The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter SEVENTEEN


Half an hour later, it was Ellie’s turn at the targets. Her guests would grow bored soon. She could read it in the way they had broken off into little groups, paying more attention to their own gossip than to those who chose to shoot. She could read the swirls and eddies in a social setting like an expert gamekeeper tracking his herds and flocks. And she was already prepared for the next phase of the afternoon. Even now, servants would be setting out a cold collation in the saloon downstairs — food and drink would keep her guests entertained, and not thinking of her, for another hour at least.

But as she picked up her bow, she sensed a different movement in the currents behind her. She didn’t turn around, but she heard the whispers. She nocked the arrow, pulled back, stared down the shaft, and released the string.

It struck the heart of the target. Her father hadn’t allowed hysterics, but it didn’t matter — she had always found more satisfaction in a perfectly-placed arrow than a crying fit.

She could have shot again, trying to match Percy’s record. But she heard a slow, loud clap add itself to the tumult of praise, and she wasn’t sure her nerves allowed for another attempt. She handed her weapon to the footman, a slender blond with pretty, even features who looked like Eros as he held the bow.

This wasn’t the time to think of painting her footmen. She turned back to her guests. But she only saw Nick. He stood slightly apart, near the door he had just entered, watching her with eyes that tracked over her skin like Greek fire. His hair was windblown and his cheeks were red with cold. But his voice was pure heat as he congratulated her.

“Tremendous shot, Lady Folkestone,” he said, in a voice that silenced the masses. “Odysseus himself couldn’t have done better.”

She blushed. She never blushed. But she saw him, again, in the painting she’d made of him, with Ellie as Circe and Nick as the man who waited to do her bidding. “You’re more of an Odysseus than I am, my lord — back from your wanderings and all that. Do you care to shoot? The rest of the party is just finished.”

He didn’t glance at any of them. “I’m no archer. It’s not a popular pastime in the East End.”

The silence turned uncomfortable. No one had mentioned his antecedents, at least not to her, but he wouldn’t let them forget it. Ellie smoothed it over with a little laugh. “Of course. We can always try another diversion. Have you a scheme to entertain us?”

“I always have a scheme for you, my lady.”

He sounded lightly flirtatious, in a way that made the women sigh. If he were always like this, the combination of his charm and his title would more than cover the sins of his background. He could melt all their hearts with little effort.

But there was nothing light or flirtatious about Nick’s face. His eyes locked onto hers. His grin turned devastating, the grin of a man who was supremely confident that he could take what he wanted.

It was easy for him to be confident. For the next few months, at least, he owned her. But perhaps he, like her, had realized an unfortunate truth in the darkness of her studio the previous night: he could have had her without spending forty thousand bloody pounds to force her.

That thought brought her up short and cut the mutual seduction they’d woven. “What shall it be, Lord Folkestone? Piquet? Whist?”

Her cool voice didn’t deter him. He held out his arm. “Take a turn in the garden with me, if your guests can spare you. There’s a bit of outdoor business we need to discuss.”

His tone, like hers, lost its flirtatious edge. She couldn’t say no — his request was odd, but her refusal would be odder still. She nodded once. “I will need to change if I am to be outside,” she said.

She had changed out of her comfortable morning dress for the archery and her white Grecian gown was no match for the snow. He nodded. “I shall await you in the entrance hall in half an hour.”

He left without waiting to see if she followed. She sent her guests on their way to the saloon, knowing that they would spend the afternoon dissecting whether “a turn in the garden” was code for something more nefarious, but there was nothing she could do to stop it — particularly when she didn’t know what Nick’s intentions were.

By the time she reached the foyer, clad in a thick walking dress, flannel petticoats, sturdy boots, and a fur-lined cloak, she was brimming with curiosity.

“Did you find something during your conversation with the tenants?” Ellie asked as Nick put on his hat. “Or is this about…something else?”

He slanted her a look that said he’d rather this were about their bargain, but he shook his head. “The tenants had nothing of value to report, and there isn’t time now for our…other activities. But there’s something I wish for you to sketch.”

He said nothing more as he led her down the hall to his study to retrieve a sketchpad, and then back past the dining room to the green baize door to the servants’ hall. She had been in their domain less than half a dozen times in her entire tenure as marchioness, but Nick walked through like he was well acquainted with the rooms.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“To one of the outbuildings,” he said, steering her through the kitchen and around the massive spits where two boys turned the rods that roasted a score of pheasants over the fire. “We could have gone through the gardens, but it’s too cold for my blood.”

She didn’t complain. Even for someone who had stayed in England all her life, the weather wasn’t pleasant. But when they reached the servants’ entrance and found Marcus cooling his heels on a bench near the door, she came up short.

