The Marquess Who Loved Me (21 page)

She laughed again. “I would guess that you only give impressions you wish to give, my lord. In that, you and Lady Folkestone are well matched. If you were whist partners, your control over your reactions would make you nigh on unbeatable.”

“You are a direct one, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t meant to be a setdown, but he regretted the words when her eyes switched from vivacious to wary. “Please do forgive me, Lord Folkestone. I forgot myself.”

He waved a hand, suddenly contrite. “No forgiveness necessary, Miss Etchingham. I’m sure I’ve heard worse.”

“Not from ape-leaders who are taking advantage of your hospitality, I would think.”

She glanced through the double doors to where Ellie and Lord Salford still talked in muted undertones. She was far more dependent on Salford’s generosity than Nick’s — and Nick wondered, then, whether that fact chafed her, despite the comfort of her position.

But he didn’t know her well enough to ask. And ultimately, Miss Etchingham’s future was not his responsibility. He pressed his other agenda instead. “Does our mutual friend bear any of the blame for your…unguarded tongue?”

Prudence turned her gaze back to Nick. “I do not hold Lady Folkestone responsible for my personal failings, my lord.”

He saw the spark in her eyes. Was it his imagination, or had she implied that he unfairly blamed Ellie for his mistakes? “Still, is it not detrimental for your reputation to associate with her?”

She frowned. “Ellie — excuse me, Lady Folkestone — has never gone beyond the pale.”

“The rumors of her parties are legendary.”

“‘Legendary’ is a key word, I believe. She has an eye for drama and an appetite for titillating people, but she herself is always perfectly composed. If she indulged in hysterics or public love affairs, perhaps she would no longer be received — but morality applies to titled, wealthy widows differently than it does to the rest of us. I believe she could walk stark naked into Almack’s and still not be cut — it’s hard to cut someone that self-contained. The ton knows they care more for her than she cares for them, after all.”

No one could go to Almack’s nude, not even Ellie, but he lost a few seconds considering it. Prudence’s quick grin said she guessed his preoccupation. Nick cleared his throat. “Then is she always as she was at her masquerade? Aloof?”

“You won’t catch me spreading tales about her,” Prudence warned. “But I will say that, in all the time I’ve known her, I’ve never seen her display any emotion stronger than amusement or vague disapproval in public.”

“And in private?”

“Did I not just say I won’t spread tales?”

Nick shrugged. “I had to ask.”

“Why did you have to ask?”

Her eyes were expectant, her posture even more so. She leaned forward as though she needed to be as close as possible to whatever words he might share. The answer mattered to her, for some reason he couldn’t fathom — unless she really cared to know what Nick’s intentions were toward Ellie?

He wasn’t above playing on that sentiment. “I find Lady Folkestone most…intriguing. You’ll forgive me for wanting to know more about her preferences.”

Prudence looked at Ellie again, pausing as she collected her thoughts. “I cannot help you there, my lord. Whatever Lady Folkestone’s preferences might be, she’s remarkably skilled at not sharing them.”

His Ellie, the one he had loved, had always shared her preferences. She had wanted to seize everything, so eager to go to London and see something beyond the small estate where her father kept her cloistered. She had never been able to hide her desires, or her fears, from him — which is why he had believed her when she said she preferred his cousin to him.

But when had she gotten so good at masking herself? And what did she really, truly want? The previous night had shown him that she was still capable of desire — if she unleashed that desire, where would she go and what might she choose?

Would she choose him? Or would she choose to escape him again?

The clock chimed the hour. Midnight. A footman entered the room, on the cue Nick had given him, and handed Ellie a note on a silver salver. Nick watched as she flipped the note open. Her eyes scanned the lines. If she felt anything when she had finished, her emotions didn’t reach her face. She looked up, unerringly, to Nick, betraying only the briefest hint of a scowl as she folded the note again. Then she dismissed the footman and turned back to Salford as though nothing had happened — as though she hadn’t just read the note Nick had arranged for her to receive, in which he said what he expected of her that night.

He turned back to Prudence. “I do believe you are correct, Miss Etchingham. Lady Folkestone is a puzzle.”

But she hadn’t always been. And tonight he would have another go at deciphering her — whether she wished it or not.

Ellie had fought hard to control her blush when she read the note that Nick had sent her. She must have succeeded — Salford had said nothing about it. He merely continued discussing her antiquities collection with her as though receiving a note at midnight didn’t merit any curiosity whatsoever.
 

Or perhaps he was merely polite. Far more polite than Nick. Only a devil would make this arrangement, let alone send the note he had sent. Why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone like Salford? Someone kind, with a sharp mind, who might take care of her?

But Ellie didn’t want a protector. Perhaps she didn’t deserve one, either. Perhaps she deserved an inescapable adversary, a dark king to match the woman she had remade herself into.

Stop being dramatic
. The party had dissolved five minutes after she received the note, when she had abruptly sent everyone off to bed. And now, after twenty minutes spent pacing in her room, she had come back downstairs to follow her orders. She took a breath and pushed open the door to the study. She closed it behind her and turned the key in the lock. Leaning against the door, she unfolded the note in her hand and read it again.

E. - The study, half past midnight. Lock the interior door. Unlock the door to the terrace but leave the curtains closed. Take down your hair for me and kneel in front of the desk. Wait there until I arrive. Don’t move when I enter. Don’t make a sound until I say you may. Tonight, goddess, we shall see whether you can worship me. - N.

Her father was wrong. There were times when one
had
to be dramatic. This was one of them. She strode across the room and tossed the note into the fire. She didn’t wait to see the paper burn — the words were already seared into her memory.

