The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN


By midnight, Ellie wanted nothing more than to be alone with Nick. But she didn’t want to draw attention to him by seeking him out — not while her guests were chirping like magpies over the best gossip of the season.

The aftermath of Edgewood’s death had taken hours to resolve. The magistrate was shocked to learn that the Marquess of Folkestone had shot a man after being in the country less than a fortnight. But even though the story would raise eyebrows for months, no one would question that it was self-defense.

More shocking was that Edgewood would be buried in unconsecrated ground just outside the family plot. He wasn’t their cousin any more than Napoleon was. But if people knew that Christabel had shared a house with an unrelated stranger, she would be utterly ruined. So they had all lied, with depraved fluency, and claimed that Edgewood was indeed their cousin — and that he had tried to kill Nick and Marcus in order to inherit the title himself.

It was a flimsy excuse, but the magistrate accepted it gracefully. If a marquess, an earl, a duke, and a marchioness closed ranks around each other, there was little he could do to disprove their statements. Her excuses to Norbury, however, were more difficult to offer.

“Don’t tell me you knew Folkestone was going to accuse me of murder,” Norbury had demanded that afternoon, when she had finally returned from the dower house.

Her wince was the only answer he needed.

“And you believed him?” Norbury asked. His voice was hoarse from coughing, which only made it worse.

Ellie sighed. “I am sorry, Norbury.”

“But we’ve been friends for half a decade. You know I’m not nearly dangerous enough to shoot anyone.”

“I think you give yourself too little credit. Haven’t I always found you interesting? Perhaps not dangerous — but certainly capable of daring deeds.”

He drew his shoulders up. The heroic effect was diminished when he sneezed. “You are stroking my ego, Lady Folkestone.”

She shrugged. “That’s what friends do. But I’m glad you’re not the killer.”

“As am I. Folkestone, however, owes me an apology.”

Nick had disappeared as soon as they had returned, although he had promised to rejoin them for dinner. So she knew he wouldn’t overhear when she leaned in to Norbury’s ear. “You should tell him you expect to spend two weeks hunting with him. He hates the country — it might be punishment enough.”

Norbury laughed. “Only if you’re there to organize the entertainments, my lady.”

There was a sly look in his eyes, but she didn’t acknowledge the lurking question about her future. She was just glad that he seemed willing to accept her apology, even if there would still be some awkwardness over what had happened in her breakfast room.

But as the afternoon and evening wore on, Ellie struggled with how to entertain her guests — particularly since all she wanted to do was talk to Nick. There was no clear etiquette for how to handle what had happened. The party should have dispersed after such a shocking development, but no one had left — they were too busy tittering and writing overwrought letters to their friends to bother with making travel arrangements.

When the clock finally tolled midnight, Ellie was still in the drawing room. Sir Percival sat beside her, scrawling something on a piece of paper. From what she could see, it was the start of an awful poem about Folkestone as Odysseus, come back to kill the intruders in his house.

She didn’t fault him for it. At least Percy would take some inspiration from what had happened, rather than dining out on the on dit for the next month as most of her guests planned to do.

She wasn’t being fair to them. The ones who cared about her weren’t spreading tales. The rest didn’t particularly matter.

All that mattered was whether Nick was all right. He had come down for dinner, but he hadn’t joined the ladies in the drawing room afterward. Marcus had told her that Nick had retired early. She couldn’t go to him without being noticed — but by midnight, she was ready to find him no matter what anyone thought.

Just as she stood up, a footman appeared with a note on a silver salver. She took it, trying not to blush as she slid her nail under the wafer and opened it.

E. - Conservatory, ten minutes. - N.

She stopped blushing. Where was the wildly evocative description of what he would do to her?

Surely he wasn’t having second thoughts?

She was in the conservatory in seven minutes, not ten. She couldn’t wait any longer. But it seemed Nick couldn’t wait either. He lounged against a pillar near the entrance, half-concealed in the shadows.

The conservatory wasn’t as cold as the outbuildings. The gardeners built fires during the day to keep the plants warm, and the heat hadn’t been lost overnight. But she still shivered. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t send for me.”

She winced at the plaintive note in her voice. He unfolded himself and came over to her. “I couldn’t make polite conversation with all your guests tonight. But I couldn’t wait any longer to see you.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her deeper into the conservatory, moving down the paths between the plants like a man rushing headlong into battle — all nerves and energy, abandoning all caution so that he could keep pushing forward.

