The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter THIRTY-TWO


When Ellie returned to Folkestone shortly before midnight, she didn’t have to search for Nick. The door between his room and hers was ajar.

She shrugged out of her pelisse, hat, and gloves and tossed everything onto her bed. Then, before her courage failed her, she walked through the door. She had managed not to think of him at the pub, although brooding might have been preferable to the grisly sight of Lucia's many stitches. She had left her maid in Marcus’s capable hands — and, surprisingly, Lucia hadn’t protested his involvement in her affairs. But Ellie’s stomach suddenly felt full of stones.

Did Nick want her as much as she wanted him? Or was his love a phantom that no amount of desire could resurrect?

When she entered, she heard the echo of the previous night. He sat in the same chair, next to an equally large fire, and his eyes were hooded and unreadable.

”Will you join me?” he asked.

Asked. Not told. She shut the door and walked to him. When his hand extended, it wasn’t to stop her — it was to invite her to take the other chair.

Part of her wanted to stay on her feet, keep him off balance, gain the upper hand. But if she wanted him to be real for her, she was honor-bound to be real for him.

She sat. “Did you learn anything from the guests?” she asked.

It wasn’t the question she wanted an answer to. He shrugged it aside. “My batman returned from London — the tattoos were too common to learn anything from. Your brother and I made a bit of progress here, though. But all that will keep until tomorrow. Is Lucia feeling well?”

“She will live, although she’d feel better if she allowed Christabel to dose her with laudanum.”

They fell silent. Neither seemed quite able to make eye contact, not with the ghosts of the previous night’s conversation chilling the air between them. Then, abruptly, Nick stood up. “Stay there a moment,” he said. “I have something for you.”

He disappeared into his dressing room and returned a moment later with a small box and a leather pouch. “What do you want, Ellie?” he asked, his voice taut, as though he’d had to force the words out. “Pleasure? Or freedom?”

On “pleasure,” he raised the box. On “freedom,” he offered the pouch. As he waited for her response, his hands seemed perfectly balanced — a choice between two fates, with nothing to tip the scales.

Nothing but him. “Why must I choose?” she asked.

He sat down again, balancing the pouch on one knee and the box on the other. “Because I can’t think about any future beyond tonight if you’re here only because I coerced you.”

She laughed incredulously. “But you did coerce me.”

He nodded. “But if you had the choice, right now, to walk away with all your debts forgiven — would you take it?”

“I’d be a fool not to.”

Nick closed his eyes. For a moment, he was twenty-two again, reacting to that first, unbelievable moment of betrayal. But Ellie saw a difference in the tightness of his jaw, in the way he sighed but didn’t grimace.

He had expected that answer, in a way he hadn’t expected her to leave him the first time.

“I’d be a fool not to,” she said again. “But perhaps I’d rather be a fool than a pragmatist.”

“Would you rather be a fool than a free woman?” he asked, opening his eyes. “What about all your vows to be your own mistress?”

“I can still be my own mistress. But I would enjoy it more if you were with me.”

Her heart caught in her throat. It was as close to a declaration as she could get.

It seemed to be enough for him. In an instant, he’d set aside the objects in his lap, stood up, and pulled her into his arms. Her cheeks were still cold from her carriage ride home. His hands burned against them. He looked dead into her eyes, as though he could read her soul.

“I believe you,” he said.

He kissed her before she could think. Her body responded for her. She was ravenous for him, as ravenous as he was for her, and she wasn’t satisfied with the firm, hard, vow-sealing kiss he gave her. She wanted that, wanted to feel like they’d branded each other — but at this point, brands were superfluous compared to the marks they’d left on each other’s souls.

She opened her mouth and he took her offering. It was like they were young again, kissing with all the fuel of their dreams behind them — enough fuel to burn away their regrets. She dug her fingers into his shoulders, urging him on as she felt him start to unfasten the buttons down the back of her dress. He had a long job ahead of them — but then, they had all night.

Their kisses turned shorter, more like sips of pleasure compared to the long, thirst-quenching draught of their first one. He finished with her dress. She slid his jacket from his shoulders. The rest of their clothing followed in the same pattern — hurried, but smooth, and with no concern for worship or winning.

“Why wasn’t it like this before?” she murmured against his lips before kissing him again.

He pulled her chemise up over her head, tossing it to join his trousers on the floor. “Don’t know. But if we’re fools for this, we were even bigger fools to avoid it.”

He picked her up and laid her out on his bed — their bed. No matter what happened after, she would always consider it theirs.

“Do you know, this is the first time I’ve ever taken a lover to bed?” she said.

His hand had found her thatch of curls, but he paused and looked at her eyes rather than her breasts. “Truly?”

She leaned up on her elbows and stroked her hand over his heart. “You and I never had a bed — all those pesky chaperones. So it didn’t seem…right, with the others.”

“And here I thought I wouldn’t have to work to make this good enough.”

He grinned as he dropped his lips to her breast. She fell back into the mattress, her own grin matching his. “Wouldn’t want you to get too complacent, my lord.”

“Never complacent, Ellie my love.”

His mouth closed over her breast, sucking lightly just as his fingers found the most sensitive place beneath her curls. She arched up, putting a hand on his head, sifting through his hair as though pillaging for treasure.

But the treasure she sought was already there, wrapped around her like a net of spun sugar, fragile and almost unbearable sweet. The Nick in her arms was the one she’d caught glimpses of the past few days, the witty, sardonic man who would laugh just for her. If she could keep his laughter, let it soak into her skin until, together, they lit up every last bit of darkness…

His fingers took on more urgency, and suddenly there was no room for thought. “I need you, Ellie.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. “I’ll need you until I die, in this life and every other.”