She unlocked the terrace door. She shivered as she pulled the pins from her hair, placing them one by one on the lacquered white desk. Her sense of order was disturbed by having them there, so she slid open a drawer and tossed them inside — directly on top of Nick’s copy of the agreement they had signed, the paper that bound her to him. She shut the drawer and shook her hair out until it fell in heavy waves down her back.

Then she moved around the desk to the open space in the center of the room. She eyed the floor dubiously. It was thickly carpeted, but she wasn’t accustomed to kneeling. Ellie Claiborne knelt for no one and nothing.

But the saints of old had knelt until their knees bled — something Ellie would have done a decade ago, if she had thought her betrayal of Nick and their love was something she could do penance for. So she knelt. She felt ridiculous even as she sank to her knees, but there was nothing for it. Perhaps Nick would see how ridiculous it was and let her have a chair instead.

There was little hope of that. As soon as he walked through the French door a few minutes later, she knew he didn’t find her ridiculous. The hunger in his eyes was so stark, the set of his jaw so determined, the slash of his lips so cruel, that she knew, then, how this night would go.

He would wring everything from her that he intended to wring. And her cursed, traitorous heart would give it to him — everything he asked for, everything he wanted.

Everything she wanted, if she were being honest. Because, stupid fool that she was, she would rather have this night, no matter where it led, than another lifetime without him.

*
   
*
   
*

She knelt for him. Nick had dreamed of her in that pose. He had dreamed of the words that would come from those lips. She would beg for his forgiveness. She would plead for him to come back to her. She would cry as he denied her. He would crush her heart so that she would feel the same roaring, angry emptiness that he felt. And then he would leave her with the knowledge that she would share his bed anyway, again, and again, until her debt was repaid.

But dreaming was so far away from doing. And now that Nick had her there, in exactly the pose he had imagined, he felt far more doubt than he’d ever expected.

She didn’t greet him. So far, she had followed his instructions to the letter. Only her eyes moved to follow him, but she didn’t tilt her head as he moved toward her — didn’t turn as he walked behind her, although her spine stiffened with the tension of not knowing what he intended.

He wanted to touch her. But, more, he wanted to know her. He
needed
to know her, suddenly — needed to know why her image was so icy when her painting was so wild. Why she was so distant when her friends were so intimate. Why she, who seemed so jaded and fickle, had never professed love for anyone else.

He walked over to the decanter and poured himself a drink. It was still a hideous room — not the setting he’d imagined for this seduction, although using her in the room she’d decorated in a fit of pique against him was its own sort of poetry. Still, he would be damned before he sat on one of those lavender hassocks. He pulled the chair out from behind the desk and sat in it, directly in front of Ellie, his legs spread negligently in front of him. His erection pressed against his breeches, but he still had some control — there was still time for the questions he suddenly, urgently needed to ask.

“Tell me what your sins are.”

Ellie sat back on her heels, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your sins. I said I would learn them. And I want to learn them now.”

“Now? You called me onto the carpet like a child, not a…?”

She couldn’t complete the sentence. “A concubine?” he supplied.

She nodded.

“Funny, that doesn’t seem to be a word you would hesitate over. But no, you’re not a child. And we will get to the concubine part of the evening in good time.”

She choked back a laugh, perhaps thinking that laughter wasn’t allowed by the letter of his demands. She was so far from tears as to make his revenge, if he still wanted it, seem permanently unattainable. He frowned and tried to focus. “Your sins, Ellie. Now.”

She met his gaze straight on. “You were the only sin that was deadly for me.”

“Still regretting you gave your maidenhead to a peasant? My only regret is I can’t take it again.”

“Do you want me to say I regret that I have but one maidenhead to give for your lordship? I’m sorry, but you broke that toy — you’ll have to take something else.”

He sipped his whisky to hide his sudden grin and contemplated the lines of her face. In this mood, she wouldn’t betray vulnerability. Her chin was too stubborn, her mouth too sultry, her eyes too guarded. She was the Virgin Queen again, cold and unattainable no matter what he said or what he forced her to do. But he knew how to break through the ice.

“Is there nothing else you wish to confess?” he asked.

If she lifted her chin any higher, she would snap her own neck. “Absolutely not.”

He tossed back the rest of his whisky, wiped his mouth with his sleeve just to annoy her, and set the glass behind him on the desk. Then he leaned back in his chair and crossed his hands behind his head. “Then you may begin, goddess. Worship me.”

Her mouth went dry. She was trying so hard to stay unaffected, but she was already wet for him — not visibly aroused like he was, but her secret need was a pressing, demanding, living thing that would eat through her resolve long before Nick would let her leave the room.

Why did she want him so badly? There was no warmth in his eyes. His mouth was grim. The words that came from it were even more so. There was a time, years ago, when she would have crawled across any room to have him again. Now she had no desire to crawl — but he had swept into this house and demanded it, as though no time at all had passed between her failure and his revenge.

Ellie wet her lips. His eyes followed the darting of her tongue. His arms tensed as though his hands were turning into fists. She narrowed her eyes at that — at the way he had arranged all of this, as though to remind both of them who was at fault for their doomed love.

Suddenly, she was angry. If one room of her heart held regret, and if another held guilt, there was a third room that held fury. Fury at him for letting her go so easily. Fury that he had left and never looked back. Fury that he had left her alone to destroy herself.

It was all her fault…but it was his fault, too.

She stayed on her knees like a penitent approaching an altar, shifting her skirts out from underneath her so that she could move forward without falling on her face. He didn’t move at all, but his mouth fell open as though she’d finally, truly shocked him.