Her expression shuttered. “No.”
Grim frustration shot through him. Still, nothing but an impasse. She accepted his kisses and his cock, but not his love. “You are a liar, Nellie. A scared, beautiful little liar. You do not trust yourself with me. Do not trust your ability to resist me.”
Her chin went up. “You are deluding yourself, Jack. I will never change my mind. At the end of these thirteen days, I will leave you, and you will have no choice but to accept it.”
Like hell she would.
He struggled to maintain his outward calm. “We shall see about that, Nellie. Tell yourself that if it makes you feel better. But in the end, the proof is right here, between us. The proof is in your kiss. In your touch. The way your body responds so sweetly to mine.”
With that, he offered her a bow, and then he stalked from the room before he said something he would regret.
Chapter Sixteen
Twelve days remaining, and once again, Jack was right, though she would swallow every last drop of her pride before she would admit it to him.
The morning hour was early as Nell walked on the gravel path surrounding the lake. She was on her way to her customary feeding of the ducks and swans, basket handle draped over her arm.
In the quiet of the summer sun rising high on the day, rich with golden promise, she could acknowledge it to herself. She had spent the rest of the day before hiding from him and the unwanted truth. She did not trust herself with him, and nor did she trust her ability to resist him.
Because she had none.
She rounded the bend in the path where the hedges gave way and the lake spread out in all its majesty. But it was not the beauty of the lake which gave her pause. Rather, it was the man.
Wearing light linens, a jaunty hat covering his dark hair, sat the man who had haunted her dreams. The man she could not seem to stop running from. The man she could also not seem to stop running toward. He was seated in the grass as if he had not a care, a lanky arm draped over his bent knee.
With the backdrop of the sparkling lake behind him and the lush, verdant flora, he could have been a painting. She could stare at the view before her and never grow tired or bored of it.
And that is entirely the problem, my girl, she told herself.
“Jack,” she said, stopping a safe distance from him. “What are you doing here?”
Though he had only been visible to her in profile, he turned to face her now, flashing her the half grin that never failed to make her melt. “We have trod upon this tired ground before, darling wife. I live here.”
So he did.
How strange it all still felt. Almost surreal.
“You are being deliberately obtuse,” she accused. “You know very well I meant what are you doing here by the lake at this time of the morning?”
And during the hour she always fed the ducks and swans, no less.
“Sketching,” he told her, holding up a small book which had been hidden in the grass at his side. “Would you believe I found my old books and charcoal? Someone saw them neatly crated and stored in the attic. I wonder who it could have been.”
It had been her, of course, and they both knew it. What he did not know was all the occasions upon which she had ventured to the attic, which smelled of old beams and centuries’ worth of occupants, and which invariably sweltered in the summer months. He did not know how many times she had gone there, opened that crate, taken out his books and flipped through the pages and pages of sketches.
Flowers, trees, the lake, the swans and ducks.
Many of them were of Nell. Common scenes, all of them. Nell reading in the library, her walking in the garden, her asleep, hair fanned out in wild disarray on her pillow. She had looked at those sketches and the anguish had been every bit as real and strong as on the day they had parted.
Each time she had placed them back in their crate, she had promised herself it would be the last she would seek them out. And yet, she always returned.
She forced the memories from her mind now and approached him tentatively, knowing she would only reinforce his assertion that she did not trust herself to resist him if she maintained a distance. “I requested the servants crate up all the personal effects that you neglected to take with you. I had no notion of what was there. If you found it now and have chosen to reacquaint yourself with an art you always enjoyed, I am pleased for you.”
“Are you?” He raised a dark brow, studying her. “Then why do you look as if you would like to club me over the head with the nearest rock and then roll me into the lake?”
She could not stifle her shocked laugh at his suggestion. “You are suggesting I look murderous to you?”
“Perhaps not precisely murderous.” He stroked his jaw in contemplative fashion. “But irate enough to do me bodily harm, certainly. Do not pretend as if it would be the first occasion upon which you would do me violence. You have already scratched me like an angry cat and slapped me twice.”
“All well-deserved,” she told him tartly. “Consider yourself fortunate it was not worse.”
“Do your worst to me, Nellie,” he invited, his grin deepening. “Perhaps I may even like it.”
The bounder. Of course he would turn their conversation back to the erotic. And of course her pulse would increase and her entire body would flush with awareness. Why, oh why, did this man have to affect her so?
Her lips twitched with the urge to smile, but she could not afford to encourage him. “You wish, my lord.”
He waggled his brows with comic effect. “I have a great many wishes. Would you care to hear them?”
She had to put an end to this lighthearted moment. “Save them for your next marchioness, I beg you.”
His grin vanished, and she knew a pang of loss. He looked suddenly, unaccountably sad. “Twelve days, Nellie.”
“Twelve days to freedom,” she countered.
“Or twelve days to happiness.” He stood, leaving his sketchbook and charcoal in the grass at his feet. “May I join you?”
