The Lord and the Wayward Lady (17 page)

‘Yes. I believe you and I trust you. And, Nell, I do love you.’ She had never seen him so serious without that endearing frown. Almost, she could let herself believe him.

‘And whatever you do about that—except ignore it—will cause a scandal,’ she observed dispassionately, fighting the need to throw herself into his arms. ‘You cannot marry me. That would be shocking, especially with two sisters on the Marriage Mart. And if you made me your mistress and anyone found out who I was, then that would be almost as bad. Your loyalty might be called into question—to the Crown and to your father.’

‘Anyone questioning my loyalty will find themselves looking down the barrel of a pistol at dawn.’ His right hand flexed as he said it, and Nell shivered.

‘Wonderful, you will be killed because of me,’ she said.

‘I am an excellent shot,’ he countered. ‘What I aim at, I hit.’

‘Oh well, that is all right then,’ she retorted. ‘Do I stay
behind to explain to your family why you have had to flee abroad having killed your man?’

‘Has anyone told you how infuriating you can be?’ Marcus demanded, coming upright in a sudden burst of temper.

‘Yes,
you,’
Nell said, trying not to dwell on how magnificent he looked, towering over her, dark eyes blazing. ‘And I am not being infuriating now, merely right. You, on the other hand, are unused to anyone gainsaying you and are not, I have to point out, taking it very well.’

‘Then tell me how you feel, Nell.’ Marcus dropped to one knee with a suddenness that startled her. ‘Tell me how you feel about me. About us.’ He caught her hands in his. In the strong grip, she could feel a pulse thudding. Hers or his, she could not tell.

I love you, I love you…
She only had to say it and all her good resolutions would be for nothing. He would not let her go and the outcome—whatever it was—could not be happy. Not for them, not for his family.

‘I desire you,’ she said, making herself meet his eyes. ‘I find, when you touch me, that morals and proper behaviour seem to count as nothing. You kiss me and I go up in flames—and that is wrong and cannot last. And you make me weak.’ She laughed—shakily, it was true—but her amusement brought a flash of answering humour into his eyes.

‘Good,’ Marcus said, his voice husky, leaning in to her.

‘Not weak like that.’ Nell swayed back, away from his wicked, tempting mouth. ‘I am an independent woman. I must stand by myself, not come to lean on a man. You are too big,’ she complained, feeling suddenly
tired and querulous. ‘I just want to sit back and let you fight my battles, and that will not do.’

‘Nell, you have agreed to let us help you,’ Marcus began. He was stroking the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. Nell closed her eyes for a moment, imagining his mouth there.

‘And I am very grateful and fully intend it to be a business relationship,’ she said with as much firmness as she could manage. ‘I cannot be a dependent.’

‘I am not asking you to be a dependent, Nell, I am asking you to—’

‘No! No,’ she repeated, more gently. ‘Do not say anything that we will surely regret as soon as it is said. I will stay with your family until I can set up my business, and I am so grateful for that, I cannot properly express it.’

Marcus sat back on his heels and shook his head at her, frowning. ‘And then, every Quarter Day,’ she persisted, ‘I will meet with your man of business and we will discuss profit and loss. I hope to be able to return you a respectable sum for your investment. And when your friends lament the amount their mistresses cost them in millinery and haberdashery, you will tell them of an elegant establishment you know where, if not exactly dagger cheap, one may find a stylish bonnet at a keen price.’

‘And you will be content?’

‘Of course. I will be too busy for foolish daydreams about…passion. And so will you be.’

‘I see.’ Marcus got to his feet. ‘How very practical you are, Nell. You pour a positive bucketful of cold water over heated dreams.’

‘That is how it has to be.’ Nell managed a smile. ‘I cannot afford dreams.’

‘I would give them to you if I could,’ Marcus said, and for a moment the tenderness in his eyes was almost more than she could bear.

‘I know,’ she managed, the smile still intact.

He stooped and she did not try and avoid his mouth, or the gentle touch of his hand as he cradled the back of her head and held her for his kiss. It would be the last time, the last dream.

She would remember every detail, she told herself as his mouth moved over hers with possessive tenderness. The taste of him, the texture of his skin as she laid her palm against his cheek, the scent of him, the leashed power under her other hand where the muscles of his arm clenched with the effort he was making to hold back, the sweep of his eyelashes as she opened her own eyes to look into his face.

