The Lord and the Wayward Lady (19 page)

There was a muffled sound that Nell had no trouble interpreting as Hal receiving a cuff round the ear from his older brother.

‘Er, sorry, stark naked.’

‘Well, get out of here and find the guns and I’ll be right down,’ Marcus growled. ‘Can’t you show a bit more discretion, damn it? This is a lady’s bedchamber, not a cavalry barracks.’

‘Quite, of course. Only you weren’t in your room so I assumed…’

‘Hal!’

‘Sorry, Nell.’ The door closed with a discreet click.

Nell peered cautiously over the top of the sheet. Marcus was pulling on his breeches and looking remarkably cheerful.

‘You’ll have to marry me now.’

‘Nonsense. Hal is hardly likely to be gossiping about this.’ Nell slid out of bed with a harassed glance at the clock—just past six—and began to pick up scattered clothing. She straightened to find Marcus looking at her with an expression that sent goosebumps scuttling up and down her spine. ‘Stop that!’ she protested, diving into the comfortingly chaste nightgown.

‘Well, don’t bend over dressed in nothing but your very delightful skin if you do not want me transfixed,’ he said mildly, picking up the bundle of clothes. ‘I can hardly believe our friend is so foolish as to be seen in broad daylight and then to leave plain tracks… He must be getting desperate.’

‘Oh God.’ Nell sat down with a bump on the edge of the bed.
You will know when
, the dark man had said. This was a decoy and now she must go, warm from sharing her bed with Marc, and deceive him while he and Hal hunted their enemy in the wrong direction.

‘Marc—’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll find him, deal with him. And then I’ll come back and we will talk, Nell.’ There was a wealth of meaning in his voice and a tenderness as he stroked her cheek in farewell that had her choking back tears. He would not feel like that when he discovered what she had done after all her protestations that he could trust her.

‘Be careful,’ she said, covering his hand with hers for a moment. ‘Come back safe.’

But he
would
be safe, that was her one consolation. The danger would be at her side and it was up to her now to convince Salterton that this persecution must stop.
Whatever her father had, or had not done, she was the only Wardale able to deal with the consequences now. Nell scrambled into her warmest clothes, praying that Marcus would believe she was acting for the best. But even if he did not, she thought, it would make no difference. She could not marry him. Somehow that was not much comfort.

‘A
nother rope.’ Hal held it up, dark with moisture, a sordid threat dripping limply in his hand.

‘He’s damned arrogant, I’ll say that for him.’ Marcus swung up into the saddle, scanning the meadow behind the stable block. ‘Look at this trail.’

‘He wasn’t expecting to be surprised and thought the snow would soon blow in to fill the tracks,’ Hal countered, stuffing the rope into his saddlebag. ‘And it will, if we don’t get a move on.’

‘This isn’t a cavalry charge.’ Marcus caught up with him, then held Corinth to a steady canter. ‘Look out for an ambush.’

‘Speaking of which.’ Hal sent him a quizzical look. ‘Are you walking into parson’s mousetrap?’

‘I hope so. If she’ll have me.’

‘You think Nell might refuse you? She’d be mad to.’

‘You said she was sensible not to have me when we last spoke of this.’

‘That was before I had seen you together, and before I knew you were lovers.’

Marcus tightened his lips and rode in silence for a while. It was against his instincts to discuss Nell with anyone and yet, this was his brother and for once Hal looked serious. ‘She doesn’t love me and she can see all too clearly the scandal there would be.’

‘Doesn’t love you?’ Hal sounded incredulous. ‘Then what are you doing in her bed? She’s a good girl, I can tell that. If she’s there, it’s because she loves you.’ He veered off to put his raking bay gelding at a fallen tree trunk.

‘Do I need to tell you, of all people, that women experience sexual desire?’ Marcus enquired as his brother drew level again. ‘It doesn’t occur to you that she may desire me? If she loves me, why not marry me?’

‘
Because
she loves you, you clodpoll,’ Hal snapped. ‘Do you need it pointed out that some women have as strong a sense of honour as a man does? Nell fears the scandal. Not for herself, I imagine—she can always duck back into obscurity—but for you, for us.’ When Marcus did not answer he added, ‘The two of you are like April and May, even Father’s noticed it, for Heaven’s sake!’

‘He’s noticed what I feel, probably,’ Marcus conceded, still reeling from the novelty of Hal lecturing him. The possibility that he might be right and that Nell really loved him was too important a thought to be explored now.

‘He’s noticed both of you, believe me.’

‘And how is he going to feel about it? He seems to like her.’

‘Pleased?’ Hal ventured. ‘Heal the rift and so forth?’

‘I hope so. But it all depends on her saying
yes
, which I doubt. She’s damn stubborn.’ Marcus put Corinth to a
five-barred gate, then wheeled round to scan the field they had just landed in. The hoof prints ran clear as a blaze diagonally across.

‘Well, that makes two of you.’

Half an hour later Hal stood in his stirrups. ‘Something happened over there, look.’ They cantered up to the area of churned snow in the corner of the high, tangled hedge. Marcus dismounted and squatted down to look.

‘Two horses, one tethered—waiting perhaps? They pushed through the hedge here.’ He clambered through cursing the quickthorn as it pulled at his coat. ‘Two sets of tracks here, heading in different directions. I can’t tell if they’ve both got riders.’

‘We’ll have to split up. Wait there.’ Marcus stood while Hal brought the horses through the gate lower down. His gut instinct was telling him something was wrong. They’d been drawn from the house—both of them—on what he was increasingly certain was a feint.

‘I don’t like this,’ he said, remounting. ‘I think we’re being decoyed away. We’ve certainly been led round in a big loop. One lot of tracks are going up into the woods—on this hard ground and with no snow in there, they could double back towards the house.’

‘You take that way, then,’ Hal said. ‘I’ll take this—it looks as though it’s heading for the turnpike.’ He pulled the rifle from its holster and slung it over his shoulder. His eyes, slitted against the snow dazzle, swung from a contemplation of the ground ahead back to Marcus. ‘Watch your back.’

‘And you,’ Marcus called after him as Hal spurred the gelding into a gallop.

As he guessed, Marcus lost the tracks a few yards
into the woods. Something was still nagging at him.
Nell.
Corinth, with his head turned towards home, needed no urging. They passed the point where the way branched off up to the folly, the big hunter eating up the hard ground as the track descended towards the park.

Marcus made for the front door. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mark across the white expanse that covered the lawns. Corinth turned at a touch of the reins, leapt neatly over the skeletal rose border and cantered across to the tracks. Marcus jumped down and set his own booted foot against the clear, fresh footprints. They were unmistakeably a woman’s prints, the marks where her cloak had brushed the snow clear on either side as they headed for the edge of the woods.

Nell.
And she had more than an hour’s start. Was she running from—or to—her dark man? Marcus stood, trying to listen to his instincts. All his life, it seemed, he had relied on his intellect to tell him what the right thing was. Now, with Nell, he no longer knew. Was he besotted and his judgement hopelessly awry, or should he listen to the still certainty within him that she was true?

Corinth bent his neck round to butt Marcus on the forearm and he looked up. ‘You know,’ he said to the big horse who pricked his ears and snorted, ‘I had no idea love was going to be like this. I thought, fool that I am, that it was going to be easy.’

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 contrast 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.