by Louise Allen
‘You would not,’ he began, sick with himself for his own suspicions. He turned back as Nell’s legs gave way and she began to slide inelegantly down the glossy front of the dresser, one hand to her head. Then he saw the blood. Her fingers where she had touched her head were red.
‘Oh God. Nell.’ He caught her under the arms and held her against his body. ‘Where are you hurt? Show me.’
‘Head, here,’ she murmured. He tipped her against his shoulder, his fingers searching in the mass of hair until they found the lump. She flinched against him as he touched it and his hand came away stained as hers was. But there was no ominous movement in her skull around the lump and she was still conscious.
Marcus scooped her up. He couldn’t be certain it was superficial, he needed better light to see by. His room was nearest, Allsop dozing in the armchair as Marcus swept in. The valet came to his feet in an instant. ‘My lord! Shall I send for the doctor?’
‘Miss Latham has suffered a blow to the head; I am not sure how serious it is. Bring the lamp and more candles over here, let me look at the wound.’ Nell was passive in his arms, whether from shock, weakness or loss of consciousness he was unsure. There was blood matting her hair on the right side over her ear and, as he parted it gently, he could see the raw skin, crowning a lump the size of a bantam’s egg.
‘It’s a graze, not a cut, so it needs no stitching. Get me warm water, cloths, the basilicum powder. Nell!’ Nell opened her eyes and blinked at him as he settled her back against the pillows. ‘Look into my eyes, let me see your pupils.’ Obediently she stared back. Her eyes seemed normal. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘Three.’ He laid her back against the pillows, but she kept her eyes on him. ‘It was the dark man, Salterton…I recognised the way he moves. Lord Narborough…’
‘He had taken a sleeping draught. He slept through it all, quite undisturbed,’ Marcus said as the valet set down the water. ‘Allsop, someone attempted to break into his lordship’s bedchamber. Fortunately Miss Latham was passing, heard the window break and frightened him off, but not before he hit her and knocked her down. I imagine he has gone for the night, but just to be on the safe side, go and sleep on the truckle bed in his lordship’s dressing room, will you? Take the pistol from the case in my closet.’
‘My lord.’ Imperturbable, the man bowed himself off, leaving Marcus regarding Nell, suddenly prey to doubts that he could manage this without hurting her.
‘Would you like me to send for the doctor?’
‘No—’ she shook her head, eyes closed again ‘—fuss.’ She lay still for a moment then admitted with a shaky smile, ‘Don’t like doctors.’ Marcus grimaced in sympathy. She was brave and she was unexpectedly strong, but nothing and no one should hurt her. The thought of Nell’s delicate skin being prodded, perhaps patches of hair shaved away, turned his stomach. He found he could not look at her face in case the sight of her distress affected him too strongly.
‘I do not think you are scared of anything, Nell,’ he said, attempting to sound bracing and unworried. ‘Let me see if I can clean it and stop the bleeding, and we’ll review how you are in the morning.’ As he said it, the impropriety struck him. ‘Would you like me to wake Miss Price, or Mama?’
‘They’ll worry about Lord Narborough,’ she murmured, her eyes fluttering open. ‘Things are so scary in the middle of the night. It doesn’t matter. Trust you.’
That, if anything, made it worse. What cause had she to say that? ‘You’re cold.’ He realized that she was beginning to shiver in her thin wrapper. ‘Take this off and have my robe—Allsop’s had it warming by the fire.’
He helped her with the wrapper, untying the belt, slipping it off her shoulders until he could remove it, noticing the plain fabric, worn thin in places, each small tear or hole painstakingly darned. He rubbed his finger over a line of tiny stitches, thinking of Nell in that drab, dark little room, darning a garment no one else would likely ever see until her eyes ached, rather than let her standards drop.
Damn it, how could he have thought for a moment that she was some man’s paramour? Everything she owned spoke of a long, solitary battle against poverty. He did not care how improper it was, he was going to buy her something warm and luxurious and pretty just as soon as he could get to a Bond Street shop.
