by Louise Allen
‘Here, hold the edge, we’ll get you out.’ Marcus turned in the water, reaching for the other man with his free hand.
Like a gaffed fish, the dark man twisted away, his face stark with rejection.
‘Don’t be a fool, you’ll drown.’ But he had gone, swept away under the ice into the green gloom.
‘Can you get out or am I going to have to come in and get you?’ Hal demanded through gritted teeth. ‘My bloody arm is half out of its socket.’
Marcus took the other hand held out to him, kicked, and was hauled out onto the ice. ‘The damn fool wouldn’t let me save him,’ he gasped, sprawled on his belly, coughing up water.
‘That’s an economy then,’ Hal said, his tone at odds with the urgency with which he was dragging Marcus’s coat off him and wrapping him in his own. ‘No trial and no hanging.’
‘Nell?’ Marcus turned to find her cradled in his father’s arms, his greatcoat round her as the earl chaffed her hands.
‘She’s fainted,’ he said. ‘We need to get her back, now.’
‘We all need to get back,’ Marcus said, finding his feet and limping towards the horses. ‘Hal, can you lift her up to me?’ he asked as he got up onto Corinth. He wasn’t sure how he kept going, but he was damned if anyone other than himself was taking Nell home.
She came to as he snuggled her against himself, one arm around her, one hand for the reins. ‘Marcus? I knew you’d come. I’m very sorry. I thought I could find out…’
‘And I thought I’d lost you,’ he said gruffly.
‘Not when you can shoot like that,’ she murmured against his sodden shirt front. ‘He’s gone, hasn’t he? Under the ice?’ she asked, her voice stronger as she turned to face the river.
Marcus saw his father and brother looking at him, their eyes reflecting the hope—and the doubt—that he knew was in his. ‘Yes, he’s gone,’ he said firmly, with a shake of his head to the other two to keep them silent, and sent Corinth into a smooth canter towards home.
‘Where am I?’ Nell asked, confused. She was in a room that was not her own, surrounded by a babble of voices and bundled up so tight in a cocoon of blankets that she could not move or see properly.
‘In my room,’ Marcus said beside her. ‘Will everyone please go?’ he added, raising his voice to somewhere just short of a parade ground bellow.
‘Marcus, my dear, it is hardly seemly. Nell should be in her own room and Miss Price and I will see to her.’ Lady Narborough sounded uncharacteristically flustered.
‘Go and look after Father, Mama,’ Marcus said firmly. ‘He got cold and has probably overexerted himself.’
‘Oh, yes, of course. But Miss Price—’ Nell heard her voice die away down the corridor, still protesting faintly.
‘Thank you, Diana, if you could just take the staff with you. The fire is lit, the tub is filled.’ With ruthless efficiency, Marcus cleared the room and came back to Nell. ‘Now then, let’s get you out of those wet clothes.’ He started to peel back the blankets.
‘And you,’ Nell protested, trying to pull herself together and be practical and sensible, and just feeling as though all she wanted was to melt into Marc’s arms and never to let go. ‘You must change.’
‘I have,’ he said, throwing the last damp blanket aside, and she saw he was wearing a heavy silk dressing gown over loose trousers and a shirt.
‘Now, out of these clothes.’ He swore under his breath as the sodden fastenings refused to cooperate, picked up some scissors from a side table and ruthlessly cut everything off her.
‘Marcus!’
‘My God, you are cold right through,’ he said, ignoring her flustered efforts to shield her white, goose-pimpled body. ‘Into the bath with you.’
‘Marcus,’ she tried again as he lowered her into the warm water. ‘Your mother, Miss Price—everyone knows I am in here with you! Oh, oh that is wonderful.’ The blissful warmth distracted her for a moment. ‘What are they going to think?’
He rolled up his sleeves, knelt by the tub and began to wash her, his big hands sure and gentle. ‘They will think that I love you and don’t want anyone else looking after you.’
‘Yes, but Lady Narborough—’
‘Hush.’ He silenced her by the simple expedient of kissing her, his mouth gentling over hers until she stopped trying to talk and simply relaxed back against the towel he had draped around the rim of the tub.
‘Sleepy,’ she heard herself murmur as he freed her lips. ‘So sleepy.’
‘You are warm now, it is safe to sleep. To bed with you, Nell.’
She was vaguely aware of being lifted, of the embrace of soft linen and strong arms, then sound and feeling faded away and she slept, knowing only that she was safe.
