The Lord and the Wayward Lady

by Louise Allen

  He swung up into the saddle and rode hard for the house.

  ‘We can’t find Nell,’ his mother said as he strode into the Great Hall. She looked concerned, catching his mood.

  ‘I know. She’s been lured out. Watson! Get all the footmen in here and the keepers and the grooms. Open the gun cases. I am going to end this,’ he said grimly as his father emerged from his study, ‘and then I am going to marry Nell.’

  Nell stood at the door of the folly and shivered. She was cold and frightened, she admitted to herself as she scanned the empty clearing. But she was also angry, burningly angry. This man, Salterton, was raking up her family’s tragedy for his own reasons. And it was not just what had happened to the Wardales. A man had been murdered and Lord Narborough had lived under a cloud of rumour and guilt ever since.

  Salterton had put her in the position where she must try Marcus’s trust to the limit and that, somehow, felt worse than anything else. She put her hand on the cold iron ring of the handle and it opened onto the shadows of the room.

  ‘Come in, Helena.’ He was another shadow, standing by the cold hearth, his long, caped coat brushing his booted heels, his eyes glinting as they caught the light.

  ‘You have been reading too many Gothic novels, Mr Salterton,’ Nell said, pitching her voice down a little to keep it steady. ‘Really, all this drama! Can you not just say plainly why you are doing this?’

  ‘What, and have you run screaming out of the door?’ he asked, amused. ‘Empty your pockets, if you please.’

  Nell pulled out the linings. ‘One pocket handkerchief. I have no pistol, you have my word on that.’

  ‘Then we will be on our way. Turn around, Helena.’

  She thought of correcting him, telling him her name was Nell now. But his use of that long-ago name distanced him, made this less real. ‘Where are we going? I thought you wanted to talk.’

  ‘No, you wanted to talk. Turn around,’ he repeated. ‘I am sure you would much prefer to walk than be slung over my shoulder.’

  ‘Very well.’ Nell stepped outside. ‘Which way?’

  ‘Go around to the back of the folly and you will see a narrow path. Follow that. Do not look around.’

  ‘Very well.’ She could not hear him behind her as she threaded her way along the path, hardly more than the passage forced by deer through the bracken and brambles. ‘What did you say to me yesterday? That foreign language?’ She was less interested in the meaning than in judging how close he was; the man moved like a ghost.

  ‘Hmm? Ah, yes. I said, Where the needle goes, surely the thread will follow.’

  ‘A Romany proverb?’ she guessed. ‘You are a Gypsy?’

  ‘A Rom?’

  Ah, she thought, he corrects me. This is something he is sensitive about.

  ‘I am what I chose to be, when I chose,’ he said, very close. ‘Turn down the hill—’

  There was the thunder of hooves. A big horse, ridden fast. Marc and Corinth, Nell thought as Salterton’s hand came over her mouth and she was pulled back hard against him.

  ‘Stand still, Helena,’ he murmured. Through the trees there was a flash of grey as the horse passed, then the woods were silent again. Salterton continued to hold her. ‘You smell good, Helena,’ he said, his breath feathering her cold ear.

  She bit down, hard, and wrenched at his imprisoning arm. Foolishly it had never occurred to her that she might be in that sort of danger.

  ‘You have spirit.’ He released her and gave her a little forward push. ‘There is no cause to fear, I do not force women. I have no need,’ he added a moment later as her pulse rate began to slow a little.

  ‘Your arrogance is astonishing,’ Nell said, concentrating on walking steadily. She refused to let him see he was frightening her.

  ‘It is only arrogance if it is unjustified.’ The chuckle from behind had her gritting her teeth. ‘Carlow has fallen in love with you. He will be so very unhappy to have lost you.’

  ‘Lost me?’ The slope was steeper now, Nell told herself. That was why she stumbled, had to put out a hand to steady herself.

  ‘Calm yourself, I do not kill women either,’ Salterton said. ‘He will not want you back, that English aristocrat, after you have lain with me.’

