The Marquess Who Loved Me (4 page)

“What would you have me do?” Nick asked. “Beg forgiveness?”

“Talk to her, see if she…”

Nick cut him off again. “Begging her forgiveness isn’t on the table. I meant your forgiveness.”

Marcus’s laugh was harsh, surprised — a blast of sound escaping before he regained control of his throat. He colored slightly, looking around him — a reminder that he might care for the opinions of the guests where Nick did not.

“There’s nothing for which I want to forgive you,” he finally replied.

Nick raised an eyebrow. “That’s a diplomatic answer.”

Marcus shrugged. “Take it how you will. I am glad you’re home. But I wish you would choose an easier path.”

Nick turned back to watch the dance. Ellie and her partner were coming down the line a final time. When they linked arms at the end, she smiled at her partner with something that looked like genuine affection. Not love — not if he could still read her — but something close to that, a brief quirk of the lips and a happy light in her eyes.

He scowled. She chose that moment to glance toward him. All that lovely light froze on her face.

She turned away immediately, expressionless. The set of her shoulders reminded him of a man he’d known in India, just before a surgeon debrided a leg wound to prevent gangrene. At least the man had been fortunate enough to pass out after the first few cuts.

Ellie wasn’t the fainting type.

But Nick wasn’t the type to put away his knives.

“Who is that?” he asked.

Marcus knew where Nick’s focus was. “Lord Norbury. He inherited a viscountcy a few years ago.”

Nick recognized the name from the months-old newspapers he had read in Madras. “Is he attempting to win Ellie?”

“No. He’s been married for years. They are merely friends.”

“‘Friends’ is still reason enough for me to dislike him.”

Marcus laughed again. This time, there was humor in his tone. “It’s good to see you haven’t changed.”

He shrugged. “The ton doesn’t care for me. I see no reason to care for it.”

“You could have the ton eating out of your hand if you tried, you know. Richest marquessate in the country, all the intrigue over where you’ve been, your eligible bachelor status — the women will be tripping over themselves to gain your attendance at their parties this season.”

Nick didn’t respond.

“If you’re still here during the season, of course,” Marcus added, in a tone that said he knew his previous advice would go unheeded.

The country dance ended with Ellie on the opposite side of the ballroom. Nick took a step away from the door, his heart already quickening.

Marcus grabbed his arm. “At least give her tonight,” he said urgently. “Don’t humiliate her in front of her guests — if not for her sake, then for your business interests.”

As children, the altruistic, selfless arguments were the ones that won Nick over. He hadn’t thought of himself as noble since Ellie had disabused him of those romantic delusions. She hadn’t called him noble when she’d broken their engagement. She’d called him a peasant.

But no peasant could afford the price Nick would pay to have his revenge.

Still, Marcus’s cool appeal to Nick’s avarice cut deep. And it cut even deeper because he was right — Nick saw all the guests between him and Ellie as possible investors, customers, or fools who would easily spend their money on the goods Nick provided.

“I’ve give her a few hours,” he said, brushing aside Marcus’s hand. “But I will begin tonight.”

Marcus sighed. “Send for me when you come to your senses.”

Nick resumed his place by the door as his brother left. He took a glass of champagne from a passing footman and settled in to wait. He let his anticipation build slowly, tasting it with every sip of his drink — savoring it all the more because he knew that tonight, finally, he would have satisfaction.

The beginning of the end. By the time he finished with Ellie, he would have his revenge.

And then, surely, he could find a way to forget her.

Nick didn’t dance. He didn’t go in to supper. Beyond the one conversation she saw him have with Marcus, he didn’t speak to anyone at all.

The man was unnerving her. Ellie knew that was his intention. His actions were laughably transparent, but she couldn’t fight the effect he had on her. When she thought of being alone with him — for the first time since that awful conversation she’d wished, endlessly, to take back — her breath turned shallow and her hands went slick with sweat.

So she didn’t think of it, even though his dark presence on the edge of her vision wouldn’t let her forget.