She kept up with his pace, but her worry grew. “Are you feeling well? I know you had a shock today — should you perhaps be resting?”

He shook his head and didn’t slow down. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

His voice was a closed door. But it wasn’t a locked, barricaded, impassable door — more like a gate that he wouldn’t open today, but might open tomorrow.

She would ask him about it again. The speed in his stride and the thrum of energy in his voice distracted her, though. She’d heard that men were sometimes…voracious after battle, as though the stress of surviving needed an equally strong release.

This might not be a night for conversation. But she would help him however she could.

He cast her a backward glance, one that managed to look both amused and sardonic in the dim light of the waning moon. “When was the last time you let a challenge like that go unanswered?”

She made a wry face at him. “Since I realized how much you like to bait me. You’ll have to try harder than that.”

He stopped suddenly, near one of the back corners of the conservatory, and pulled her into his arms. “Would you take this bait?” he murmured.

She was pressed fully flush against him. She felt him hardening for her, felt herself melting against him. She tilted her face up to look into his eyes. “I might consider it,” she whispered.

He dipped his head and grazed his lips against hers. “And this bait?” he asked.

“You win,” she said. She draped her arms on his shoulders and kissed him thoroughly, consumingly. Her mouth wanted more of him. Her hands wanted to touch him, everywhere, but she contented herself with his broad shoulders and the silky hair that brushed across her fingers. The tempo of the kiss matched the thudding of her heart — and they came together without hesitation, without regret, as though all the walls between them had crumbled into dust.

When he pulled back, she sighed as she lost him. “What shall it be tonight, Nick?” she asked. “Do you want me as a woodland nymph? A gardener? A lost princess trapped in the woods?”

He shook his head. Then he gestured to the bed of plants behind him. “Do you know what these are?” he asked.

She squinted into the darkness. “Strawberries?” she guessed. “But it’s too early to pick them. The chef will have your skin if you interfere with his produce.”

“I will not commit any crimes against the chef,” Nick vowed. “But I’m disappointed there are no blackberries in the conservatory. I cannot find a blackberry in Surrey at this time of year to save my life.”

“Why do you want blackberries?” Ellie asked, bewildered. “Surely the chef has some blackberry liqueur. He might make something with it for you.”

“You don’t understand, do you? I’d hoped you would, but you may not remember that day as I do.”

“That day…?”

He frowned as though willing her to share his memory. “The day we picked blackberries,” she said suddenly. “I think it may have been the best day of my life.”

It was a dramatic thing to say — but then, it had been a dramatic day. Everything was bright, cloudless. The berries were sweet; Nick’s laugh was sweeter still. He had only just started laughing for her then, and she had treasured each time he sparked a smile for one of her jests. And when he had kissed her…

“It may have been the best day of my life, too,” he said. “So perfect that I sometimes wondered what the purpose of life was, if that day could not be bettered.”

Then he took her hands into his and stripped off her gloves. “Can you guess why I brought you here?” he asked.

She shook her head. She hoped she knew why he had brought her there. But she wasn’t going to rush him. “If it’s to tell me you are going back to India, I shall murder you.”

He stuffed her gloves into his waistcoat and twined his fingers through hers. “No trips to India in my future. But I have thought a lot about beginnings.”

Nick paused. Ellie held her breath. It seemed the whole conservatory held its breath — in the cool mist of the greenhouse, they were utterly alone, utterly able to focus on each other.

And what Ellie felt in Nick’s grip on her hands made her heart flip.

He drew a breath. “I have thought a lot about beginnings. That blackberry patch was a beginning. And it felt right, tonight, to revisit it — not with the girl you were and the boy I was, but with who we are now.”

She squeezed his hands, but she didn’t speak. And for once, Nick didn’t need to be drawn into laughter. He smiled at her. If there was awe in his eyes, it wasn’t the worship she hated — it was the same awe that she felt, that they could be together, in this moment, and it could feel so right.

“I never thought I would have to make this speech, you know. It was always you, Ellie. Always, always you. There would never be anyone else for me. And I suppose my stupid revenge was an attempt to convince myself that I could let you go. But I can’t. Everything I am, everything I want to be, is for you.”