  ‘You think you can seduce me? You?’ Nell put every ounce of contempt she could manage into her voice. ‘You can force me, no doubt. But seduce me?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It may take a little time, but I am a patient man. A very patient man.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Nell demanded. She was breathing heavily now, despite her best efforts at control. Her breath was making clouds in the freezing air and her throat was raw.

  ‘I owe the Carlows nothing but misery and death,’ he said simply, so simply that at first she thought she had misheard him. ‘It is a long story and an old one, but then, as I said, I am a patient man and I do not forget.’

  ‘Or forgive, apparently,’ Nell said tartly and heard him laugh softly. ‘And why involve me?’

  ‘Why, you are a part of the thread too—you and your brother and your sister.’

  ‘They are alive?’ She stumbled again, badly this time, and he caught her by the shoulders, holding her so she could not turn to face him.

  ‘Don’t you know, Helena?’

  ‘No. No, I do not,’ she admitted. ‘Nathan vanished—did you kill him?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Nell stifled a sob and pulled free, walking on ahead. He is not going to make me cry. He is tormenting me. Nathan is safe, Nathan is alive; they both are.

  ‘You should ask Miss Price,’ he said. ‘She has secrets too.’

  He was trying to unsettle her, torment her. Diana Price could know nothing of Nathan. After a moment, when she regained her composure, she said, ‘This thread you speak of is silken, I presume, and makes a rope to hang a peer with?’ She heard a grunt of assent. ‘And the rosemary is for remembrance?’

  ‘What rosemary?’

  ‘You did not send a sprig of it? To Lord Narborough?’

  ‘No,’ he said, and for the first time she thought she had unsettled him, just a little, but he said nothing more.

  Almost at the bottom of the slope now, she could see meadows through the trees and guessed they must be downstream of the lake where the party had skated. Where was he taking her? Should she try and escape, or should she stay passive and hope to learn more?

  ‘Here, turn to the right.’ There was a hut of some kind nestled in the edge of the wood. A shepherd’s night shelter perhaps, for when the flocks were brought down to the water meadows to graze. ‘Go in. It is not locked.’

  Nell pushed open the door. It was snug enough, although dark, without a window. The thick planks overlapped to keep the worst of the draughts out, and a pallet heaped with blankets lay against one wall. Nell eyed it nervously.

  ‘Sit down on the stool and put your hands behind you.’

  With a sigh of relief she did as she was told, sinking down on the three-legged stool in front of a small hearth. She had hardly settled when her wrists were lashed together, not brutally, but with a ruthless efficiency—and what felt like a soft cord. Salterton had left the door open for light while he knelt to strike a flame and touch it to the pile of dry kindling on the hearthstone.

  ‘It is very dry,’ he remarked as though reading her thoughts. ‘There will be no smoke to guide your gallant lover here.’

  ‘He will find you,’ she swore, looking down at the sweeping brim of the slouch hat.

  ‘I doubt it. When the time comes, I will find him. I will find all of them.’ Salterton got to his feet and shut the door, leaving the interior of the hut lit only by the flickering flames. He sank down on his haunches beside the hearth and tossed his hat onto the pallet. In the firelight his face was a mask with dark, glittering eyes, the lines made harsher by the shadows.

  But he was, she could tell, a disturbingly handsome man with a feral grace about him and the edge of wild danger in every movement. It was a strange co
ntrast with the calm irony of his voice. It would not do, Nell told herself, to underestimate his intelligence.

  ‘Why will you find them?’

  ‘To deliver an old foretelling,’ he said, and it seemed to her that a nerve jumped on one of the beautiful high cheekbones as though he was in pain. He lifted a hand and touched his forehead for a moment.

  ‘What? What is foretold?’

  ‘You will find out. All of you. The children will pay for the sins of their fathers. It has been seen and it has been said.’

  Nell told herself that the thin trickle of ice down her spine was a draught from the door, not the effect of the lilting voice speaking its prophesy.

  ‘I will leave you here. Just for a little, Helena, while I make sure the coast is clear. And then you will come with me and learn how to please me.’ The dark man’s voice dropped into a caress like velvet on her skin, and he came up onto his knees beside her, one long brown finger tracing the line of her cheek as his lips just brushed her own. ‘Wait for me, Helena,’ he said as she recoiled. ‘Wait and think of your lover’s suffering when he imagines what will pass between us.’