She had painted him as Hades once. His pose now, with his arms crossed and his jaw set, matched the painting. The doors between the ballroom and the rest of the house replaced the gates of hell, separating the life she knew from the afterlife that awaited her.

He stood ready, waiting to take her there. Once the party ended, once she crossed that threshold, he’d have her.

Your hysterics are unbecoming, Elinor
. She heard her father’s voice in her head, as clear and inescapable as the great bells of St. Paul’s on her wedding day. Her father — now
there
was a man she could hate and love safely, without worrying he’d one day reappear in her ballroom. Perhaps he should have encouraged hysterics in his children — if her brother Richard could have belly-ached over their father’s demands like a normal man, rather than snapping and shooting him, her father would still be alive.

Still, she didn’t like hysterics any more than he had. She straightened her shoulders. She couldn’t avoid Nick — but Ellie didn’t avoid anyone.

She’d made a critical error. She should have attacked, not retreated.

Most of the local gentry had left, taking advantage of the last of the moon to drive home. Some guests would leave in the morning; the rest would stay another week. It was the tamest affair she’d given since she had stopped mourning her husband — if mourning was the right word for cloistered celebration. But even among these guests, they wouldn’t miss her as long as the wine flowed.

So when her next dancing partner, Alex Staunton, the Earl of Salford, came to claim her, she demurred. “Lord Folkestone has returned. I should see him settled,” she said.

Salford cast a sidelong glance at the door. “Do you think he’d bed down there if you gave him a pallet? He seems to like the spot.”

She stifled a laugh. She had known Salford for years, but their acquaintance had deepened after his cousin Madeleine had married her brother. Salford was stuffy to some, but their mutual interests in art and antiquities had brought them close enough that she saw beneath his honor-bound façade. Tonight, his sly humor was a bit of balm that soothed her rupturing scars.

“Folkestone isn’t easily led,” she said. “But I’ll find a room for him.”

The servants wouldn’t have to air his room, if she gave him the master suite despite the door that connected it to hers. On her orders, they had aired it every day for a decade. But Salford didn’t know of her past, or how well she knew the man who had been her husband’s cousin and heir.

He eyed Nick, who watched them darkly. “I don’t believe he likes me, Lady Folkestone,” he mused. “Any idea why that would be?”

“None,” Ellie lied. “But he’s a strange man, to have stayed in India so long when Folkestone was his. Who knows what he’s thinking?”

“Shall we experiment?” Salford asked. He brought Ellie’s hand to his lips. It was an empty gesture — there was about as much romantic feeling between them as between a pair of coffee spoons. But Ellie saw Nick’s arms tighten, saw him draw a breath — saw the laughter in Salford’s eyes as he dropped her hand.

“The marquess seems taken with you, my lady. Your effect remains undimmed.”

“I’ve no idea why,” she said with a shrug.

Salford sobered. “If he looked at Madeleine or my sister like he looks at you, I’d have his head. But you’ve never wanted a champion, have you?”

Salford was too perceptive by half. “Thank you, my lord, but I can manage the marquess.”

“Promise me — if you can’t manage him, promise you’ll tell me.”

She nodded once. The gesture was a lie. Salford probably knew it was, but he didn’t call her on it.

She walked toward the doors, taking as direct a line as she could through the dwindling dancers. Nick leaned against a pillar, calm again — lounging ever more obviously by the second as she approached. He wouldn’t admit jealousy, just as she wouldn’t admit discomfort.

But his eyes burned even as his body relaxed.

When she reached him, she dropped into a curtsey, made even more grand by the way her heavy skirts pooled dramatically around her. “My lord,” she murmured.

“Lady Folkestone,” he drawled. “Never thought I’d see you curtsey to me.”

“I hope you enjoyed it,” she said, coming to her full height. “I shan’t do it again.”

“No?” he asked. “Then I’m glad you wore that dress for it. Your breasts are wonderful in it. Especially when you bend to offer them to me.”

Her pulse quickened. “I assure you — if I were offering them, you’d know it.”

