Nell (27 page)

‘See, Papa. I telled you we found the treasure.’

Jarrow’s fingers quivered as he reached out to take the emeralds. He was conscious only of numbness, but his heart jerked oddly as the jewels fell into his hand. He spoke his thought aloud. ‘They are unexpectedly warm.’

Nell flushed, and he realised what he had said. Heat rushed into his veins and he could no more keep his gaze from straying to her bosom than fly to the moon. He saw her quickly reach to pull the flap across, concealing that tempting sight. Urgency engulfed him. He dropped to his haunches and put an arm about his daughter.

‘My sweet, go with Mrs Whyte for a while. I am sure she will like to hear all about your adventure in the crypt.’ He glanced significantly up at his housekeeper.

‘It is quite like one of Hetty’s fairy tales.’

‘Is like Aladdin! I tell Whytey about the crip.’

Briskly nodding, the housekeeper stepped forward to take Henrietta’s hand. ‘That’s right. I’m agog, child. We’ll go to my kitchen and have a nice drink of—’

Nell could not help smiling as Mrs Whyte broke off, her mob cap wobbling comically. She intervened. ‘Not milk, for Hetty dislikes it.’

‘Don’t want milk! Hate milk!’

‘Then you shan’t have it, my love. I am sure Mrs Whyte has some lemonade, or—’

‘I know what you’d like,’ interrupted the housekeeper.

‘Hot chocolate.’

Hetty’s eyes lit at the notion of such a treat, and she fervently approved the offer, adding a rider. ‘And cake?’

‘All you can eat,’ said Jarrow, a hint of impatience in his tone. ‘Off you go now.’

‘Nell come?’

‘Not yet.’ With firmness. ‘Nell and I have a great deal to discuss. Have we not, Miss Faraday?’

A rosy glow settled in Nell’s bosom at the gleam she spied in his eye. Her heartbeat out of rhythm, she scarce knew how she responded. ‘I believe there are one or two matters outstanding, my lord.’

She received a straight look that she was at a loss to interpret. ‘Then let us repair to the parlour. Keston, I don’t wish to be disturbed.’

Eden was in the parlour before her and had laid the emeralds on the table. Insistent upon first changing her soiled and torn gown, Nell had hurried into her bronze calico and quickly done up her hair again before joining him there. Now she stood looking down at the jewels as he tidied the gold casing, his finger caressing the green stones. The suspense caught in her chest.

‘Is it the real one?’

‘I can’t tell. They are intact, which the false ones were not. But I can’t be sure.’ His head turned. ‘I shall have to take it to a jeweller.’

Their eyes met, and the emeralds went out of Jarrow’s head. He caught her hand.

‘Nell, can you forgive me?’

A smile wavered on her lips. ‘I was as much to blame. There is nothing to forgive.’

‘Oh, but there is!’

He released her and shifted out into the room. How to tell her? Could she possibly fathom the double-edged sword that had driven him? His gaze returned to her face. There was a troubled frown there and he longed to kiss
it away. But that was impossible—until he had won the right.

‘You thought me obtuse, unfeeling, when I accused you. Indeed, I am sure you must have thought me a fool to believe for one moment that you had thus betrayed me.’

Her voice, tentative, reached across the space between them. ‘Not a fool, sir. Only obsessed.’

Jarrow looked away, shamed by her truth. ‘You are right, as always. I could not think beyond the events of that night. For months they have tortured me—the truth staring me in the face. Only I did not want to face it. The consequences…’

He left it hanging in the air, and crossed restlessly to the mantel, staring at the portrait. ‘She did not deserve that of him.’ Jarrow did not know he had spoken aloud. Nell’s clear tones startled him.

‘You make no allowance for his own state of mind, my lord.’

‘What mind?’ he demanded savagely, turning. ‘That of a fiend!’

Nell saw the bitterness re-enter his features and her heart sank. But she did not shrink. ‘The mind of one who has no grasp upon reality. Don’t you see it? Julietta may have been demented, but her brother is truly insane. He killed her without compunction, and only because he said she had cheated him. He did it to get the emeralds, for he told me so. But she had thwarted him.’

She saw horror in his face. Had he truly not believed it until this moment? She took an involuntary step towards him, and halted.