Nell lay back, too dizzy and queasy to worry about the fact that she was on Marcus’s bed in his thick silk robe, alone in his room with him. The little blade he was using to cut the lint flashed in his hand. ‘He had a knife…’
‘I’m sure he did,’ he retorted, gently parting her hair.
‘Do you think he meant to murder Lord Narborough?’
‘There was another silken rope, on the floor. I may be wrong, but I think his purpose is to frighten us, not to kill. But he would be armed in case of discovery. Hold still.’ The warm water trickled over her ear as Marcus began to clean the wound. Nell bit her lip and tried to keep still. ‘Am I hurting you?’
‘It stings,’ she admitted. He was so gentle, his big hands moving over her scalp as though he was handling a baby. Nell focused her eyes and watched him rinsing the cloth in the water, intent on his work. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, exposing strong forearms dusted with brown hair.
She felt a curious compulsion to raise her hand, stroke the dark pelt. She lifted it, then let it drop. Mustn’t touch him. ‘I didn’t let him in, Marcus. I know it must seem suspicious, my being there.’
‘Why were you?’ She could not see his face, only his chest, so close as he leaned over to tend her head.
If she told him now, on top of this fresh attack, would he believe her innocent? His immediate thought on discovering that she was not a virgin had been that she was Salterton’s lover. When he had found her just now he had accused her without hesitation. How could she convince him of her good faith when he knew who her father was? And yet it hurt so much to lie to him.
‘I couldn’t sleep, I was restless. Your father had been telling me stories of the history of the house and it seemed so romantic. So I decided to walk a little in the Long Gallery. As I was going past Lord Narborough’s door, I heard the noise of breaking glass, just a sudden sharp crack in the silence. I opened the door in case something was wrong, another heart stroke perhaps, and the man attacked me. It was dark,’ she added. ‘My candle blew out but I recognised him. Salterton moves beautifully.’
‘He’ll be crawling like a crippled cat when I get my hands on him,’ Marcus promised with a lack of emphasis that was chilling in itself. He began to sprinkle basilicum powder into her hair. ‘I’ll put a pad on that and then bandage it. It is not as bad as all that blood made it appear—a deep graze rather than a cut—but you are going to have a most piratical appearance. You are being very brave, Nell.’
Her head ached now, a deep throb that made her think about Marcus’s wound. He had shown no sign of it since their arrival here, and yet it must have pained him far more than her head. There was no sign of bandaging under the fine linen of his shirt. She found her gaze lingering on his broad shoulders, on the open V of his shirt, and steadied her voice.
‘It aches,’ she admitted. ‘But it is nothing, I imagine, compared to your shoulder.’
‘Men are supposed to put up with these things,’ he said curtly, apparently focused on winding the bandage firmly around her head. ‘What sort of bastard hits a woman?’
Was he going to refer to the morning and his assumptions about her lover? Marcus was tidying away the bandages now; he could not pretend absorption in his medical activities for much longer.
He got up, cleared the water bowl away then came and sat down by the bed. ‘I have to apologise to you, Nell.’ He met her eyes at last.
‘You do?’ Perversely the tenderness she felt for him, here in the midnight intimacy of his room, did not incline her to make this easy for him.
‘This morning I should not have made the suggestion that I did. And then I leapt to a conclusion that was utt
erly unwarranted. I insulted you and I failed to recognise that you had experienced something…terrible.’
‘Yes.’ She wanted to close her eyes, lie back, sleep. But Marcus was apologizing and she could not, for some reason, bring herself to snub him after all. ‘I had—have—a brother and a sister. But Mama and I lost contact with them when I was seventeen. My brother vanished one day, Mama was ill, there was no money. Our landlord told me he would let us stay, for free if I would…if I would lie with him. I refused. You can imagine the rest.’ She was not going to remember it any more than she could help.
‘What was his name?’ There was a pain in her hand. Nell looked down and saw Marcus’s hand gripping her fingers. He followed her gaze and released her with a muttered curse.
‘Why?’
‘The man needs dealing with. I would ensure he was never able to do that to a defenceless woman again.’
