The Marquess Who Loved Me

Chapter NINE


“You could sell the Canaletto, the Reynolds, and everything by Gainsborough, my lady,” Lucia suggested, examining the catalogue she had unearthed from Ellie’s private salon in Folkestone House. “They would likely bring a tidy sum above what you paid.”

Ellie stood in the very center of Folkestone House’s main drawing room. It had been a dull and uninspired room when she had entered it as a bride, filled with dull and uninspired minor works by failed protégés of the Old Masters. She had turned it into one of the finest private displays of art in London. Every painting was perfectly stretched in gilded frames and hung on the walls with more space between them than was currently en vogue — an effect that made each shine a bit more brightly, without relegating some paintings to the very edges of the ceiling as was common in other drawing rooms.

She turned in a slow circle. “I could sell all of them. But it could take months — especially if no dealer will take my business.”

Merchants were eager to sell to a woman, but not all of them would deal with her. Her anger still burned from her earlier call at her London bank, where she found that the manager would not disburse any funds without Marcus to countersign the order.

But her heart broke at the thought of selling the paintings she had collected so carefully. Some were works so masterful that she had to have them. Others were less showy, but fit perfectly in either color or theme with her decorating scheme for Folkestone House’s many rooms. All, though, had spoken to her — often at times when no one and nothing else had.

“I would rather sell my jewels,” Ellie continued, musing aloud. Lucia didn’t respond. No response was necessary, not after the disastrous interview at Rundell and Bridge. They were entirely solicitous and sympathetic, but they caught the scent of her desperation. They would give her only a fraction of the jewels’ worth. And three thousand pounds was not enough to save her.

It wasn’t losing access to the house that broke Ellie’s heart. She had never loved it. It was that this room, like every other, had been designed with a single purpose — to please Nick, perhaps to win him back. But all the effort, all the soul she had poured into these rooms, was like blood spilled on a distant battleground, in a battle fought before word arrived that a surrender had already occurred. While Ellie had fought, hopelessly, for the day when she might finally atone for her mistake, Nick had plotted to ruin her. And this house, and the money she had spent on it, were the instruments of her defeat.

She straightened her spine. It had been a stupid plan anyway. Nick no longer cared for beauty. He only cared for profit. And she could no longer afford to be sentimental.

She turned back to Lucia. “Gather the catalogues of my collections to take back to Folkestone. We will make a prospective sale list tomorrow. Lord Salford knows the private buying sphere as well as anyone. He may have some thoughts on how to liquidate everything without letting my financial difficulties slip.”

Lucia was better suited to be an aide de camp than a lady’s maid, and was more than competent for the task at hand. She also understood the stakes. “It may be possible to sell some items without arousing suspicion,” she said slowly. She was calmer and more methodical than Ellie; where Ellie’s voice sometimes tripped a rapid staccato in its attempt to keep up with her own thoughts, Lucia's voice had the feel of a deep, mysterious lake, with currents rippling across it only after she had considered all the possibilities. “But the provenance of your collection is well known to any major buyers. And with Lord Folkestone’s return…there will be rumors no matter how discreet you are.”

“What would you have me do?” Ellie demanded. “I can only live for free at my brother’s house or at the Folkestone dower house — and since my mother-in-law still clings to it, you can be sure I will avoid that wretched place at all costs. Selling is the only option.”

Lucia stood, stiff and formal, the way she always did when she prepared to tell her mistress a truth that Ellie didn’t want to hear. “There are two other options, my lady. Accept Lord Folkestone’s bargain, distasteful as it is, and keep everything. Or, if I may be so bold, sell your paintings.”

“You just said I can’t sell my paintings,” Ellie said peevishly, ignoring the first option entirely.

“Not these paintings. The paintings you created yourself.”

“I couldn’t possibly.”

Lucia frowned. In these moments, when her logic made her forget herself, she had the assured, confident demeanor of a lady, rather than the subservient class her youthful sins had cast her into. “You have the connections necessary to set up a display in a private gallery, and you have hundreds of canvasses to choose from. You might not raise the entire forty thousand pounds, but you could surely earn enough to shorten the duration of Folkestone’s demands.”