  Nell strained her ears as the door closed behind him, listening. Even in the deep snow around the hut he made no sound. She counted in her head—one minute, two, three—then stood up, her arms awkwardly behind her, and knelt down on the pallet with its thin covering of blankets. Somehow she had to get her hands in front of her.

  For what seemed like an hour, but was probably only fifteen minutes, Nell rolled and twisted and swore, hampered by her heavy coat and thick skirts. Finally, at the cost of wrenched shoulders and sore wrists, she managed to get her arms under her bottom and thread her legs through.

  She sat on the pallet panting for a moment, then used her fingertips to pull out the knife she had concealed in the side of her half-boot. It had seemed wildly melodramatic when she had selected the sharp little fruit knife and slid it into its hiding place; now she was grateful for the impulse. It was far more useful than any pistol would have been; with it wedged between her feet she sawed through the bonds easily.

  It was not until she looked more carefully at the loops still tied around her wrists that she realized it was more of the silken rope, spun this time into a thin cord. Nell started to tug at the knots, then realized she was wasting time. She had to get back to the house, tell Marc what Salterton had said, and hope he and Lord Narborough and Hal could make some sense of it.

  All I have to do is elude him, she thought ruefully as she opened the door and peered out. Salterton’s tracks led back behind the hut—he had gone into the woods. Nell took a moment to get her bearings, then set off along the edge of the trees, hugging the hedge line. It was at least a mile back to the house, more likely a mile and a half by this route.

  Nell ran and walked alternately, stumbling as she kept turning to check around her for pursuit. How long would he take on his errand before he returned for her? Where was Marc?

  Then out of the corner of her eye, in the distance, she saw movement. Nell stopped, squinting against the dazzle of sun on the snow, and realized it was the top of a carriage—and with this snow, the only route a carriage could take was the turnpike road. If she cut across the meadows, across the frozen river and up the other side, then there was a good chance she would find another carriage, a cottage, a farm. Refuge.

  But it meant leaving cover and going into the open. Nell hesitated, then turned her back on the woods and ran, the snow kicking up behind her, her throat raw with the cold air. For a moment she thought she had done it, then a dark figure burst from the woods by the hut, threw off its hampering greatcoat and began to run diagonally across the meadow to intercept her.

  He had farther to run but he was stronger, his legs longer, and she was battling her clinging skirts. Nell wrenched off her bonnet and struggled with buttons as she ran, gasping with relief as she left hat and coat behind her. But the advantage was not enough; as she reached the river and launched herself across its treacherous slippery surface, she could hear Salterton behind her.

  Sheer terror took her across the ice as though on skates but her very speed betrayed her. At the far bank Nell tripped, tried to stop, felt herself falling and was jerked upright.

  ‘You spurn my hospitality, Helena?’ The dark man pulled her round to face him. He hardly seemed to have exerted himself at all, his breathing calm compared to her panting breaths.

  ‘Oh! I am going to be sick!’ She doubled up as though retching and he freed her arm. Frantic, Nell’s groping fingers found the knife in her boot again and she straightened with it held out in front of her. ‘Let me go or I swear I will use this,’ she gasped, meaning it.

  Salterton moved so fast his hand seemed to blur. Nell screamed in fear and fury and slashed at him, but he caught her wrist with one hand and wrenched the knife from her with the other.

  ‘Hellcat,’ he snarled, all his control gone, and she stood there transfixed, the blood from his slashed hand dripping onto the frozen river as the knife pressed against her throat.

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘You said you did not kill women,’ Nell said, the blade moving against her windpipe as she spoke. With her mind she tried to reach out to Marc. I’m sorry, so sorry, I love you…

  ‘I do not.’ Slowly Salterton lowered the blade. ‘Not even wildcats like you.’ The knife vanished, the grip on her arms changed as he pulled her back towards the centre of the river. Under their feet the ice gave an ominous creak. It was deep water here, Nell remembered, the outflow from the dammed millpond.