And then those thick dark lashes lifted and he broke the kiss.

‘Wise Nell,’ he murmured. And was gone.

F
or that day, and the next, a strange calm lay over Stanegate Court. Hal and Marcus rode out, deployed the keepers and the grounds staff on patrols and searches, and found nothing.

The Gypsies had moved, the keepers told him, only ashes and hoof marks to show where they had been. ‘And wagon wheels,’ Randall the head keeper reported. ‘Not like their usual tilt carts, something bigger.’ He shrugged. ‘Gone now anyway, my lord.’

Marcus doubted it. Moved, certainly, but the Romany tribe was still around somewhere. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘They have sharp eyes; they might have seen someone.’

He was restless, urgent for action, frustrated by the dark man’s ability to melt like a ghost into the woods. And Nell’s presence in the house did not help. He wanted her more with each passing day and she, it seemed, might want his lovemaking, but not his love.

‘Are you going to marry Nell?’ Hal asked as they sat on their horses on Beacon Hill, scanning the hillsides for some betraying trickle of smoke.

‘No.’

‘Ah, the scandal,’ his brother said. ‘No doubt you are wise. You are the heir, after all.’

‘I have not put it to the touch; she will not allow me to ask.’

Hal’s gasp of astonishment would have been flattering if it was not followed by a snort of laughter. ‘Sensible woman.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Don’t poker up with me, Marc. She wants to be independent.’

‘She was independent and on the edge of poverty. I fail to see the virtue of independence for a woman under those circumstances.’

‘And now she will be independent and comfortable. Secure. And she does not have to listen to scandalmongers dragging her father’s sins out to be picked over, or have you issuing challenges left right and centre whenever you think she’s been slighted.’ Hal turned up the collar of his caped coat against the wind. ‘And she can take a lover if she wishes, when she is ready to.’

Corinth tossed his head as the bit jabbed his mouth. Marcus forced his hand to relax. ‘I’ll not bother with the challenge if you touch on that subject again,’ he said flatly. ‘I’ll just knock your teeth out.’

‘You can try,’ Hal said, equally calmly. ‘Just remember, I’ve been fighting for my life recently, not in Gentleman Jackson’s boxing salon.’

‘Believe me,’ Marcus said, looking out over the bleak expanse of the snow-covered Vale of Aylesbury, ‘I would kill for Nell. But not you, little brother.’ He set his spurs to the big grey’s sides and galloped off along the ridge,
hearing the thunder of Hal’s hunter behind him, trying to forget everything in the sting of the wind and the feel of the surging muscles under him.

Mid-morning on the second day, Nell found herself alone in the small drawing room with Diana Price. The companion was reading what looked very like a book of sermons, but put it to one side as Nell came in and sat on the other side of the fireplace. She was, Nell thought, almost supernaturally calm, collected and
proper.
Her energetic skating had been the nearest Nell had seen to her letting go and enjoying herself. It was a relief, somehow, to be curious about someone else and not be constantly staring inwards at her own preoccupations.

‘Do you mind me asking,’ she said, stretching out a hand to the fire, ‘but how did you come to be a lady’s companion? My sister was one—she may still be, for all I know—and I was thinking about her, wondering what the life is like.’ Diana looked up sharply, and Nell hastened to add, ‘I do not want you to say anything about your employers, naturally.’

‘One’s employers make all the difference,’ Diana said dryly. ‘With considerate, intelligent people such as the Carlows, the position is very congenial. With a stupid or tyrannical employer, it can be hell, I believe.’ She bit her lip, as though undecided whether to say more; then, almost as if it were dragged out of her, she added, ‘My father lost everything gambling. In one night he was, effectively, ruined by—’ She broke off, staring into the flames.

‘Please, say no more. It must be most distressing,’ Nell said, feeling quite dreadful that her probing had touched such a raw nerve.

Diana shook her head as though trying to clear it, looked at Nell and seemed to reach a decision. ‘He was ruined by a card sharp. A man so young, so innocent looking, my father had no idea of his danger. By morning he had lost everything—our house, his money…everything. Papa never recovered, his health was shattered. I thank God that Mama did not live to see it. He moved North and took what work he could. Somehow he managed to keep out of debtors’ prison, but I had no option but to seek employment.’

‘I am so sorry,’ Nell said warmly. ‘And I am so glad you found a happy position here.’

