The Marquess Who Loved Me (11 page)

She grinned at him. For just a moment he saw her at eighteen again, vowing to do anything to charm a laugh from him.

He did reach for her then, but she’d already slid away. His hand dropped as she stepped toward the door.

Then she turned back. “I meant it, Nick, when I said I missed you. Despite everything.”

She was gone before he could reply. He listened to her steps, slow at first, then gaining intensity as she retreated down the hall. She would have every feature firmly in control before any servant saw her, he was sure of it.

Just as sure as he was that he never should have come back from India. He should have stayed there until the sun burned out every emotion, until the monsoon drowned every memory.

Because even though he couldn’t keep her, he wasn’t sure he had the strength to leave her again.

“He is insufferable,” Ellie declared. The carriage hit a rut in the frozen road. She reached for a strap to steady herself. “Not a word for ten years, and now he wants to know everything about everyone?”

She’d held her tongue for nearly two hours, but as they neared Folkestone, she finally broke her silence. Lucia didn’t open her eyes. Enclosed carriages always made the maid queasy, but it was too damp for her to ride in the open air with the driver.

At least the maid was more comfortable in the larger Folkestone traveling coach. Ellie had used that as an excuse to steal it from Nick and Marcus, even though she knew she was merely being petty. But if Ellie were to spend two hours stewing over Nick’s return, she would rather do it in luxury than in the smaller coach she’d been forced to take to London that morning.

“I am sure his lordship knows something of the estate,” Lucia said, leaning back into the cushions. “Mr. Claiborne corresponded with him regularly.”

“Marcus can go to the devil and take his brother with him. Every man in every generation of this family has been an oaf — or worse. I suppose I should be grateful that Charles didn’t give me a child. Can you imagine raising a Claiborne male?”

“Your sparkling personality wouldn’t be utterly absent in your offspring, I trust.”

Ellie looked at her maid suspiciously. “Do you count that as a blessing or a curse?”

Lucia's mouth curved the tiniest bit. “I’ll allow that you are preferable to any Claiborne I’ve met.”

Ellie sniffed. “If you weren’t utterly unemployable, I would turn you off and be done with you.”

Her maid’s smile widened, an odd contrast to the sickly green of her face. “You are too kind, my lady.”

“Tell me the truth, Lucia. What should I do about Nick?”

Lucia paused, so long that it seemed she might be sick in earnest. Ellie reached up to pound on the ceiling, but Lucia spoke before she could order a halt.

“Do you want what I think, or what you want to hear?”

Ellie dropped her fist into her lap. “What you think.”

“I think you want me to say you should leave.”

“That’s not what I asked for.”

Lucia shrugged. “Then if I say I think you should stay — do you want to hear that?”

“Staying is an awful idea.”

“My point precisely, my lady.”

“You know what happened between us,” Ellie said. She’d shared the details one night, when she’d had far too much claret and was in a maudlin mood as she prepared for bed. Lucia had been good enough not to reference it again, but her mind was a steel trap — she wouldn’t have forgotten. “Why wouldn’t I run at the first sight of him?”

“For the same reason you’ve lived in his house all these years, I suspect. And the same reason you haven’t married again.”

“I’m not in love with him, if that’s what you mean.”

Lucia opened an eye.

“I’m not,” Ellie insisted.

Lucia opened her other eye. In the dim interior of the coach, she suddenly looked deadly serious. “Believe what you will, my lady. But for all the advice you’ve given me, let me return the favor. You either stayed because you love him, or stayed because you want revenge. I don’t know which desire drives you — but either way, the only way to seize it is to stay with Folkestone and see where he leads you.”

Love.

Revenge.

Ellie wanted both. But Lucia had missed a crucial piece.

Ellie wanted forgiveness — both from Nick and from herself. And she wanted to believe that, if she ever had the chance to love again, she would be strong enough to hold on to it — and strong enough not to lose herself just for the taste of it.

