The Lord and the Wayward Lady (9 page)

‘Marcus.’ His hand slid round to cup her chin, turn her face up to him. ‘There is something… I am not a virgin.’

For a long moment he stood quite still, then he flung himself away from her, leaving her shivering with the sudden withdrawal of his heat. ‘Then I was right. You are his mistress.’ There was a curious kind of bitterness in his voice and, keyed up to tell him what had happened, she was thrown off balance.

‘Whose mistress?’ Then she saw what he was thinking. ‘You believe I am his whore? Salterton’s whore.’

‘Don’t use that word.’ Marcus swung round, his face dark with anger. ‘Don’t ever use that word of yourself.’

‘Why not?’ Nell slid off the chest, jarring her heels as she landed on the bare boards. ‘It is what you think, what you would make me, is it not? Or are you too much of a hypocrite to face it? You leap to conclusions, accuse me on no evidence, cannot wait one moment to let me explain—but of course, you are disappointed so you
make wild accusations. You want a virgin, don’t you? That’s what men always want, after all.

‘Well, I am not a virgin, so you can go back to your expensive, skilled mistress and make her an offer and enjoy her expertise and her practised tricks. Not as titillating as fear and screams and pain, but I am sure it has its satisfactions.’

‘Nell, for God’s sake!’ Marcus reached for her as she stood there, panting with anger and the terrible relief of pouring it all out at long last. ‘Nell, come here.’

‘No.’ She lashed out at him, hitting his face more by luck than intention. They stared at each other as the sound of the slap echoed against the carved panelling of the little room, his eyes so wide she could see her own tiny reflection in them. ‘
No
.’

Fear and screams and pain…
The words buzzed in his head, more painful than the sting of Nell’s fingers on his cheek or the ache of unsatisfied arousal in his groin. She had been forced? Had the ferocity with which she had fought him in the carriage, the rejection in the Long Gallery, had those been terror and not the sudden recollection that she was betraying another lover?

‘Hell!’ he said out loud into the empty room as the echoes of the slammed door died away. What had he done? But he knew. He had raked up a past that was agony to her. He had offered a sexual relationship when that was the last thing she needed. In his male arrogance he had crowded her with his body, his strength, blocking her escape, reminding her, inevitably, that he had the power to do with her what he wanted.

Marcus strode to the door and then stopped. Nell did
not need him pursuing her all over the house. She needed, he was certain, another woman to talk to and there was no one here but strangers she could not trust. As he had shown her she could not trust him.

Nell ran up the stairs, scrubbing at her face as if she could stop the tears by brute force.
Damn him!
Now he knew what had happened to her and he would despise her for it. It was always the woman’s fault, of course, the woman who was ruined as a result.

By dint of sheer willpower, she stopped crying, got the hiccupping sobs under control and looked around. She was somewhere on the first floor, but in her distress she had missed the turn to the wing where her bedchamber was and now she was lost. The old house rambled like a living organism. Passages led off from corridors, doors might open onto chambers or stairs or more corridors. Small flights of steps appeared for no apparent reason.

At random she opened a door and found herself in a small library. There was a desk in the window, a fire in the grate and a pleasant smell of apple-wood smoke and leather. A book—that would help her compose herself. Nell walked across and began to examine the shelves, taking slow breaths as control returned.

It was a very masculine selection, she decided, opening a copy of the
Racing Calendar
for 1810 at random, then replacing it. Heavy bound editions of the Classics did not tempt her either. There was a glass-fronted bookcase on one wall. She tried the handle as she peered in. Locked. The books inside did not seem particularly valuable: a row of matching volumes, each with the date in gilt on the spine. Diaries, she supposed.

With a sigh Nell dragged her sodden handkerchief out and blew her nose again.

‘If you want poetry and novels they are in the main library downstairs, Miss Latham,’ said a deep voice behind her.

‘Ah!’ She jumped and spun round. ‘Oh. Lord Narborough. I do apologise, I had no idea this room was occupied, I was just—’

‘Looking for somewhere to hide?’ He put down a book, rose from his deep winged chair and held out a large white handkerchief. ‘Here, take this.’

Beyond trying to pretend nothing was wrong, Nell took it and applied it to what she was certain was her very red nose. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

‘Homesick?’ She shook her head. ‘Marcus?’

‘Yes. He does not trust me and I am afraid we…argue. I have just slapped his face,’ she admitted in a rush.