‘We have one thing in common,’ Diana said, her eyes fixed on Nell’s face as though she was searching it. ‘We have both been ruined by a feckless young man. You would not have been in the position you were, had your brother not deserted you.’

‘Oh, no! Nathan did not desert us, I am sure of that.’ Distressed, Nell got to her feet and began to pace. ‘I do not know what happened to him—and I fear the worst—yet surely I would know if my own brother had died? He was getting into bad company, that I do know. Suddenly there was money—not regularly, but more than I could account for by him taking odd jobs of work. He would not tell us where it was coming from, yet when I challenged him he swore he was not stealing.’

Diana Price made a sound so like a snort of disbelief that Nell turned in surprise. The other woman was on her feet, gathering up her book and handkerchief. She gave Nell a thin smile. ‘I like you, Miss…Wardale. Despite everything.’

The door closed behind her, leaving Nell puzzled and uneasy in the quiet room.

Nell watched Marcus, as she had throughout dinner. He was brooding, but not, she sensed, about her. As Lady Narborough rose after dinner, Marcus came to himself with a start, almost late on his feet as the women got up.

‘Nell, Hal, Father—there is something I would like to discuss. Mama, can you spare Nell for half an hour?’

‘If she does not object to your port,’ his mother said with a smile.

‘Thank you, Watson, that will be all.’ The earl waited for the room to clear. ‘Would you care for a glass of ratafia, my dear?’

‘Might I try port?’ Nell asked. ‘I never have.’ The room seemed suddenly overwhelmingly masculine with the silver and porcelain cleared, the white linen removed, just the glasses and the decanters and a bowl of nuts on the polished board.

‘I have been trying to remember back,’ Marcus said, cracking nuts in his fingers as his father poured the deep ruby liquid into her glass. ‘I was nine years old, young enough for none of it to make much sense, old enough to be able to escape being whisked off to the nursery every time an adult conversation took place. I seem to recall a lot of time spent behind the curtains in the window seat.’

‘I have told you all that occurred,’ the earl said with a frown. ‘What you recall as a child cannot add to that.’

‘But this is something that has never been mentioned since. Not to me, at least. It sounds melodramatic, but was there something about a curse? I have this vague memory of a Gypsy’s curse.’

Lord Narborough set down his wine glass with a snap. ‘
That
nonsense.’

‘These woods are a haunt of Gypsies, yet they have suddenly vanished. Nell’s dark man might be a Romany.’ Nell looked from one man to the other. Hal appeared sceptical, the earl uncomfortable. Marcus caught her eye and held it, a silent conversation she could not, dare not, try to understand.

‘There was something,’ Lord Narborough said at length. ‘Kit Hebden—Lord Framlingham—took a Gypsy woman as a lover, had a son by him. Amanda, his own wife, seemed barren, so he brought the baby home, forced her to rear it.’

‘Tactless,’ Hal remarked.

‘Cruel,’ Marcus countered. ‘As good as saying he was potent and any lack of children was his wife’s fault.’

‘Poor little boy,’ Nell said, moved. ‘Just a pawn in his father’s games.’

‘Not at first. Lady Framlingham came to love the child, reared it as her own. And, as so often happens, once there was a baby in the house, she too began to increase. She had a daughter and a son and was expecting again when her husband was murdered. She lost that baby, and her own son shortly afterwards.’

‘The love child must have been a comfort,’ Nell said hopefully, remembering that Amanda Hebden, Lady Framlingham, had been her own father’s mistress. What a hideous muddle.

‘Not for long. After the murder, Amanda was in no fit state to dress herself, let alone look after children. Her family descended, took over—and sent the boy away.’

‘Back to his Gypsy mother?’

‘No, off to some foundling hospital up in the North. Yorkshire Moors, I think.’

‘But how terrible,’ Nell murmured.

‘They were scandalised that Hebden had imposed the child on her and refused to take her own protests that she loved him into account. Then his true mother came. Her lover was dead, her child gone. She cursed us all—the Hebdens for betraying her, the Wardales for her lover’s death, me for failing to stop it, for being part of, as she saw it, the conspiracy.’ The earl sipped his port. ‘Beautiful creature. Wild, exotic—and completely unhinged with grief.’

‘What happened to her?’ Nell asked.

‘She killed herself, sealing the curse with her own blood. It made it more potent, so the Romany believe.’

‘That is why Mama was wary of Gypsies,’ Nell realized. ‘She would cross the street rather than pass a harmless peg seller, or an old dame with heather to sell.’