Ellie turned away from Lucia and looked at the paintings on the walls. She’d dreamed of showing her paintings publicly when she was younger — might have done it, too, if it could have caused the scandal she needed to prevent her father from finding a second husband for her. But that desire had faded as her painting had turned wilder, as her perfect little landscapes and watercolors turned into fierce, tempestuous fantasies.

Ellie left too much of herself on the canvas. And her real self wasn’t fit to be shared with anyone.

“Unthinkable. I’d sooner stay with Nick than whore my paintings like that.”

She couldn’t see Lucia, but she sensed her maid’s disapproval. “It’s the world’s loss,” Lucia said. “If you weren’t so precious about your work, I am convinced you could rival any of your contemporaries.”

Ellie’s voice turned cold. “See to the catalogues. I want to be in the carriage in less than a quarter of an hour.”

She heard Lucia leave; the maid was wise enough to know when Ellie’s limits had been reached.

If only Ellie knew her own limits. She hugged her arms around herself. The caretaker had lit a fire for Ellie when she had returned unexpectedly, but a single fire wasn’t enough to banish the chill of a house that had been empty for a week.

She heard steps in the hallway — heavy, masculine steps, not Lucia’s lighter gait. More than one man, if she heard correctly. One moved faster than the others, faster than dignity would usually allow. She turned to the door just as it burst open. One of her footmen — the youngest one, hired for his blond hair rather than his ability to serve — rushed across the threshold. “Lord Folkestone, my lady,” he gasped.

Her arms dropped to her sides. Her hand itched for a paint brush. She suddenly saw the footman in Athens — not a glittering Adonis, but a winded Pheidippides, the messenger who had run twenty-six miles to give news of the victory at Marathon before dropping dead at her feet.

Stop being dramatic.

But there was no time to stop. Nick rounded the door behind him and the footman had just enough sense left to slide out of Nick’s path before any of them discovered whether Nick would have pushed him aside. “Lady Folkestone,” Nick said. “What a delightful surprise.”

“Lovely to see you, I’m sure,” she said. “Welcome to Folkestone House.”

He bowed, a match for her insincerity. “Don’t say you’ve decided to return to London and abandon your guests?”

She knew there was only one ‘guest’ he cared about — and it had more to do with revenge than hospitality. “I did think that today was the only day I might get away.”

His eyes narrowed at her reference to the reprieve she’d won from him. “And what business might bring you to the capital?”

“Oh, you know how flighty I can be,” she said, waving a hand. “One never knows when my attention might turn to something else.”

It was a dangerous game. Nick was no longer the kind, gracious boy who would let her tease him, but she wasn’t ready for him to know that she sought a different means of repaying him. He took the bait, though — she’d known from his clenched jaw and brooding, hooded eyes that he would be quick to anger.

And even quicker to action. “Get out,” he growled at the footman, who still wheezed near the door. The man squeaked his agreement and left without even checking to make sure that Ellie would be safe.

She really needed to start hiring staff who were capable of guarding her, not just men who might look good draped in classical linen.

Beyond the door, she saw Lucia. But her maid was too busy hissing accusations at an extremely uncomfortable Marcus to save her. And then it was too late — Nick slammed the door and turned the key in the lock, leaving them alone to confront each other.

“We really must stop meeting like this,” she said. “I cannot afford to fix any broken door frames.”

Nick snorted. “This house seems as sturdy as any I’ve seen. Unless you introduced dry rot as part of your spending campaign?”

“Would that I had thought of that,” Ellie retorted. “What are you doing here, Nick?”

“It’s my house.”

She’d thought she hated his coldness — but smugness was worse. “Ah, how silly of me to forget. Will you be staying here tonight, then?”

She knew she sounded too expectant. He didn’t even bother to answer her question. “Tell me what you were doing here,” he demanded.

“I owe you money, not explanations, my lord,” she said, giving his title all the venom she possessed. “Or anyway, you’ve shown no desire for them.”