‘Do him a world of good, I’ve no doubt. Pull the bell, would you be so kind? What we need is a cup of coffee. Now, you sit there, my dear.’

‘But, Lord Narborough, you do not understand.’ And what was she going to tell him, exactly? That his son had offered his protection and she had hesitated for long, betraying minutes before refusing him?

‘Have you got anything to do with that rope or the rosemary at breakfast?’ he asked her abruptly.

‘No!’ Nell bit her lip. ‘I have things I wish to keep secret and Lord Stanegate can tell that. It makes him suspicious. But, I give you my word, my lord, I do not know any more about why you have been sent these mysterious objects than I have said.’

‘Well then, we have no need to speak of it any more.
Ah, Andrewes. Coffee and biscuits if you please. And, Andrewes, should anyone—anyone at all—be enquiring for Miss Latham, you believe you have not seen her since breakfast.’

‘Very good, my lord.’

‘Now then.’ He settled back in his chair, steepled his fingers and regarded her benignly. ‘Tell me how to make a hat.’

‘But you cannot want to know that, my lord.’

‘I most certainly do. Have you any idea how much I pay for hats for three ladies in a year?’

‘One hundred guineas?’ Nell hazarded.

‘Nearer three. Now, I want to know what is involved in making a hat. I would like to know where my money goes.’

By the time the gong sounded for luncheon, Nell had forgotten Marcus, her distress, even who the man she was so comfortable with was. They drank coffee, ate all the biscuits; he asked questions about hats, teased her, told her about the latest litter of hound puppies in the stable. She asked about the history of the house and found he was an authority on it.

‘Really? A priest hole?’ she gasped, wide-eyed.

‘A hidden room, certainly, and it was used during the Civil War—we stood for the king, you understand.’ George Carlow regarded her with a smile. ‘You know, you remind me of someone. I wish I could remember who. There’s something when you smile…’

‘Oh.’
Mama.
She had always been told that she was the image of her mother, except for her colouring, which was her father’s. If Lord Narborough had been so close
to her father, she realized, the realities flooding back, he would have known her mother well also. ‘Listen—wasn’t that the gong for luncheon?’

The elusive memory escaping him, Lord Narborough got to his feet. ‘So it is. Shall we go down?’

Nell stuck to his side on the way downstairs, then took refuge between Verity and Honoria at the table. But Marcus was absent. After half an hour, when she felt physically sick every time the door opened, Honoria put her out of her misery by remarking, ‘It’s too bad of Marcus, going off to Aylesbury like that without stopping to see if there’s anything we want from the shops.’

‘He’s gone to the bank, darling,’ her mother remarked. ‘And then he’s dining with the Wallaces. You cannot expect him to trail round haberdashery counters for you.’

‘Well, if he was going to the Wallaces, he could have taken me,’ Honoria persisted. ‘It is an age since I spoke to Georgina.’

‘I believe it was a last-minute decision to go. He is just dropping in on them to take pot luck,’ Lady Narborough said. ‘We will invite Georgina and Harriet over next week if the weather holds.’

So, Marcus had made an unplanned trip, just to avoid her. Nell shivered, anticipating the look she would see in his eyes next time they met. Pity? Or disgust?

Nell retired early that evening, the puzzle of her feelings for Lord Narborough driving her back to her mother’s box. She liked the man, she trusted him instinctively. Could she be so wrong about him?

The diary lay at the bottom of the box. Nell stood, twisting her hands together for several minutes before she
reached in and lifted it out. The red morocco cover was scuffed and dull and a brown pressed flower fell out and crumbled into brittle fragments as she opened it.

Resolutely Nell began to read, the earl’s big handkerchief tight in one hand.

An hour later she laid the book down, dry eyed and drained. In 1795, her father, William Wardale, Earl of Leybourne, had been convicted of the murder by stabbing of Christopher Hebden, Baron Framlingham, in the garden of the Carlow’s London house. He had been found, literally red-handed, by Lord Narborough. The woman he had been having an affair with had been Hebden’s wife, Amanda. And almost worse than anything, her mother had written on the tear-blotched pages that he had been suspected of spying for the French, although that had never been made known publicly.

Somehow that, and the name of his lover, had been kept a secret. He was stripped of his title and his lands by Act of Attainder, meaning her brother, Nathan, could never inherit. And so he was hanged.

Stunned and shaking, now she could see it all laid out so clearly, Nell put the diary back in the box and locked it. No, it was impossible that her unwitting involvement in this was coincidence. Someone had deliberately implicated her in their plot against the Carlows. But why? If her father had been guilty, then he had paid the terrible price for his crimes. His family had all paid it with him. Why should anyone seek to involve her now?