A crack sounded outside the carriage. Someone shouted. Ellie felt the carriage jerk as the horses tried to bolt, and another jolt as the driver reined them in.

Ellie opened a window covering. Lucia moved to do the same on the other side. The sun, shrouded in clouds, had nearly set — but even in the dimness, Ellie saw the shapes of two masked men on horseback.

And two guns, both aimed at the carriage.

She pulled the curtain closed. The carriage had lost speed. Their driver couldn’t evade mounted highwaymen. She could only hope that the robbery would be bloodless. No one had been killed by a highwayman in their neighborhood in ages. It was best to give them something, then send them packing. She had taken descriptions of her jewels to London rather than her entire collection — there was little else for the highwaymen to take.

But it was odd of them to choose daylight, when they could be more easily recognized and their victims were unlikely to be wearing expensive evening finery.

“Do you have your pistol?” she asked Lucia.

The maid held up her reticule.

“Put it between the cushions — they’ll take the bag. We will give them what they want, but if they threaten violence, defend yourself.”

“Of course.” Lucia slid the pistol out and secreted it under the upholstered cushion. Ellie surveyed the rest of the carriage, but unless she wanted to try hitting the men with a lamp, there were no other weapons.
 

The carriage stopped. Her breath came fast and shallow. She braced herself against the seat — they wouldn’t see her tremble.

A second shot fired, closer this time. Lucia’s lips compressed in a grim line. Ellie looked up, not sure whether to open the ceiling panel — not sure whether her nerves would hold if the driver was dead above them.

But she couldn’t sit idle — not when she might be able to pay the thieves to leave before anyone was harmed. She reached for the door handle and unlatched it.

“Stay here,” she ordered Lucia.

Just as she opened the door, someone yanked it from the outside. She stumbled, hitting her head on the doorframe. The sharp explosion of pain made her eyes water.

One man had dismounted. He looked up at her with a leer as he gestured with his pistol. “Now ain’t you a prize,” he said, staring straight at her breasts.

She ignored him, looking over his head to the man who watched — mounted, masked, and inscrutable. His horse and clothing were of better quality than the man who’d come for her. Some part of her found that odd.

“Call off your lackey and tell me what you want,” she demanded.

Behind her, Lucia cursed under her breath. The man who stood at her feet reached for her arm. But her gambit worked. The leader whistled at him, calling him to heel like a dog.

“Who is in your carriage?” the horseman asked.

An unusual question — and another warning bell. The part of her that was neither terrified nor angry knew, suddenly, that this was not an ordinary robbery.

“What if I said I had two footmen, both armed?” she asked.

“Then I’m sure they would have already inserted themselves in this conversation. Tell me now, or I will kill your driver.”

She couldn’t tell if he was bluffing. And she didn’t hear any travelers in the distance who might aid them. She raised a hand in surrender. “My maid and I travel alone.”

The second man lifted her out of the doorway before she could protest, dumping her on her derriere in the ditch. Certainly not an ordinary robbery — and she was suddenly cold, shivering on the ground, hoping someone would come before she learned why the highwaymen had stopped her.

At least her driver still lived, even if his face was ashen. He edged forward, very slowly — perhaps hoping to pull a gun from under his seat.

The mounted man noticed and swung his gaze from Ellie to the driver. “You’re not the man I want to kill today,” he warned, in a voice that might have been pleasant if the words weren’t so threatening.

The second man turned back from the carriage door. “The bitch tells the truth. No gents, just a maid.”

Ellie expected the demands to start — money, jewels, perhaps even the horses. But she didn’t expect the man to close the door to the carriage, leaving Lucia inside.

“What now, sir? He ain’t here.”

“Perhaps we can find a use for her,” the leader mused, staring at Ellie.

Ellie pulled herself to her feet, ignoring the implication, pretending that she didn’t feel something ugly twist within her belly at his words. “I’ve five pounds and a set of gold eardrops. Take them and flee, before someone comes along.”