He smiled, that cruel smile she hadn’t seen before tonight. “Save your offerings for someone else. If I want what you have, I’ll be taking it whether you offer or not.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Has no one in the last decade explained nobility to you? You are a peer of the realm, not a feudal baron. There’s no
droit du seigneur
that allows you to take any woman you want.”

Nick shrugged. He was dressed more modernly than any of her guests, by over three hundred years — but his devastating face belonged on a battlement, not a ballroom. “You know I wasn’t born to this. But I will take what belongs to me.”

This was quickly turning into a rout — and Ellie was not the victor. She stopped bantering. “Take your estate, then. I meant it when I said I will be gone in the morning.”

“And I meant it when I said you owe me. Shall the repayment start now, or do you wish to hide for another hour?”

The certainty in his voice confused her. Beyond their broken engagement, there were no other debts between them. “I owe you nothing. And I wasn’t hiding.”

“Don’t lie. Aren’t we beyond that?”

God, his voice was cold. When had it become something that could freeze her so ruthlessly? He must have had the seeds of this when she knew him, but he’d never used it on her.

But he wasn’t the only one who had hardened. She would match him, cut for cut, until he left her alone.

“I wasn’t hiding,” she repeated. “I was letting you stew. You’ve had a decade to stew, I know. But it’s ever so much more entertaining when I can watch.”

That was the final shove that broke through his ice. He grabbed her arm, his fingers turning to fire on her flesh. “Now,” he ground out, already propelling her through the door. “We talk now.”

She was right. Hell surely awaited her. Perhaps she shouldn’t have pushed him, tried to force a reaction out of him. She’d gotten what she wanted, though — a glimpse of his temper and, beneath that, the stubborn, passionate man she’d loved.

The man she’d loved and thrown away, when she was young and stupid and desperate for her father’s approval.

She’d waited forever for him to come back, wishing he would give her a chance to make amends. But now that he was here, she wasn’t sure she could stand seeing him again.

He dragged her through the foyer and past the servants she’d trained to stay out of her affairs. No one tried to save her. He pulled her up the stairs by instinct, but when he reached the landing, he paused.

“Left,” she said. “Third door from the end is my salon. No one will disturb us there.”

“Father always said this house was a rabbit warren,” Nick said. Were it not for his unbreakable grip on her arm and the thrum of tension in his voice, he might have been any visitor receiving a tour of the estate.

“It was. The servants’ domains in the attics and basements could still lose you for a week. But your brother and I renovated the public rooms and bedchambers in a more modern style. You never seemed partial to older modes of living.”

“How thoughtful of you,” he murmured.

“Yes, well, I hope you enjoy it as I have. It’s a good house, Nick.”

He spun her into her salon and let go of her arm, not responding to her inane ramblings. The room usually soothed her. Even more so than the rest of the house, every decoration, every scrap of fabric, was chosen to suit her. The large, overstuffed chaise-longue, identical in shape and size to one she kept in her house in London, was upholstered in rich navy velvet. Two chairs stood across from it, complementing the velvet with a gold fleur-de-lis pattern across their seats. Books of prints and engravings lined the shelves, interspersed with objets d’art from her collection.

It was a small, lush room that no one used but her. And it was exactly the opposite of the room where they’d had their last conversation, when she had told Nick, for the second time, that she could no longer marry him, and then insulted him to make sure he got the message. In her memory, everything in that room, one of her father’s cold, cavernous drawing rooms, was white — white walls, white upholstery, white hothouse flowers, her white gloves clenched in the lap of her white dress, Nick’s white face as his blood leached away while she cut into him. Only Nick’s flowers had been red, as though it was his heart he’d flung at her instead of his roses.

She shivered. This was not that room. She was twenty-nine, not nineteen — and her father wasn’t here to remind her of propriety and bloodlines. She walked straight toward the row of decanters on a shelf in the corner, not waiting for Nick to follow. She would rather have wine, but she hadn’t thought to send her butler for a bottle, and she wasn’t of a mind to wait. “Brandy or whisky?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Whisky.” He locked the door. The sound was a warning shot. Her hand shook as she tilted the decanter toward a glass, and she splashed liquor on the tray beneath it. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard, striving for control.