“You shouldn’t keep a traitor at your back when you’re looking for a killer,” she said to Nick. “Take care, or he may sell you out to someone else.”

Marcus winced. “Ellie, I am sorry. Again.”

She waved a hand. “Claibornes are always sorry. I should have known better than to trust you. You’re cut from the same cloth as all the rest.”

He had stood when she arrived, but rather than giving way, he leaned against the door and blocked their route. “Say what you will about me, but I did what I thought was best. You had more money and comfort these past ten years than your actual funds would have given you. Nick’s money kept you free to pursue your own passions rather than marrying someone else. And it seemed that Nick might never come home. You were the only thing I thought would lure him back. As it turns out, we should have hired people to try to kill him in India — it might have brought him back years ago and saved all of us some heartache.”

He grinned at her. The old Marcus was back — the one who had been her friend after he could see beyond the fact that she’d broken his brother’s heart.

She sighed. “That doesn’t make it right, you know. I don’t think I can forgive you for this.”

His smile died. “Seems that none of us can forgive each other.”

Nick intervened. “Can we discuss this somewhere else? Half the servants are listening to us.”

Ellie looked around to find more footmen, scullery maids, and chambermaids milling in the kitchens than were strictly necessary. She found her butler in the crowd and raised her brows. “Ashby, why aren’t you attending my guests in the saloon?”

He had the grace to blush. “Just retrieving wine for them, my lady.”

She knew the wine wasn’t kept in the kitchen, but she let the remark pass. Ashby was a good butler, but she couldn’t fault him for being concerned about Nick’s arrival. She couldn’t fault any of them. She had trained them to be loyal to her and her alone — she could guess that Nick’s return, and what it meant for them, were all any of them were talking about.

Nick gestured her toward the door and they walked out into the snow. Several sets of footprints had already stamped paths to the main outbuildings. The coal, lamp oil, and foodstuffs were all stored in the cellars, but the staff still needed to feed the horses, milk the cows, and stoke fires in the orangery and other succession houses to keep the plants from freezing. One outbuilding, though, had fewer footprints leading to it — and a stout lock on the door that she hadn’t noticed before.

Nick pulled a key from his pocket. But before he unlocked it, he turned to Ellie. “I should have prepared you better, but there was nothing I could say in front of the others. I brought the dead highwayman’s body back with us yesterday…”

“He’s in here?” Ellie interrupted. She’d successfully kept the vision of his bloodied face out of her mind that morning, but she wasn’t sure she was prepared to see it again.

“I couldn’t leave him in the ditch. There was no better place to put him. But unless we tell the magistrate to post notices, we have no way of discovering who he is.”

“What do you want me to sketch? I remember his face — there isn’t enough left to draw.”

Nick dropped the key into his pocket and put his arm around her shoulder. “There’s no need to see the face. I know you aren’t accustomed to such things.”

Ellie shook her head to clear it. She wasn’t eager to see the man again, but if she had to, she wouldn’t let herself vomit again. “I’ve seen wounds like that before. I can handle myself.”

Nick’s hand stopped in mid-caress. “Where would you have seen such a thing?

“Did you not hear?” She counted the months. Her father had died a year earlier, but it had taken a month or two for the rumors to spread. If Marcus had written the truth in a letter to Nick, he might not have received it before his ship left India. “I suppose you wouldn’t have. Officially, Father and Richard died in a carriage accident. Sophronia pulled every string she could to sway the reports. But really, my brother shot Father in the head and then turned the gun on himself.”

She said it as one repeated an oft-told bit of minor gossip — as though she didn’t sometimes still dream of her father and wish he had survived. Her nonchalance was a lie, though. In the dreams where he survived, it was only to tell her that he loved her.

And that was as delusional as any other fantasy she could have.

Nick dropped his arm away from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“When?” she countered. “We’ve had more pressing issues to address. And anyway, it’s all in the past. How he died doesn’t matter, does it?”

But it did matter. There had been no time for deathbed conversions or last confessions. Just her father’s voice from three weeks before his death — the last time she’d given in and taken dinner with him. He had told her to stop mourning and find some purpose other than redecorating “that peasant’s house.”

She’d never admit it, but he may have had a point.

Nick frowned. “Did he ever apologize for…”

“Charles?”

He nodded.

Ellie snorted. “Of course not. He’d have found another Charles for me if I hadn’t become so disreputable and recalcitrant. But I understand him now, better than I did before.”

“What do you understand?”

“He did what he thought was best. Do I hate him for it? Yes. But he wasn’t evil. He just…wasn’t very nice.”