He leaned against the door and let his eyes wander over her in a callous, dismissive way. “You can satisfy me in many ways, Ellie my love — and I look forward to discovering even more of them. But I find your explanations wholly uninteresting.”

“Your loss,” she said, shrugging with a nonchalance her heart didn’t feel. “You aren’t the first Claiborne in this house to believe I should be seen and not heard.”

Mentioning Charles was a spark to a powder keg. Nick gritted his teeth. “I’m not my cousin.”

“No, you’re not,” she agreed. “Charles was the arrogant, annoying prig who married me. You are the arrogant, annoying prig who bought me. Such a difference, that.”

She expected an explosion, but Nick just smiled. “I’ll give you arrogant and annoying. But I’m no prig.”

“No?”

“No.” He strode toward her. She held still, not willing to give up ground, and he reached her in four steps. “A prig would be a stickler for what’s proper.”

He slid a hand to her waist and pulled her close, close enough to whisper in her ear. “A prig would never let a tradesman such as myself soil your pretty skin with my dirty hands.”

His other hand stroked her hair, petting her like a prize he’d won at a backwater fair. His voice turned to a growl. “A prig would have known, from the first day that he saw you in that far-off country field, that a lady of your class would never have a man from mine.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, but his hand clasped over her mouth — not the tender shushing of a child, but a desperate, overpowering attempt to stop her voice. “I’m not a gentleman. I might have been, once, until you showed me what I really am. So say those words again, my love. Call me a peasant. Hold your nose at how I reek of the shop. Say how much I embarrass you. I don’t care anymore — it’s all true. But never, ever compare me to Charles.”

His hand against her mouth was another piece of the wall between them — a wall she couldn’t scale, or blast through, or burrow under, because she’d reinforced it just as heavily from her side as he had from his.

But she could shout over it, and hope that he heard the tone of her voice even if he refused to hear the words. When his hand slipped away, she said, “You are many things, Nicholas Claiborne. But you have never been an embarrassment.”

He slid a hand up to her hair, tentatively, like Socrates picking up the hemlock cup that would be his death. She tilted her head back and looked up into his face. She saw wariness there, hidden under his cold veneer, and it broke her heart.

His voice softened, but the steel underneath it didn’t. “Don’t pretend, Ellie. I never wanted to be part of your circles, and until I inherited a bloody title, they never wanted me. On some level you know that. And in your heart, you could never let yourself be with someone like me.”

He’d said the same words when she had told him of her father’s ultimatum years ago. The old duke had said that she could marry Nick if she spent a season in London and found no one better — a trade she’d been glad to make, never suspecting that her father would push her into marrying someone else.

Nick had known the pressures she would face, even if she hadn’t. She hadn’t suspected that her father would be that stubborn. She was sure that he, and everyone else, would welcome Nick once they grew accustomed to him.

But Nick had always been convinced that she would ultimately, inevitably, come to her senses and give him up. She opened her lips, started to deny his words, but he spoke before she could. “Don’t say anything, Ellie. I can’t believe you. And you won’t convince me.”

The unfairness of it was too much. It was unfair that the world had convinced him of the gulf between them. It was unfair that he wouldn’t listen to her.

But she was unfair for expecting him to. She shouldn’t have married Charles.

She especially shouldn’t have married Charles when she had still been in love with Nick.

Ellie didn’t say any of that, though. She pulled his fingers into hers. “I don’t remember your hands being dirty. I remember them being warm, and gentle, and forceful, and devious.”

With each word, she kissed one of his fingertips. His knuckles gripped hers with crushing force. She somehow found his strength comforting. As she kissed the last finger, she looked up into his eyes. She was only inches from him. But after ten years and thousands of miles, those last few inches felt like an insurmountable obstacle.

He massaged her neck lightly with his free hand. His thumb found the pressure point at the base of her skull and she tilted her head to the side, offering him a view of her throat.

“God, Ellie,” he whispered. The soft cadence of his voice sounded like a lament.

But when his lips met hers, there was no mourning there — only fire.