She sounded brave, braver than she felt. She braced herself as the rougher man strode toward her. She knew what the gleam in his eyes promised. This couldn’t possibly end well.

Another gunshot sounded, close enough to deafen her. The man stumbled, then fell sideways to the ground.

Her horses bolted. The carriage lurched down the road, picking up speed as the animals panicked. The driver shouted, indistinct under the ringing in her ears. She turned toward the mounted highwayman just as he raised his gun. There was nowhere to run, nothing to protect herself with. She instinctively lifted her arm, shielding her eyes.

Another shot. Something splattered across her skirts. She thought he’d missed. But when she took a step back, she saw the gore.

He’d shot his partner in the face.

She stumbled backward before she could think. Her throat burned, but she didn’t register the nausea until she was already retching in the sparse, brittle winter grass. This had nothing to do with how her father had died, but for a moment she saw him lying in the ditch instead, his face mangled and broken.

The man slid off his horse at his colleague’s feet. “Turn away,” he ordered Ellie, not waiting to see if she obeyed.

She couldn’t look away — could prey ever look away from a predator? He flipped the body over with his foot, as though his partner was a bit of rubbish in his way. The body was limp. One of the eyes was gone and the cheek below it was destroyed. The other eye stared sightlessly into the sky.

Then the living highwayman lifted his booted foot and stomped down hard, crushing the skull like it was a softened gourd.

She vomited again.

“My apologies,” the highwayman said. She looked up to see him wiping his boot on the grass before mounting his horse. He didn’t spare a glance for the body between them. “I will take care not to trouble you again.”

His voice was utterly without emotion — surely that wasn’t normal? She shuddered, thinking suddenly that all the visions she’d ever had of evil were wrong.

The man veered off into the trees. The hoofbeats faded into the winter silence. She wiped her mouth with her hand and forced herself to breathe. Turning nearly a full circle to her right to avoid seeing the dead man again, she took stock of the road. Her carriage was gone. The dead man’s horse grazed, uncaring, in the ditch.

Ellie’s breath rasped in her throat. She’d seen death before. She didn’t particularly regret this one. But the violence of it, and the way the man’s partner had desecrated him, then abandoned him…

She couldn’t stay there. She took off at a fast walk, almost a run, cursing her skirts as she hiked them up with one hand. She would have stolen the horse, but she couldn’t mount unassisted, and she hadn’t ridden a man’s saddle since she was in her teens.

So she walked, hoping her carriage would come back for her before any other travelers found her — hoping the carriage had stayed upright and that the horses didn’t kill Lucia or the driver in their panic.

It was nearly five minutes before her carriage returned. “My lady, are you hurt?” the driver cried as he set the brake and leapt from the box.

She shook her head. “Lucia? The horses?”

Lucia opened the carriage door and leapt down without waiting. Her skin was a ghastly shade and her eyes had turned to glass. “Alive, albeit bruised. I shall never ride in a carriage again.”

Ellie exhaled. She felt sick again, with her heart pounding furiously and the bile threatening to rise. Her head pounded. She touched her hairline and found a bruise spreading vicious streaks of pain across her scalp. She took a deep breath, then another. But she kept her eyes open, unable to confront the visions painting themselves over and over again in the dark corners of her mind.

“Are you sure you aren’t hurt, my lady?” Lucia asked.

“Of course. We won, didn’t we?”

Lucia grabbed her shoulders, shaking her lightly, just enough that they both felt how her knees were locked. “You need to sit down, my lady,” she said firmly. “Let me…”

If she said anything else, Ellie didn’t hear it. Her nausea subsided, but something black rushed to overtake it, and she slid swiftly into the void.

She awoke to pain burrowing relentlessly into her chest. It felt like someone digging into her breastbone in an attempt to steal her heart. She was struggling before she could open her eyes, trying to move away, trying to protest with something other than an incoherent moan.