‘Eden, no one but a madman would have taken the path he chose. Using a child! You must see that.’

‘I should have seen it long since.’ Low-voiced, and filled with self-blame.

Nell longed to go to him. But she was uncertain yet. Abruptly, she felt the onset of exhaustion. It had been a difficult day. She dropped into a chair by the table, rubbing absently at a graze on her hand as her eyes shifted to the necklace.

‘He is an accomplished actor. And he has cunning. You were too close to him to see through him, perhaps. It was easier for me. Coming here a stranger—and untouched by these events—I could look with an open mind.’

But not for long, she might have added. The pain still visible in his drawn features tore at her heartstrings.

Jarrow looked across at her. The halo of honey-gold hair shone in the light from the window. The tug of his conscience faded. Her voice came at him like a ripple of music.

‘What are you going to do with him?’

He moved without realising it, his eyes on the strong-featured face. He spoke automatically. ‘I have no idea, Nell.’

The fate of his brother-in-law had somehow ceased to be important, a vague shadow in the dimness of his mind. But he entered into it none the less, feeling an odd sense of unreality, of distance.

‘If we remain here, I must get rid of him—somehow. If it turns out instead that I now have the wherewithal to remove from the castle, then I don’t know.’

Nell reached out absently to finger the jewels. ‘I wish you would remove, for Hetty’s sake.’

‘Only for Hetty’s sake?’

It was softly said, and Nell turned quickly to look up at him. A faint pulse beat at her, but she spoke in as
normal a tone as she could. ‘For your own also. To remain where your memories must torture you seems foolish to me. Especially now that you know the truth.’

‘The truth, yes.’ An echo of that familiar distress gnawed at him. ‘I had long suspected it. For months I have known that Toly was playing at highwayman. What I did not know was whether he had begun before or after Lord Nobody fired that fatal shot. Nor could I be certain that he had indeed that identity—which is what sent me riding out after him. I hoped to catch him in the act. But the moment I began to believe it, I had to struggle with the possibility that he had shot Julietta deliberately.’

She did not speak, and he crossed to the table with sudden impatience, seizing up the necklace. ‘Had I the faintest inkling that this was what he wanted—!’

‘Why did you think your wife had sold the jewels?’

Jarrow felt only a trace of the bitterness that had been a part of him for so long. Strange. Where had it gone? He answered almost absently.

‘Julietta told me so. When I brought her home, and she was angry enough to wish to hurt me.’

‘And you believed her?’

He shifted his shoulders, a trifle discomfited. ‘I had no reason not to believe it. And every reason to do so, for she showed me the paste copy and smashed one of the stones before my eyes, so that I could see it was but glass.’

‘But how vindictive!’ Nell caught herself up, giving him a contrite look. ‘I should not have said that.’ To her relief, Eden looked rather bemused than angry.

‘She could not have been wearing the paste ones in the castle. It must have been these, or I should have noticed the missing jewel.’

Nell caught his meaning and her eyes met his. Her
tone was hushed. ‘Eden, they must indeed be the real emeralds you hold in your hand.’

She saw his fingers tighten on the gaud and they trembled a little. His voice became tight. ‘I will not believe it until they are seen by an expert.’

How much it meant to him! Nell rushed headlong into speech. ‘I am sure, if you are not, Eden, else why should Mr Beresford covet them and do so much evil only to recover them. He must have known the true worth of the necklace she hid from him. Only what I cannot fathom is what Julietta thought she would do with the emeralds if she did not allow her brother to sell them.’

Jarrow dropped the necklace to the table again and sat down opposite. ‘You are trying to fathom the workings of a diseased mind, Nell. It likely amused her to think that the jewels were intact when I supposed them to have been lost to me.’

There was a silence. Nell found his gaze upon her and could not return it. She saw him reach out, and next moment her fingers were imprisoned within his own.

‘Nell, I owe you a debt of gratitude which I can never repay.’

Heavens, let him not take that road! ‘You owe me nothing, sir.’

‘On the contrary, there is no way I can express—’

Goaded, she tugged her hand away. ‘The last thing I wish for is your gratitude, Eden! I had rather you turned moody and snarled at me!’

She was on her feet, and he rose to match her. ‘Why, Nell? You must know how much it means to me to know that Hetty’s mind is untainted. Or at least as far as I can be sure at this present.’