Before Nick responded, Marcus cleared his throat. “I’m sure this conversation is delightful, but may I suggest you continue it in the house? It’s far too cold out here.”

Nick unlocked the door and ushered them into the gloom of the windowless shed. Enough light came in through the door to make out an outline of the body; he added to it by lighting the lantern that sat on nearby stool. The corpse lay on the floor with a blanket covering it, and he knelt down to pull the blanket aside and reveal both arms, but not the head or chest.

“My batman discovered these tattoos when he checked for identifying marks. If you draw them, Trower can take them to the London or Southampton docks after the snows clear and possibly find which ships he sailed on.”

Ellie looked over the corpse. Most of the tattoos were simple designs and short words dyed into his skin. They would be easy enough for a novice to create during his breaks in the ship’s watches. Two or three were more intricate, created by a skilled artist — perhaps a tattooed warrior of the South Pacific?

She started sketching. The designs were small enough that she could fit them all on a single large page of her sketchbook. “Do you recognize any of them?” she finally asked after several minutes of drawing.

“No, but there is one he may have received when he crossed the Equator for the first time,” he said. “Sailors who’ve never crossed it before are put through any number of ordeals — shaving, tarring, and other, mostly good-natured, humiliations. Passengers like myself just have to contribute the alcohol on our first voyage across. But I might have gotten a tattoo myself that night if I’d had another cup of rum.”

She pictured him standing on the rail of a ship, the salt spray driving his hair back in the wind. It was enough to make her hand pause, wishing she could draw that instead of a dead man’s tattoos.

“You must have seen such wonderful sights,” she said, returning to her work.

He crouched beside her, examining her handiwork as she drew the last tattoo — a serpent wrapped around an anchor. “Sights beyond imagining. I wish you had been there to paint them. My words cannot do justice to them the way your colors can.”

“Perhaps someday, with whatever funds I have left, I shall go abroad,” Ellie said, shading in the serpent’s head. “I should have done so years ago, but I wasn’t quite ready to go alone.”

He was silent at that, but she didn’t notice until she’d finished the drawing — and realized, as she focused on their conversation rather than her pencil, how much she’d given away.

“No matter, though,” she said brightly, shoving the sketchbook at him. “Now that you’ve returned, you can take the estate. Marcus, would you care to escort me to Greece now that you may take a holiday?”

Marcus raised his brows as she stood and dusted off her skirts. “Have your forgotten that you are angry with me?”

Nick laughed. It was genuine mirth, not the cutting disdain he so often gave her. “She can be remarkably inconsistent when she doesn’t remember who she’s claimed to love and hate.”

“Claibornes,” she muttered. “I shall go to the Continent myself, then. If you are very kind to me, Nick, perhaps I will send you a sketch occasionally while you moulder in the House of Lords.”

“You would have me stuck in London for eternity, wouldn’t you?”

She wouldn’t. Nick belonged somewhere more primal, somewhere with a harsh purity to the sea and sky — not in Parliament or the ballrooms, where he didn’t have the patience to even play those murky social games, let alone win them.

“I’d have you on an isle in the Mediterranean,” she said. “Think of all I could paint there.”

His eyes flashed. But he didn’t respond. She was glad of it. She’d been too truthful, hadn’t hidden that statement beneath a jaded, sultry tone. She wanted him, all to herself, with Homer’s wine-dark sea and the flawless Mediterranean light serving as a backdrop for all the passion she’d always poured into her paintings of him.

That was a truth.

The worse truth, though, was that her heart — that poor, confused, angry beast — somehow had started painting a future with him again. A future with laughter, and love, and fire.

The future she had thought she’d finally, finally let go.

Stop mourning and find a purpose, her father’s voice said.

Ellie turned abruptly for the door, wading through the awkward, heavy silence that followed her confession. “I hope I helped,” she said, her voice too loud. “I shall see you both at dinner, yes?”

She didn’t wait. They didn’t follow. She heard Marcus’s low whistle, heard Nick mutter something that made his brother laugh, but she didn’t turn back. She knew her mythology — if she turned back, she would be lost.

She was already lost.

She dipped down, scooped up a palmful of untouched snow, and pressed it against her face. The cold shocked her and she sucked in a deep, cleansing breath. The crisp air burned as she inhaled, froze as she exhaled. It was enough to help her slow her steps, enough that by the time she returned to the house, her wet face felt composed.

But not enough to save her from herself. Which left the question — should she run as far from Folkestone as her funds and courage could carry her?

Or should she let her heart fight, grimly, hopelessly, incurably, for a future she was sure Nick would never give her?