him. Why should anyone seek to involve her now?
If her father had been innocent, then why not come to her, tell her? It was as though someone wanted revenge on both families.
The clocks began to strike. Midnight. Lord Narborough was often late to bed; she had heard his wife nagging him about it. He might still be awake, and if he was, then she was going to confront him, tell him who she was, demand to know the truth about what had happened.
Before her courage failed, Nell tied her wrapper, put on her slippers, picked up a chamberstick and let herself out into the dark corridor.
There was no light under his door, no sound from within. Frustrated, Nell leaned against the panels feeling absurdly let down. It was foolish to have this sort of conversation at this time of night in any case, shocking to visit a man’s bedchamber at any hour. Much better to speak to him in the morning, she told herself, shivering with cold and reaction.
As she straightened up, there was a sharp noise from the room, the sound of breaking glass. Then silence.
She stared at the door. Perhaps the earl had knocked over a water glass. Or perhaps he was ill, flailing out in the throes of a heart stroke. She could not simply ignore it. The doorknob turned silently under the pressure of her hand as she stepped inside. Nothing, just the sound of heavy breathing from the curtained bed. Then she felt the draft from the window, saw movement from the corner of her eye, spun round. Her candle blew out but there, silhouetted against the faint light, was a lithe figure. A figure she had seen before.
Nell grabbed for him, saw the flash of metal in the gloom and was thrown roughly to one side. She staggered, reached out, found nothing under her groping hands as she fell. She opened her mouth to scream as her head struck something hard and solid. The darkened room was spinning—or was it her? Everything went black.
Chapter Nine
‘Good night, Andrewes.’ Marcus left the night-duty footman to lock up behind him and go back to the hooded porter’s chair by the front door. As he strode down the Great Hall to the staircase the clocks chimed midnight from every corner of the rambling house.
A convivial evening with Sir James Wallace and his family had done little to help him decide how to approach Nell in the morning. It certainly had done nothing to quieten his conscience. He was not normally so unperceptive, he told himself, his boot heels clicking on the broad wooden treads as he climbed.
The truth, he thought, refusing to let himself off the hook, was that he had been attracted to Nell from the start and that had clouded his judgement. He looked at her, he wanted her and he knew he should not. So, he concluded with a wry smile, he had convinced himself she was not to be trusted in order to boost his flagging willpower. Not a very comfortable admission to have to make. And quite how he was going to put it to her when he apologised, he had no idea.
In London the night would be young, his mother and sisters out at parties, himself at one of his clubs. This evening it seemed everyone had decided on an ea
rly night. The house was silent and no light showed under his mother’s bedchamber door as he passed it. He walked softly on down the considerable stretch of corridor marked only by the doors into her sitting room and her dressing room, then round the corner.
Marcus stopped in his tracks. His father’s door was ajar onto darkness and from within came a low moan. He ran, shouldering the door wide. There was no sign of his father. The curtains billowed in the cold January air, the flame in the lamp he held guttered wildly and, on the floor huddled against the dresser, was Nell. As he stared at her, she closed her eyes as though to block him out.
He wrenched back the bed curtains in a rattle of rings and saw his father, night cap in place, snoring gently against his piled pillows. As Marcus looked down at him he shifted slightly, then the reassuring rhythm of snores resumed. Beside the bed was one of the medicine bottles from the still room. He picked it up and sniffed: Mama’s fennel infusion, the smell familiar from childhood fevers and toothaches.
Quietly he drew the curtains closed and walked back to Nell. Beside her hand was a snake-like coil. Another silken rope.
Something turned cold and hard inside him as he bent and dragged Nell to her feet. She came up limply, her arms lax as though passively resisting him.
‘I told myself to trust you,’ he snarled, shaking her. ‘And I find you letting in your bloody accomplice. Where is he?’
Her eyes opened slowly, as though she too had taken a sleeping draught. In the soft light of lamp the greenish hazel irises seemed black. ‘Why would I need to break the window?’ she asked, her faint voice full of dull anger. ‘Why upstairs?’
Marcus glanced at the casement, let her go, then went to pull the window closed. The small pane nearest the handle was broken. Glass crunched under his booted feet. It had been broken from the outside, he realized, leaning out. Below the window, the bare stems of the wisteria made a strong, twisted ladder, the topmost stem scarred with a fresh cut.