‘I believe you will find her ever to be so. She is free of that curse, I am certain.’

‘Then I am more than ever in your debt. For your future care also. I know you will not desert her.’

Nell felt torn. He had tried to apologise for his mistake and she would have none of it. But now she was conscious that she still cherished a grievance. He had evidently realised his mistake, but it had made no difference in the way he regarded her. She was Henrietta’s governess still, and she wanted to leave this place forever! The words felt forced from her.

‘You will have to find a new nurse.’

‘A new nurse, and a new governess.’

Nell stopped dead, staring at him in shock, her heart thumping in her chest. Her voice was a thread. ‘You want me to go?’

He was before her, reaching towards her. Nell evaded him, but he caught her easily. ‘Be still, my dear one!’

The endearment caught at her and she let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. ‘Eden, don’t tease me, pray!’

‘I was never more in earnest,’ he assured her, and captured her into his embrace. ‘I don’t want you for a governess, Nell. Can’t you guess why?’

The next instant, Nell was deprived of all power of thought, for his mouth descended upon hers and his fierce kiss quite melted her bones.

She emerged in a state of desperate confusion, her heart fluttering like an imprisoned bird. Since she felt as if she were about to fall, she had no recourse but to cling to the arms that cradled her, but the chaos of her mind sought instant expression.

‘You must not, Eden! It is not right, you know it is not.’

The brown eyes were close to hers, alight with a pas
sion Nell felt as keenly as her own. His voice had a quality of hoarseness.

‘Then we must make it right, for I can no longer tolerate your presence in my house without abandoning every precept by which I call myself a gentleman.’

Nell did not pretend to misunderstand him, but it was not the declaration for which she had secretly yearned. She tried to pull away. ‘Then I have no choice but to leave.’

Jarrow abruptly released her, prey to an unreasoning hurt. ‘Do you take it for an insult, Nell? I am asking you to marry me, not to become my mistress!’

‘I know.’ She backed away. ‘I should say that I am honoured, should I not? Only I cannot, Eden, for you don’t mean to honour me, do you?’

‘No, I mean to make you mine because I must, because I cannot bear to be without you. Does that count for nothing?’

Nell shifted away, trying in vain to control her churning emotions. ‘You are lonely, that I understand. And Henrietta needs a mother, that too I appreciate.’ She turned, gazing back at him with longing in her heart. ‘You tempt me very much, but I dare not yield. I could not endure to be so close—and yet not close enough.’

For several moments he said nothing, but the dark eyes showed his hurt, and Nell was hard put to it not to retract her words and give in. He turned away at last, and moved slowly to the window. He spoke without turning round.

‘I see what it is. You have seen my wounds, and you are afraid of the risks.’

Nell could not deny it, but she did not speak. She could not bear to hurt him further.

‘I cannot blame you,’ he went on, low-voiced. ‘Nor
can I promise that they will not ride me from time to time.’ He looked at her over his shoulder, and the bitter look was pronounced. ‘The scars run deep, Nell. I don’t even know if I am capable of mending.’ Then he turned to face her again, and the hunger at his eyes was unmistakable. ‘What I do know is that I need you. I tried to be rid of you today because I have fought against what you do to me. I swore that no woman would beguile me again.’ A faint smile crossed his lips. ‘I had not bargained for the wiles of Miss Helen Faraday—a governess and as irresistible as water to a man dying of thirst!’

A laugh escaped Nell despite the tug and thrust of feeling in her bosom. Everything in her yearned to give in to him. But that hard core of common sense held her back. The barrier was insuperable. She came to him, holding out her hands. He took them in his and lifted them one by one to his lips. Nell watched this proceeding with tenderness, but her determination was not shaken.

‘Eden, I am not afraid of your past.’ Despite herself, a tremor entered her voice and her eyes filled. ‘But you see, I love you. There is nothing you can say that will make me put myself in a situation which can only give me pain.’

Jarrow was staring at her blankly. ‘I don’t understand. How should it give you pain? Except by my exposing you to my black moods and bad temper?’

‘How can you ask me? A love unrequited can only—’

‘Unrequited! What the devil are you talking about, you idiotic female? Haven’t I been telling you for the last half hour at least that I love you to distraction?’