‘But the woman is dead, and Gypsies have been in these woods for ever, without doing us any harm,’ Hal protested.

‘But the child?’ Marcus said. ‘What about the child?’

‘Veryan may know.’ Lord Narborough filled his glass and pushed the decanter towards his elder son. ‘I had a letter this morning—took two days; the mail is in a dreadful state with this weather. He is coming over tomorrow, bringing the papers from the old case.’ Nell was not aware of moving or speaking, but he glanced sharply at her. ‘I am sorry, my dear. This must all be very painful.’

‘I just want to know the truth and for this persecution to stop,’ she said, swallowing the last of the port in
her glass. It sent a warm, rich glow through her, attacking the chill of what they were talking about. ‘It seems tragedy heaps upon tragedy—that poor woman, her child.’ She shivered, trying to imagine the depths of despair of Hebden’s Gypsy lover.

‘We will know more tomorrow,’ Marcus said. ‘Let us rejoin the others and speak of happier matters.’

But Marcus’s optimism proved false. Lord Keddinton, stamping snow from his boots and moving gratefully to the heat of the fire in the study, could offer little except to slam the door on their latest theory.

‘You think the Gypsy brat is behind this?’ He curled his elegant fingers round the heat of a glass of punch and shook his head. ‘Dead. I made it my business to find out what happened to him. They sent him to some place up in Yorkshire. A year later, there was a fire, the child perished in that. Imogen Hebden is the only offspring of Framlingham’s still alive. A charming young woman, friend of my daughters. She isn’t behind this, you may be sure of that.

‘The Rom might be acting as agents for whoever it is, of course,’ he added with a shrug.

‘And the files, sir?’ Hal asked.

‘Here you are.’ He handed a slim folder to the earl. ‘I’ve looked at it and young Gregson hunted down every scrap he could find—getting quite obsessed with the case, poor devil.’

‘What’s wrong?’ Marcus caught the fleeting expression of pain that crossed Veryan’s face.

‘Dead. Hit by a vehicle it seems, on his way home a week ago.’

‘I am sorry to hear that.’ The earl looked up from the file. ‘A promising young man, I thought.’

‘He was. I had high hopes of him.’

‘Just coincidence that he was reviewing this case?’ Marcus asked. Cold fingers were trailing up his spine. He told himself he was being fanciful, but the news made him uneasy.

‘So I had believed,’ Veryan said slowly. ‘Now, I wonder.’ He left them soon afterwards. Marcus returned from the hall, having waved him off on his cold journey home, to find his brother and father in fruitless speculation.

Marcus pulled the door to and began to pace. ‘Never mind who he is or why he is doing this,’ he said after a while. ‘We need to get our hands on him.’

‘Set a trap, you mean?’

At the sound of the earl’s voice, Nell stopped in her tracks as she passed the study door. It was just ajar. With a guilty glance around, she tiptoed closer and gave it a slight push so the gap widened to an inch. She should not be eavesdropping, but if Marcus was planning something dangerous, she wanted to know.

‘Yes.’ Marcus sounded as though he were thinking aloud. ‘We need to get him inside. There’s too much space out there; he will always have the advantage.’

‘We’ll need to pull the patrols back,’ Hal said. ‘Concentrate them on, say, the stable block as though we were expecting an attack that way. It’s an easier target, all that inflammable material, it would be logical if we thought it was a threat.’

‘I bow to your military tactical experience,’ Marcus
said sardonically. ‘Then we patrol inside, taking care not to be seen?’

‘It’s a big house,’ the earl observed. ‘Rambling, several wings.’

‘We would need to direct him somehow,’ Marcus mused. ‘But he’s no fool; he’ll suspect an open window.’

‘I don’t like it,’ Lord Narborough said finally. ‘Not with the women here.’

‘One of you could take them up to town?’ Hal suggested.

‘We need the three of us here. No, Father is right, it is too risky.’

Nell moved softly away. With the men so protective of the women, the dark man had them just where he wanted them. Someone needed to carry the fight to him, confront him, discover whether there was some purpose behind this persecution or simply the vicious spite of a madman.

She had brought the first rope, her father was the man accused of treason and murder. She was at the heart of this, so she must do something. He would be watching; she was certain of that. Nell began to hurry. Down at the end of this corridor was the gun room and the men were occupied, if her luck held, until luncheon.