‘Harris,’ she said. The name had been that of a bogeyman for so long. It was a liberation to find that speaking of it to this man began to disperse the terror. She could see her landlord now as an unpleasant, manipulative bully, not the ever-present monster he became in the endless dark nights.
‘He will be long gone. Mama and I had to get away. We left, but then she became worse. It was a nightmare, and when it was all over, by the time she was better and I was sure I would not bear Harris’s child, then we realized we had lost all contact with the others. It was not a very nice part of London we found ourselves in,’ she added with considerable understatement.
‘My sister, I hope and pray, is still in respectable employment. My brother may be dead, I do not know.’
Marcus had repossessed himself of her hand and she let him hold it. Warmth and strength seemed to flow into her and she felt her eyes closing again.
‘Oh, Nell. The carriage and then the Long Gallery. I was not gentle. I can imagine you never want another man to touch you again.’ His grip opened and she curled her fingers into his to hold him.
‘So I thought,’ she agreed, beginning to drift towards sleep now. ‘I find it depends on the man.’
Marcus was halfway to his feet. At her words, he moved sharply, as though caught off-balance, and his free hand brushed the side of her breast. She opened her eyes as he snatched his hand back, his face stark. ‘I am so sorry, Nell, that was an accident.’
They both seemed to have stopped breathing, still linked by her grasp on his left hand. Nell managed to find enough air for two words. ‘I know.’ He was standing there, tall and strong and worried for her, her blood on his shirt where he had held her in his arms, his big, elegant hands that had tended her wound stilled with the fear that his touch would terrify her.
Nell felt tears welling up at the back of her eyes and swallowed them away, making her voice light. ‘You know, it is a very long time since anyone just held me. I think…I think that would be nice.’
‘Nice.’ The frown lines between his brows vanished. ‘You would like me to hold you?’
‘Mmm. In your arms. In bed.’ Her eyes were growing heavy again and the room was drifting away, along with vague inhibitions. She shouldn’t ask that of him, she knew, but somehow she couldn’t quite recall why not. ‘I think I would feel safe then. I think I could sleep.’
Nell was almost asleep already. What he should do, Marcus knew perfectly well, was to pick her up, carry her back to her own room, ring for her maid and leave her.
And if she woke in the night, alone, in pain, worried that her attacker might return? That should not matter. All that should matter was decorum and propriety.
‘Well, be damned to that,’ he muttered, tugging off his boots and throwing his waistcoat and neckcloth onto the chair. He would stay with her tonight, and he would show her that it was possible for a man to be gentle, to touch a woman without an ulterior motive.
She was asleep now, honey-brown hair loose on the pillows, the rakish bandage incongruous around her head, no colour in her cheeks. He turned back the covers on the far side of the bed then lifted her across, settling her snugly, before sliding in beside her, still in his breeches and shirt.
It took some arranging to get his arm around Nell without touching her breasts or jolting her head, but he managed it at last, ending up with her left cheek on his shoulder and one arm over his chest. He suspected that his own arm was going to be numb by morning, but it was worth it to experience the soft warmth against him, the silky slide of her hair touching his neck, the cold toes curling confidingly against his stockinged feet.
‘Are you asleep?’ he murmured.
‘Yes,’ she replied, making him smile as she burrowed a little closer. ‘You are so warm, Marcus.’
‘And your feet are so cold.’ But then she was truly asleep, her breath whispering through the open neck of his shirt to tease the skin. He had never before lain with a woman like this, innocently. With innocent intent, he corrected himself. What he felt was not at all pure, and strangely, it was not the obvious things that were inciting the need to run his hands over her body, to kiss her, to rouse her to passion. It was those small, cold feet, the feel of her hip bone jutting against him, the dark shadows under the down-swept lashes that reminded him that she needed feeding up, resting. It was the things that reminded him that this was Nell.
He wanted to look after her, pamper her, indulge her. And make love to her until she forgot those damned men who haunted her and filled her life with ever-present fear, forgot everything but the feel of his body possessing her, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, the heat of his mouth on hers.