She wanted to deny him, but doing so would only prove what she was doing her utmost to refute. “I suppose I cannot stop you.”
“Allow me to carry that for you,” he offered gallantly, reaching for the basket.
She was reluctant to relinquish it, but he was already sliding the wicker handle from her arm. “I have been carrying it myself for the last three years,” she could not resist pointing out to him.
Nor could she seem to keep the bitterness from her tone.
She still resented his absence. His return had not changed that.
“I should have been here,” he said, as if reading her mind. His expression was somber. “I never should have gone. I should have stayed and fought for you.”
Part of her wished he had. Part of her was relieved he had not.
How would she have withstood him?
“The ducks are likely hungry,” she said instead, continuing down the path. “We ought not to keep them waiting.”
He sighed behind her, but the crunch of his soles upon the gravel told her he was following. She did not spare him a glance over her shoulder, keeping her gaze trained upon the lake. A warm breeze blew the scent of mown hay to her. The ducks were swimming on the smooth surface of the water, the swans not far. As she neared the water’s edge, the ducks began quacking and swimming toward her.
“They are well pleased to spy their breakfast arriving,” Jack observed, stopping at her side. “It looks as if we have an entire duck family to feed today.”
A male and female duck were in the lead, a trail of seven half-grown ducklings fanned out behind them in the water. She had watched the babies grow all summer long, from tiny balls of fluff to the almost mature ducks they had become.
“There was originally nine of them,” she said softly as the ducks came closer. “Two disappeared somewhere along the way.”
“Poor mama duck,” Jack said, but his gaze was on Nell instead of the ducks.
Something inside her sh
ifted. Melted. The way he was looking at her made her think of how reckless she had been with him. Of the warmth of his seed inside her body. Even now, his child could be growing in her womb. The notion was not nearly as unwanted as it should be.
She cleared her throat. “It is nature’s way, I suppose. The fox needs his dinner as well as the duck.”
“True,” he agreed. “Nellie, no matter what happens in the next twelve days, if there are repercussions, promise you will tell me.”
Repercussions. A baby.
Jack’s baby.
She bit her lip against a wave of pain and longing she had no right to feel. “I would never go to Tom carrying another man’s child. You need not fear I would keep such a thing from you.”
His jaw clenched, and he looked as if he wanted to say more, but then he nodded and turned his attention toward the lake. The ducks had reached the edge and made it to the grassy bank, ready for their corn. Trying to distract herself, she reached into the basket.
But Jack had the same idea. Their fingers brushed, and a jolt skipped up her arm, past her elbow. She snatched her hand away as if he had burned her. Would it always be this way? Their physical connection so unbreakable? She could not help but to wonder.
If only she felt a fraction of the same intensity with Tom. The same mad needs.
Gritting her teeth, Nell grabbed a handful of corn and scattered it for the ducks. The swans were slower in arriving this morning, still taking their time in their slow approach. Jack scattered some corn as well, taking special care to scatter some nearer to the ducklings.
“I want them too, you know,” he said, taking up another handful of corn and sprinkling it over the grass before them.
She swallowed. “Ducks?”
“Children.” He glanced back at her, and the look he gave her was heated. “I want to be a father. The time has come. I need an heir, it is true, but I also find myself longing for a babe to hold in my arms. A little girl with golden wisps of hair and a nose just like yours.”
She did not want to hear this.
“Jack,” she protested, blindly scooping up some more corn and dispersing it for the ducks.
“And she would have your blue eyes and your long lashes,” he continued as if she had not spoken. “She would call me Papa and I would teach her how to swim in the lake when she is old enough, and you would show her how to properly sit a horse. And then a brother as well. He would be stubborn like you, and mayhap he would inherit my nose and chin.”
He was breaking her heart. Her hand trembled as she reached for another fistful of corn. She struggled to maintain her outward composure. “What a fanciful imagination you have, my lord.”
“Do not tell me you have never thought of it, Nellie.” His voice was low. Knowing.
Of course she had, damn him.
“It is a moot point,” she told him coolly. “For it will never happen.”
“It could,” he pressed. “Our babe could be growing within you even as we speak.”
“I do not believe fate would be that cruel.”
“Would it be cruel?” he asked softly. “Would you hate it that much, Nellie?”
No, she would not hate it at all. And that was entirely the problem.
“What does it matter?” she asked. “Why do you care?”
“Because I care about you, Nellie.” His hand closed over hers in the basket of corn. “Because I love you.”
Desperation had her jerking her hand away from his touch. “Stop saying that.”
“Why?” He was calm. “Is it easier to lie to yourself when I do not remind you that my heart beats for you and you alone?”
Nell could not bear any more of this. How was she going to survive twelve more days of such agony? She had no inkling. All she did know was that she had to escape him.
She clenched her jaw. “Finish feeding the ducks on your own. I find myself suddenly suffering from a headache.”
With that, she turned and began hurriedly retracing her steps on the path.
“There you are, Nellie, run away again,” he called after her, his voice mocking. “Running will not solve your problems.”