Nell woke slowly in a strange bed. The room was unlit except for the cool wash of moonlight turning everything stark black and silver. In the grate the fire burned low, a dull, deep red that told her she had slept for hours. The curtains must be open, she reasoned, blinking her eyes into focus as she turned her cheek on the pillow. Marcus. She could smell his cologne, that faint tang of citrus, and beneath it the scent of his skin. She was in his bed. Now she recognised the room from that night when she had slept there chastely in his arms.
Her reaching hand found no other body in the bed, only a dip in the mattress beside her and a faint residual warmth. He had been there, she thought, looking after her through the night. She lay still for a while, letting the events of the day wash over her, absorbing them, hearing again Marc’s voice. I love you, he had said as he had fired the shot that freed her, his aim as true as his heart, she thought, her own heart catching in her breast.
She sat up, and found she was wearing a nightgown, even though she had no recollection of putting one on. ‘Marc?’ He was standing by the window looking out.
‘Are you all right?’ He turned and strode to the bedside, dropping whatever he had been holding onto the covers. ‘Were you dreaming? A nightmare?’
‘No.’ She let him take her hands, cupping them in his as though to reassure himself that she was warm. ‘I was thinking of you, how you saved me.’
‘I have never been more afraid in my life,’ he admitted, sitting down beside her. ‘I saw the knife at your throat, the blood—’
‘His blood, my knife,’ Nell said, daring to boast a little. ‘But you shot true.’
‘One of the few things Hal will admit I do better than he can,’ he confessed. ‘Why did you do it, Nell? Why did you go out alone to meet him?’
‘Because I felt responsible. I am sorry. I know I deceived you, I know I asked for your trust and then betrayed it.’
‘No, never that. I never thought that, Nell. I was angry that you had put yourself in danger, but my trust in you never failed.’
Comforted, immeasurably relieved, she pushed the pillows up and sat so they were shoulder to shoulder, Marc’s body a comforting bulwark. ‘I brought the first rope to you. I am my father’s daughter. I had to go.’
‘And I am my father’s son,’ Marc said dryly. ‘But you are no more responsible for your father’s actions than I am for mine, Nell.’
‘I know. And you know I understand why your father did what he did. But if Papa was innocent, then there is still a murderer and a traitor at large.’
‘Nell, it is history now.’ He put an arm around her shoulders and held her tight.
‘It is not. How can it be? Salterton, or whoever he was, said that he was the agent of an old foretelling. He called me Helena. I asked him what he meant and he said, 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. And he knows you—did you hear him say you have not changed?’
‘I don’t know him, it is more of his tricks. He has gone, Nell, and the threat with him.’
She knew every tone of his voice, the feel of his body, and something did not ring true. ‘You don’t believe that, do you? You do not truly believe he is dead.’
‘He should be. I
hit him square in the shoulder, the water was deep and fast and bitter cold.’ Marcus paused, then said, ‘I’ll not lie to you, Nell. I will not be sure until I see his dead body.’
‘Then we must take precautions,’ she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. ‘I will need a large footman-bodyguard at my new shop.’
Marcus got up abruptly and began to light candles until the room was ablaze with light.
‘Marcus?’
‘I want to see your face, Nell. Look.’ He held out the thing he had been holding by the window, a cut and frayed length of silken cord. ‘I took this off your wrists. I faced what it would have felt like to lose you and I cannot bear that again. I love you, Nell, you know that. Marry me.’
‘Your parents,’ she said hopelessly. ‘The scandal.’
‘My father adores you, my mother enquired tartly when I was going to make an honest woman of you, commenting that I did not deserve you.’
‘Oh.’ Unable to look at him, Nell picked at the frayed ends of the cord. It had dried and the intertwining colours showed vividly: deep rose-red, periwinkle-blue, golden yellow. ‘But—’
‘The scandal. I would say to hell with it and what anyone says, but I’ll not have anyone hurt you, Nell. We will go away for a long honeymoon, visit Longrigg, the Carlow estate in Northumberland. It will be a nine-day wonder, for those who recall who Helena Wardale is. When we come back there will be other scandals, you will see, and what there is we will face down together.’
‘Truly?’ she questioned. ‘Marcus, the past—’
‘The past is gone into history. We must build a new life, new memories.’
Something very like hope stirred. We, he had said. We. ‘Marcus, do you truly want to marry me?’
‘I love you, Nell.’ He stood by the bed looking down at her, smiling ruefully. ‘I will love you always, whether you’ll have me or not. But say yes. You like me a little, I have it on good authority that you love my frown. You seem to enjoy my lovemaking. Could you learn to love me just a little too, Nell?’
‘Learn?’ Her voice was all over the place. She very much feared she was going to cry. ‘I love you already, you idiot man. I’ve loved you for weeks. But I thought it would be wrong, I thought it would hurt you, Marcus. Marc, darling—don’t look like that…’ The smile had faded as she spoke, his eyes had darkened, he looked as though he was in shock.
