The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter THREE


How was she more beautiful than he remembered? She’d been pretty at seventeen, even lovelier at nineteen — the toast of the season in ’02, when her father had belatedly, begrudgingly brought her out in a bid to make her forget Nick. She’d vowed that nothing could induce her to marry someone else. But by the end of the season, she was married to — and, three days later, widowed by — his cousin. And Nick was somewhere in the Atlantic, wishing he could drown his love for her as effectively as she had suffocated her love for him.

She had been beautiful that season, even on the day when she’d tossed him aside for a title. But beautiful wasn’t quite the right word now. She was too fierce for mere beauty. Her hair was down, shockingly so — an homage to the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, surely. He knew it was a coincidence that it was exactly the way he liked it. As she navigated the turns and dips of the first country dance, her hair flared around her like a curtain of fire. She was pale, though. Paler than she had been before he removed his mask.

The Virgin Queen would not show weakness. But he’d seen the first tiny cracks in her armor.

Ellie — beautiful, traitorous bitch that she was — hadn’t forgotten him.

Nick leaned against the pillar, searching for a comfortable angle. Women had frequently danced for his pleasure when he visited the Hyderabadi court. This dance wasn’t for him. None of it was for him, unless Ellie’s memory for dates was as good as his. But it was somehow more seductive than anything he’d seen with bells and scarves. Ellie moved through the patterns perfectly, effortlessly, tantalizing him every time she disappeared behind another couple.

Tormenting him every time she smiled at the prig who was her partner.

Those who didn’t dance gave Nick a wide berth. He heard the whispers, though, and knew they guessed his identity. Whether they avoided him because they hadn’t been introduced or because of his heavy involvement in trade didn’t matter — he didn’t mind their aversion, at least not tonight. The less others disturbed him, the more he could look his fill.

One guest, though, found him almost immediately. The man, two inches shorter and much slimmer than Nick, wore an elaborately embroidered doublet and breeches that would have done a young Henry VIII proud, and the disbelieving look of one who has seen a ghost.

“I should kill you for coming back without so much as a warning letter,” his brother Marcus said, clapping him on the shoulder.

“You know the vagaries of communication,” he replied. An exact account of why Nick had returned now, and the possible threat he faced, could wait until morning. Instead, he offered a more innocuous reason for his return. “I trust that with Grandfather Corwyn’s death last year, you’ll be happy to have me back at home despite my lack of notice.”

Marcus laughed. “Of course I’m happy to have you home. Rupert would be happy too, if he weren’t still in the West Indies. With you here, perhaps I can finally take a holiday.”

Marcus was Nick’s middle brother, and had managed the London office of Corwyn, Claiborne and Sons, Ltd., with their maternal grandfather while Nick focused on their India operations and their youngest brother, Rupert, concentrated on the Caribbean trade. But after their grandfather’s death the previous year, the burdens on Marcus would have increased substantially.

“Take all the holiday you want, if it makes you happy,” Nick said. “But when have the Corwyns — or Claibornes, for that matter — ever been satisfied with idleness?”

“Never in my memory,” Marcus said. “But I would be more satisfied if we could have this conversation in my office — or rather, your office — and I wasn’t dressed like a prime fool. Come have a drink with me and escape this nonsense.”

The lure of a drink with his brother, after years of inferior libations taken alone, was strong. Ellie’s pull was stronger. “You’re not the only one the marchioness has turned into a fool,” Nick said, gesturing at the dancers.

“I would say the same, but I doubt for the same reasons.”

Nick’s gaze had unerringly found Ellie, but he pulled back to look at his brother. “Gone over to the enemy, have we?”

Marcus adjusted the ruffled lace at his neck. “My vow to you comes first — always has. But at least she was here the last decade.”

Nick’s eyes slid back to Ellie. “You never told me she’d become such a…topic of conversation in London.”

The whispers he’d heard about her in London over the past five days had made her into an almost legendary figure — a goddess with the beauty of Aphrodite and the appetites of a female Dionysus. He’d been disbelieving enough — and angry enough — that he had to see for himself.

He wasn’t disbelieving anymore.

Marcus sighed. “You left me here to manage your estate, but I won’t spread tales about people.”

“How many of them are true?”

“Ask her yourself. You might not like the answer, though.”

Nick’s anger flared again as he watched her dance through all her admiring, worshipful guests. He hadn’t been this angry in years. On the ship, he had even thought he might be able to see her again without betraying any feeling at all. But knowing that she had been here, in his house, holding court while he had rotted in India alone…

He turned back to Marcus. “Tell me you still kept to our plan.”

It wasn’t a question. Marcus sighed. “Yes. But Nick…”

He trailed off. Ten years, and the responsibilities for their grandfather’s shipping empire and Nick’s Claiborne estates, had stripped away the boy his brother used to be. If Marcus still laughed as much as he had as a boy, there was no sign of it. He was somber now, and slightly wary, as though Nick’s homecoming was something he had looked forward to until he had realized what it might mean.

Nick sighed. “I didn’t come seeking revenge tonight. Let’s talk of something else. I’d rather hear about you than her after all this time.”

It was partly true. He’d returned from India to determine whether someone wanted him dead, not to take his long overdue revenge on Ellie. He’d even told himself he wouldn’t follow through with the plan he’d hatched with Marcus, in a fit of madness, on the way to the docks a decade earlier.

But seeing Ellie now — a jaded, rich, indolent aristocrat, with the title she’d left him for and a cold, fickle heart that refused to give him satisfaction — made him itch to break her.

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t rather hear about me. Don’t pretend you’re not here for revenge. I think everyone in the ballroom sensed your intentions.”

“I haven’t decided what I will do yet,” Nick hedged.

“You have. If you hadn’t, you would have warned her you were coming. Warned me that you were coming. You couldn’t risk that I’d tell her and she would flee, could you?”

Nick hadn’t warned him because there was no time to warn him — he’d taken the first ship out of Madras after realizing that the attacks on him and his interests were not coincidences. But Marcus’s tone sounded uncomfortably like censure.

Nick leaned in, speaking low, but forceful enough to make himself understood. “She brought this upon herself. I can’t take away the title she spurned me for, but I can take everything else that marriage gave her.”

Marcus held his gaze for a long time, longer than anyone did. Whatever he saw there made his forehead crease.

“At least talk to her first. She’s changed, Nick. We all have. Perhaps not for the better…”

“I vow she hasn’t changed for the better,” Nick interjected. “The Ellie I knew never cared for spectacles such as these.”

“The Ellie you knew is dead,” Marcus shot back. “If you need proof of it, look at yourself. You aren’t the same man who waved goodbye to me on the docks.”

He wasn’t the same man. He still remembered the docks — a mercilessly cheerful June sky, when all he wanted was rain. And Marcus, who didn’t beg him to stay even though he seemed inclined to. Marcus had been the one who was supposed to go to India at the tender age of twenty, while Nick should have stayed to manage the London office. But Nick couldn’t stay, not when Ellie had married Charles — and especially not when she had been widowed three days later, since he might have begged her to take him back.

So he’d gone to India, leaving Marcus to set in motion the revenge that Nick one day intended to finish. The revenge Ellie deserved, even if Marcus now thought otherwise.

Nick shook his head. “When did you become so forgiving, little brother?”

Marcus smiled thinly. “I’m not forgiving. But being present makes me more qualified to play the judge.”

Nick couldn’t recall a single time that Marcus had sneered at him in quite that way. He’d boasted, teased, bedeviled — but never sneered.

“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.