If her father had been innocent, then why not come to her, tell her? It was as though someone wanted revenge on both families.

The clocks began to strike. Midnight. Lord Nar
borough was often late to bed; she had heard his wife nagging him about it. He might still be awake, and if he was, then she was going to confront him, tell him who she was, demand to know the truth about what had happened.

Before her courage failed, Nell tied her wrapper, put on her slippers, picked up a chamberstick and let herself out into the dark corridor.

There was no light under his door, no sound from within. Frustrated, Nell leaned against the panels feeling absurdly let down. It was foolish to have this sort of conversation at this time of night in any case, shocking to visit a man’s bedchamber at any hour. Much better to speak to him in the morning, she told herself, shivering with cold and reaction.

As she straightened up, there was a sharp noise from the room, the sound of breaking glass. Then silence.

She stared at the door. Perhaps the earl had knocked over a water glass. Or perhaps he was ill, flailing out in the throes of a heart stroke. She could not simply ignore it. The doorknob turned silently under the pressure of her hand as she stepped inside. Nothing, just the sound of heavy breathing from the curtained bed. Then she felt the draft from the window, saw movement from the corner of her eye, spun round. Her candle blew out but there, silhouetted against the faint light, was a lithe figure. A figure she had seen before.

Nell grabbed for him, saw the flash of metal in the gloom and was thrown roughly to one side. She staggered, reached out, found nothing under her groping hands as she fell. She opened her mouth to scream as her head struck something hard and solid. The darkened room was spinning—or was it her? Everything went black.

‘G
ood night, Andrewes.’ Marcus left the night-duty footman to lock up behind him and go back to the hooded porter’s chair by the front door. As he strode down the Great Hall to the staircase the clocks chimed midnight from every corner of the rambling house.

A convivial evening with Sir James Wallace and his family had done little to help him decide how to approach Nell in the morning. It certainly had done nothing to quieten his conscience. He was not normally so unperceptive, he told himself, his boot heels clicking on the broad wooden treads as he climbed.

The truth, he thought, refusing to let himself off the hook, was that he had been attracted to Nell from the start and that had clouded his judgement. He looked at her, he wanted her and he knew he should not. So, he concluded with a wry smile, he had convinced himself she was not to be trusted in order to boost his flagging willpower. Not a very comfortable admission to have to make. And quite how he was going to put it to her when he apologised, he had no idea.

In London the night would be young, his mother and sisters out at parties, himself at one of his clubs. This evening it seemed everyone had decided on an early night. The house was silent and no light showed under his mother’s bedchamber door as he passed it. He walked softly on down the considerable stretch of corridor marked only by the doors into her sitting room and her dressing room, then round the corner.

Marcus stopped in his tracks. His father’s door was ajar onto darkness and from within came a low moan. He ran, shouldering the door wide. There was no sign of his father. The curtains billowed in the cold January air, the flame in the lamp he held guttered wildly and, on the floor huddled against the dresser, was Nell. As he stared at her, she closed her eyes as though to block him out.

He wrenched back the bed curtains in a rattle of rings and saw his father, night cap in place, snoring gently against his piled pillows. As Marcus looked down at him he shifted slightly, then the reassuring rhythm of snores resumed. Beside the bed was one of the medicine bottles from the still room. He picked it up and sniffed: Mama’s fennel infusion, the smell familiar from childhood fevers and toothaches.

Quietly he drew the curtains closed and walked back to Nell. Beside her hand was a snake-like coil.
Another silken rope.

Something turned cold and hard inside him as he bent and dragged Nell to her feet. She came up limply, her arms lax as though passively resisting him.

‘I told myself to trust you,’ he snarled, shaking her. ‘And I find you letting in your bloody accomplice. Where is he?’

Her eyes opened slowly, as though she too had taken a sleeping draught. In the soft light of lamp the greenish hazel irises seemed black. ‘Why would I need to break the window?’ she asked, her faint voice full of dull anger. ‘Why upstairs?’

Marcus glanced at the casement, let her go, then went to pull the window closed. The small pane nearest the handle was broken. Glass crunched under his booted feet. It had been broken from the outside, he realized, leaning out. Below the window, the bare stems of the wisteria made a strong, twisted ladder, the topmost stem scarred with a fresh cut.

‘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 utterly 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 bogey
man 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.’