  ‘Back across to the woods, and this time, if you try anything, I’ll knock you out and carry—’

  The shot was explosive in the cold air. Salterton spun round, Nell held before him like a shield, to face the horsemen galloping towards them. It was all three of the Carlow men, she realized, both Marc and Hal riding with rifles in their hands.

  Nell blinked back tears and smiled through trembling lips. He has come for me. The horses skidded to a halt on the bank in the flurry of snow, and the three riders held them back, their faces set.

  ‘He’s armed,’ she called. ‘He has a knife.’ And it was in Salterton’s hand again, the hand that was not clasping her in front of him in a cruel parody of the way Marc had held her when they skated together. The blade lay against her breast.

  ‘Nell, are you all right?’ Marc’s voice was calm, but under it she could hear the killing rage.

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’

  ‘Let her go,’ Lord Narborough said, his face set in lines of fury. ‘What sort of coward hides behind a woman?’

  ‘One who has some sense,’ the dark man retorted, apparently amused by the older man’s anger. ‘And besides, I haven’t finished with her yet. She is a woman of spirit this one. I shall enjoy having her in my bed.’

  There was a snarl, and Hal flung out an arm and seized the barrel of Marc’s rifle. The brothers exchanged a long look, then Hal released his grip and Marcus lowered the gun.

  ‘Let her go, come here and I will fight you, man to man, with a damned knife if that is your weapon.’

  ‘Why should I?’ Salterton was edging Nell closer to midstream, perhaps eight feet from the bank. Under their feet the creaking became cracking. ‘She’s mine. You won’t touch me while I hold her—you think I care for your foolish notions of duels and honour?’

  ‘No, it is plain you do not,’ Marc said, his voice contemptuous. ‘You are no gentleman.’

  ‘But I have the woman,’ the dark man pointed out. ‘You will not attack me while I hold her, and soon, very soon, she will be where you will never find her, enjoying a man who is just that—a man, not some aristocratic parasite hiding behind his valet and his butler.’ He pulled Nell back as he spoke and rubbed his cheek possessively against hers. ‘Mine, you see?’

  Nell jerked away as far as his hold would let her, and the long barrel of Marcus’s rifle came up, unwavering. She stared at the tiny black hole of the muzzle.

  ‘I
’m sorry, Nell, I cannot let that happen,’ Marc said.

  Nell gasped. He was going to shoot her rather than let Salterton ravish her? She wanted to shout out, but her voice was dry in her throat.

  Beside her the dark man chuckled. ‘Bloody fool, with his gentlemanly dramatics. He thinks you would rather be dead than dishonoured? You have not changed at all, Marcus.’

  ‘I love you, Nell,’ Marc said, his deep voice projecting across the still air. ‘Remember how I held you on the ice when we skated? Remember that, how it ended?’

  The skating? What on earth? Nell stared back at the rifle and realized what he meant. She let her feet slide out in front of her and dropped like a stone through Salterton’s clutching arm to land heavily at his feet.

  And as she fell she heard the shot, its sharp report mingling with the sound of the ice. Above her there was a sobbing gasp. She scrabbled with hands and feet, seeing the long cracks beginning to radiate outwards, and Salterton fell, landing even more heavily than she had, and the cracks opened, the world tilted and she slid down, hitting icy water that knocked the breath from her lungs.

  Beside her, Salterton thrashed, twisted, and got one brown hand up and onto the edge of the ice and the other locked into her hair. There was blood in the water and his face was distorted in a rictus of pain and effort as he fought the current that was dragging them both under, away from the hole.

  ‘Nell!’ And Marcus plunged in; his hands supported her as he fought to lift her. She felt her hair freed, then the other man had his hand under her armpit and was pushing, working with Marcus, and she was lifted towards the surface and Hal’s reaching hands as he lay on the ice.

  Marcus kicked against the pull of the river, his boots filling with water, his coat a dead weight around his shoulders. But Nell was half out now; he glimpsed his father kneeling beside Hal, reaching for her.

  ‘Together,’ a voice rasped, and he realized it was the dark man. With a great effort he lifted, and Nell slid out onto the ice. Hal pushed her towards their father, then leaned in again, his hand closing over Marcus’s wrist.