He was right again, blast him.
But she ran anyway.
Ten bloody days to go.
Jack was running out of time, and he had a wife who believed she could spend most of their remaining time together hiding away from him in her apartments.
She was about to discover she was wrong.
He knocked at the door adjoining their chambers.
“Go away, Jack,” she called in what had become rather a familiar routine.
A deuced unwanted one. He glared at the door, which was the symbol of her continued resistance and his continued failure.
“If you do not unlock the door, I will break it open,” he warned.
“Do not be a beast,” she said. “I have the megrims.”
Her voice was muffled and dismissive.
He did not believe her.
“You have had the megrims for two days,” he countered. “When we made this bargain, you know damn well I had no intention of you spending the next fortnight hiding in your apartments.”
“I am not hiding,” she countered.
Her voice was closer.
Not close enough.
“Hiding, running, lying,” he listed off, his irritation getting the better of him. “You have until the count of five to open the door before I set my shoulder to it and break it down.”
“You would not dare.”
“One,” he counted grimly. “Two, three, four—”
“Cease this nonsense at once,” she reprimanded him in her stern governess voice.
“Five,” he said. “Stand back.”
He stepped back, angled his body so that his shoulder would bear the brunt of his forward motion, and slammed himself into the door.
“Jack!”
The shock in her voice told him she had not expected him to follow through with his threat. Good. He wanted to shock her. He also wanted to open the damned door.
He launched himself into it again, gratified at the groaning sound of the hinges.
The latch scraped, and the door flew open.
Nell stood there, wearing only her dressing gown. Her hair was unbound, and she was clutching the third volume of his travel memoirs to her breast in one hand as if it were a shield.
But not even the knowledge that she had been hiding herself away, reading his words, was enough to cut through his frustration. His shoulder smarted, and he did not particularly relish having to damage his own house just to finally convince her to open the door.
“What were you thinking, you oaf? You nearly broke the door down,” she said.
“I warned you I would,” he told her calmly, striding past her, crossing over the threshold.
“I insist you remove yourself from my chamber,” she said. “I did not give you permission to enter. I merely opened the door to keep you from acting the barbarian.”
He ignored her taunting words. “Where are your undergarments? Your corset?”
“Why?” she snapped, trailing after him with a vexed expression pinching her lovely face. “Do you intend to steal them?”
“Never, my love.” He kept himself calm with great effort. “I am going to assist you in donning them.”
“I already have a lady’s maid.” She placed her book upon a nearby table and crossed her arms over her chest. “If I need her, I will ring for her.”
“And yet, you have not done so, have you?” he countered, walking to her wardrobe and throwing open the first door he could reach.
“Get out of there!” She rushed toward him, attempting to put herself between him and the frothy confections hung neatly within.
He noticed a wooden box, oddly out of place amongst the gewgaws.
“What are you trying to hide from me, Nellie?” he asked. “I have already seen your drawers.”
Her eyes shot defiant fire at him. “I do not need your assistance
in getting dressed, and nor do I want you rummaging through my belongings. This is my space, Jack, and you do not belong here.”
“I belong everywhere you are,” he countered. “Not on the other side of a bloody locked door. Not anywhere else in the world. I belong right here. Now, we can proceed with today in one of two fashions: you will allow me to help you dress, or I will cart you over my shoulder and haul you down to breakfast in nothing more than your dressing gown. Which would you prefer?”
“Neither!”
His patience waned. He caught her waist in his hands and lifted her with ease, setting her to the side. Then he extracted a petticoat and some drawers. She launched herself at him, landing on his back and pummeling him with her dainty fists. He bobbled forward beneath the force of her attack—she was surprisingly strong for such a petite thing—and knocked the wooden box to the floor.
The lid fell off, and its contents spilled across the carpet.
He bent to retrieve the items and restore them to their former place of safekeeping. She knelt alongside him, swatting at his hands.
“No! Do not touch my things!” she screeched.
What the devil had her so outraged? He scooped up a handful of folded letters.
“Love sonnets from Sidmouth?” he asked, feeling suddenly grim.
But then, he recognized the scrawl on one of the letters, by chance.
His.
“It is none of your concern what they are,” she scolded, hastily stuffing a handkerchief back into the box, along with a handful of letters.
There was also a ring, he took note, and a brooch. A pair of emerald earbobs. A faded cluster of dried flowers. A delicate wreath of withered forget-me-nots. A sketch.
“These are all gifts I gave you,” he said calmly, turning his gaze back to her. “Letters I wrote you. Flowers I picked for you. Your betrothal ring. My mother’s brooch.”
Her chin went up. “I had forgotten where I kept them.”
Her voice, an octave higher than natural, gave her away.
“You always were a terrible liar, Nellie,” he said softly.
Something in his chest shifted. What else was she lying about?
Her nostrils flared, and she turned her attention back to the objects scattered across the carpet, placing them back in the box as quickly as she could. “I am not lying.”
Her Missing Marquess Page 19