He moved against her as he said this, and there was no pause — no waiting for her to beg, no time for her to answer. He sank into her, slowly, but irresistibly, and she spread her legs, wishing madly that there was more she could give, more he could take.

“This life and every other,” she whispered.

She pulled his head down and kissed him, hard and thorough, wanting the taste of those words to mingle on their lips. When he moved in her again, she felt the craving and the completion, twin gifts they gave each other with every stroke. And when she finally came apart, he joined her there — not a conqueror, not a captive, but a missing piece of her heart that had finally found its way home.

* * *

When they could breathe again, she turned onto her side, stroking her fingers across his chest. “If I’d known how good a bed could be, I’d have risked my chaperones finding us, ruin be damned.”

He laughed. The sound rumbled through her fingers. “Best that you didn’t know. I’m sure I only survived tonight because of your advanced age.”

She poked him in the side. “Careful, Claiborne. I’m still younger than you.”

Nick caught her fingers and brought them to his mouth, kissing each one before dropping his head back on the pillow. “Perhaps Charles had the right idea after all. If I died here, with you as my last thought, I’d die a happy man.”

“Don’t say that,” she said.

He looked up at her, his blue eyes serious. “I’m sorry. But chances are you’ll be my last thought no matter when it happens.” He paused, just long enough that she thought he was done, and then added, “You, or kippers. I’m quite fond of them.”

She giggled. “You are so adept at wooing ladies, aren’t you?”

“There’s only one lady I care to woo tonight.”

She remembered, then, the choice he had given her. “What were those objects you had for me?”

“Does it matter? I like the choice you made.”

She scowled. “You know I’m too curious for that.”

“Very well,” he said with an exaggerated sigh. He rolled out of bed, still naked, and strode to the chair he’d sat in. He picked up the pouch first, untied the leather thong that bound it, and unfurled it.

“These are the receipts for what you owe me — ten years’ worth,” he said, holding up a sheaf of papers.

Then he tossed them into the fire.

Ellie gasped. “Why did you do that?”

“As I’ve said, you weren’t the woman I wanted revenge against.” He didn’t even look at the notes as they burned — as though forty thousand pounds, and all the years he’d waited, were nothing compared to the next moment.

Instead, he came back to the bed with the mysterious box. “You said the other night that you don’t know what I did in India. And, frankly, it’s not worth sharing, at least not now. I mostly drank too much, fought every fever a man can have, made an obscene amount of money…and dreamed of you.”

He flicked open the clasp on the box. Inside lay a pile of delicate gold chains, threaded through dozens, perhaps hundreds, of tiny bells. He lifted a strand from the box. The bells chimed softly, whispering foreign dreams in the air — dreams Ellie had never had and yet, suddenly, longed for.

He leaned over her body, grazing his hands down her leg, and fastened the chain around her ankle. “I thought I would have you dance for me in these,” he said. “I dreamed of you serving me like a harem girl, wearing only bells and your glorious hair.”

He fastened another set of bells around her other ankle. She shivered, but he wasn’t done.

“If you saw what’s in my trunks, you’d know what I did in India. Jewels, fabrics, artwork, more jewels — every bazaar, it seemed, had something you might like. I think I have a flacon of perfume from every man who ever tried to bottle jasmine under glass. I said it was for my revenge, that I’d taunt you with it…”

He clasped another set of bells around her wrist. When she shifted to catch his hand, her body turned to music — but he evaded her grasp. “I lied to myself, Ellie,” he said. “Easier to say I hated you. Easier to plan for a guaranteed revenge than to risk not winning you back. Easier to hope you’d marry someone else, so I’d never have to bring these dreams back to face you…”

She cut him off as he fastened the last bracelet around her other wrist. The mingling of music and regret was discordant. These bells called for joy, not penance.

“Shut up, Nick,” she said fiercely. “Stop talking and kiss me.”

Nick heard the certainty in her voice. He reveled in it — he’d rather let her feel his heart than try to say the words he somehow couldn’t get out.

He was already hard for her again, his heart pounding so fast that surely the beat alone would make her bells ring for him. This time, though, he was slower, more patient, more thorough — the way he’d wanted to be the first time, before his cock had overruled him.

The peak, when it came, was briefer than before, but no less intense. He spent himself inside her again — and, again, pretended it was an accident rather than a choice.

Not that Ellie seemed to mind. When he could think again — after a longer interval than the previous time — he tipped his head toward her. She held her wrist above her, staring up at the bells as she turned them this way and that to catch the firelight. Her smile, as dark and mysterious as any goddess’s, was supremely satisfied.

She must have sensed his movement, because she dropped her wrist and turned her head. They were inches apart, and her smile, when directed at him, was bright enough to overwhelm him.

“You were more than worth the wait,” she said.

He wanted her again — but another time would kill him. Despite his earlier words, he wasn’t ready to die, not when he had this moment to savor. So he contented himself with pulling her into his arms and learning how she felt as she fell asleep against him, the little sounds she made as she dreamed. The fire slowly died, and the crackling embers mingled with her bells to lure him closer to sleep.

In the morning, he would settle with Norbury. And then….

And then he didn’t know, exactly, what would happen. But winning wasn’t good enough anymore.

All he wanted was Ellie. And he would do whatever it took to stay by her side.