‘Don’t I look like a man who has just been given his heart’s desire?’ he asked after a moment that seemed to stretch for ever. ‘Like a man who is realising that he has found his soulmate and that, by some miracle, she feels the same way? I’m not sure quite how to contain so much happiness, what to do with it, Nell.’
‘We could make love,’ she suggested, realising that tears were trickling down her face and that she did not care, she was so happy. ‘Would that make it better?’
‘That would make the end of the world better, Nell,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘And you won’t need to be careful?’ she suggested as he bent to unbutton the long row of bone buttons on the chaste nightgown.
‘No, I won’t need to be careful,’ he agreed, his voice husky. ‘You know, Nell, that night after Salterton broke in here, when I saw your robe with its careful darns, I swore I was going to buy you something pretty and frivolous from Bond Street. Just think what fun we can have shopping,’ he murmured, bowing his head to take her right nipple into his mouth, his teeth and his tongue together making her gasp as it hardened and peaked.
‘We would come back, laden with bandboxes.’ He released it and leant over to tease the other one. ‘And you would try everything on for me.’ His tongue trailed lower as his hands pushed the nightgown apart.
‘And then I would take it all off again?’ Nell managed to gasp as his tongue circled lazily in her navel.
‘Oh, yes. Very, very, slowly. Of course, you’ve got these nightgowns already and it would be extravagant to replace them while there’s wear in them.’ Marcus gripped the sides and tore. ‘Damn, look at that. Quite unwearable.’
‘I do love you,’ Nell said, a laugh escaping her despite the utter havoc Marcus was causing to her internal equilibrium. He was managing to simultaneously shed his dressing gown and kiss his way along her hipbones. ‘But, Marc, please, I don’t think I can bear this. I want you, now, this moment.’
‘You’ve got me,’ he said, his eyes bright in the candlelight.
‘Inside me,’ she said, and felt herself blushing.
He knelt between her parted thighs, looking down at her, and she blushed more intensely as she saw the heat in his eyes, the intent. ‘I cannot think of anywhere I would rather be,’ he said, lowering himself over her, taking just enough weight on his elbows that she was conscious of every hard-muscled inch of his body.
‘Love me,’ she whispered as he eased into her, inch by aching inch.
‘Always,’ he said against her lips as she curled her legs around his hips to take him as deep as she could. ‘Always.’
And when he brought her to the peak of delight he stayed with her, driving her higher and higher until she was sobbing his name as he lost all control, lost in her body, lost in her love.
‘Sweetheart?’ Marcus stirred drowsily, reaching out a long arm to pull Nell down against his body. ‘What is the time?’
‘Nine.’
‘Nine?’ He sat bolt upright, blinking in the morning light. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No.’ Nell shook her head, sat up too and carried on carefully pulling threads out of the remnants of the silken cord and sorting them by colour on the white bedspread.
‘What are you doing?’
She turned her head and smiled at him. His hair was rumpled, his chin deeply shadowed with his morning beard and his grey eyes were heavy lidded from a night when they had taken little time for sleep. He was beautiful and he was going to be her husband.
‘We are going to make a new family out of the pain of two old ones,’ she said, hoping she could explain, hoping he would understand. ‘Perhaps one day I will find Nathan and Rosalind, but…’An image of Nathan’s face as she had last seen it, sharp with intelligence and sinful secrets, seemed to shimmer before her and was gone.
‘We will create a new love to heal the wounds,’ Marc murmured, lifting her hair to kiss the hollow under her collarbone.
Yes, he understands. ‘These are so lovely.’ Nell held up the vivid threads that clung to her hand with a life of their own. ‘I am going to embroider my wedding veil with them. Hearts and flowers, not pain and death.’
‘You would make something beautiful out of all that hate and fear,’ Marc murmured, turning her face for his kiss.
‘I don’t remember ever being this happy.’ The silken threads fell from her fingers as she held him to her heart.
‘I swear,’ Marc said against her lips, ‘that, if you will trust me with your heart, you will say that every day of your life.’
‘I trust you,’ Nell said. ‘With my life, with my heart and with my love. We have made a new foretelling, one that will come true, one that will last for our children’s children.’
‘In that case,’ Marcus said, kissing his way down to where her heart beat so strongly for him, ‘we had better make a start on the first of those children, don’t you think?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Nell murmured, and it was the last coherent thing she said for quite a while.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5661-7
THE LORD AND THE WAYWARD LADY
Copyright © 2010 by Melanie Hilton
North American Publication 2010
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