‘Oh, well done,’ he muttered into the darkness, contemplating the painfully insistent erection he had managed to conjure up. Think about Salterton, think about Father, think what you are going to do in the morning. He settled Nell firmly against his side and willed himself to sleep.
Nell woke to the four soft tings of the little French clock on the bedside table and lay blinking in the light of the lamp Marcus had left burning. He was asleep, his right arm holding her against his body where she must have lain for hours, warm and safe.
The colour burned warm in her cheeks as she remembered asking him to stay with her, sleep with her. Hold her. She must have been almost feverish to have dared do such a thing.
He was still dressed. Her bare leg brushed against the heavy cloth of his breeches, her side was pressed to his shirt. She had trusted him instinctively and he had been gentle and caring, the antithesis of Harris, the opposite of what she had come to fear any man would be like.
He was frowning in his sleep, she realised, smiling at those sharp lines between his brows. She was becoming rather fond of that expression. It no longer seemed forbidding, more the sign that he was worrying about his family, worrying about her. Caring.
Nell shifted a little and winced at the stiffness in her neck and the jolt of pain in her bandaged head. Would he let her see his own wound, judge for herself how well it was healing? She thought not. Being injured appeared to be a physical affront to him, she thought with a smile, remembering his indignation at the pain, his own weakness. A weakness he had overcome through sheer, bloody-minded determination instead of allowing his body time to rest and heal.
She risked letting the tips of her fingers stroke across his chest. ‘Marcus,’ she whispered, her eyelids drooping again. ‘Love…’
Chapter Ten
The single chime of the clock beside him brought Marcus out of a dream of Nell, her hands drifting across his body, her lips warm on his skin, her hair flowing, murmured words of love on her lips…
He turned his head on the pillow. Quarter past four. It was important to wake up early, he knew that, but why?
Against his side, someone stirred, soft, warm, curling round his body. You idiot, Carlow. What the hell had he been thinking last night? Not thinking at all, he decided grimly, just going with his feelings and his instincts, which now, in the cold dark of dawn, were obviously wildly awry.
Nell was no dream; she was here, in his bed, where he had
put her when she had been in no state to know what was right or wrong, when she was vulnerable. She was now, for all the utter innocence of their behaviour, completely compromised.
Or she would be, if she were a lady. But Nell was a milliner, a working girl. She was no less ruined for that, but his position was completely different. The son and heir to an earldom did not marry a milliner, not if he had any care for the family name, for his duties and responsibilities to his inheritance.
But she was his responsibility now, more than ever. He lay there trying to think through all the ramifications of this. Getting her back to her own bed was the priority. Then removing all traces of her from his, making sure Allsop kept his mouth shut, finding an excuse for her head injury to satisfy his mother and sisters, explaining it all to his father, putting an effective guard on the house…
Hell. Double hell and damnation. What if she clung to him, thought that after last night he should—what? She wasn’t really ruined, not if no one knew. She was not a virgin after all. He mentally kicked himself for that thought. Crass. But a week ago he would have concluded, without a twinge of conscience, that a woman in her position should be grateful to be paid off. But this was not just any woman, this was Nell, and besides, a painfully stirring conscience was telling him that his previous attitudes were nothing to be proud of.
Against his side she moved, snuggling closer, disturbing the covers so the scent of warm, sleepy woman filled his nostrils like a drugging incense. It sent his body into a state of instant arousal that did nothing for his already guilty conscience. With a muttered curse Marcus slid out of bed, found her wrapper and threw back the covers.
‘Nell.’
‘Mmm?’
‘Wake up, you’ve got to go back to your own room.’ Slippers, had she had slippers? He found them, averting his eyes from the sight of Nell cuddled in his robe, while she sat up rubbing her eyes.
‘Ouch,’ she complained, then seemed to realize where she was. ‘Oh.’ Her face was a picture. If things had not been so serious, he would have smiled at the combination of feminine embarrassment and the dissipated appearance of the lop-sided bandage. ‘Oh, dear.’