“It was always you, too,” she said, in a voice that was suddenly hoarse. “And it always will be. No matter where this leads.”

She could have let it go at that, at least for that night. But Nick didn’t stop. “I know where this leads. It will always lead back to this moment. Don’t you see? Our lives aren’t intersecting paths. This isn’t a crossroads. This moment is a mirror of that day in the blackberry patch — and there will be another moment someday that is a mirror of this one. No matter what happens, no matter what we do to each other or how we fail ourselves, we will always circle around to this moment and start again.”

Start again. It sounded so much better, so much kinder, than all her exhortations to stop being dramatic and find a purpose. She sighed wistfully. “I would like that, Nick.”

He smiled. “I know.”

“Not lacking in confidence, are you?” she said with a laugh.

He grinned in response, but it looked a little shaky. “Only about one thing.”

Then he shocked her, utterly, by dropping to his knee.

“Ellie, I love you. I’ve always loved you. Granted, I used to love your passion, and your laughter, and your hair.” He laughed, a little self-deprecating. “But we’re both more than that. I know what we are now, and I know what I’m offering when I say that I want to share forever with you. I still want your passion — but I also want to sit beside you and breathe the same air and know that, in this world, we’re together. Can you give me that, Ellie? Will you marry me? Can we grow old together and discover whatever it is we might become?”

She had laughed when he mentioned her hair, but her laughter was overwhelmed by tears. In another life, she might have wiped her tears away — but in that moment, she chose to let them overflow, to give them to him so he might see the heart their love had opened up and knit back together.

“I love you, Nick. Beyond all rationality and comprehension, I love you. And I know what it means now, too. It’s not because you’re persuasive or because I want to please you, but because you give me the courage to stay even when I’m scared and even when it hurts.”

She dropped down to her knees in front of him, looking him dead in the eye. “There could be no greater joy in my life than to marry you, Nicholas Claiborne. And I will love you no matter how many times we begin again.”

Their kiss was like the first time — wondrous, magical, a meeting of two people who could hardly believe their luck. They could be slow. They could explore each other rather than merely devouring. Their love wasn’t perfect. There were lumps and bruises and scars — memories woven into their fabric that would never fully fade.

But it was real, not a dream.

Nick pulled away first. He lifted her hand and kissed it — right over the ring finger, where she would soon wear his wedding band. The thought filled him with some swell of pride he’d never thought he would feel. He was already thinking of the wedding night, and children, and the life they would have…and the wedding night again. He forced himself to take a breath. “Don’t change your mind this time,” he said. “Or I will take you to Gretna Green without a second thought.”

She gave him a wicked grin. “I won’t. On one condition.”

Her conditions didn’t worry him. Perhaps they should — but the grin she used now said he would like whatever it was she wanted. He leaned in to nibble her ear, wondering if he could distract her as much as she distracted him. “And what is that?” he murmured, after a long moment.

She paused, and he grinned into her hair; she was just as susceptible as he was. Finally, she said, “Promise me we’ll share a bed. Not that I’m opposed to the occasional floor or chaise,” she said, with another grin that made his heart stop. “But I rather liked waking up with you.”

That was a demand he would happily fulfill. He stood abruptly and scooped her up into his arms. “I’ll keep you in bed for a week if that’s what you want. You may break me after all, goddess.”

Ellie laughed. Then she rested her head against his chest. “I’m glad you came home.”

Home. He still barely knew his way around his house, but it didn’t matter. Ellie was the only direction he needed.

He strode for the door, dodging plants and pillars. The future waited for them, as it always had, and they finally had the courage to seize it.

“I’ve half a mind to carry you through the drawing room just to make sure you can’t get away after tonight,” he said as he nudged the door open.

“My last scandal as Lady Folkestone…or my first scandal as Lady Folkestone?” Ellie asked. “There’s an advantage to this wedding — I won’t need to order new calling cards.”

Nick laughed. “There will be time enough for scandals when you’re my Lady Folkestone. Tonight, I want you to myself.”

“I’ve always been your Lady Folkestone,” she said. “But if you want to impress that fact upon me…”

“I do. I think you will like what you will wake up to in the morning, Ellie my love.”

She smiled, a seductive little grin that added speed to his steps. “If I don’t, we shall just have to begin again. But I trust you’ll make it good, Claiborne.”

He brushed a kiss against her hair. “Always.”

THE END