Christ! No wonder she hadn’t wanted a bar of him in Bath. Why would she want to know the man who, on first acquaintance, had forced a kiss on her? A very carnal kiss. And pressed his aroused body against her.
He closed his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair, and wondered yet again what the hell had possessed him. He’d never done anything remotely like it in his life. He’d always treated women with the utmost respect. And yet he’d behaved like a boor to the most compelling woman he’d ever met.
She’d been violated in the worst way . . .
And then he’d forced her into a situation where she was compelled to marry him.
God, but she must despise him. He swore again and punched the bed.
Ten
“I shall ride with Nell in the hired chaise this morning,” declared Lady Gosforth at breakfast. “You can ride your horse, Harry. I wish to have private conversation with my niece-to-be.”
Nell swallowed. Had Lady Gosforth found out where Nell had spent the night? Was Nell about to get a lecture on morality?
She glanced at Harry. His eyes smoldered with the questions she’d managed to avoid this morning.
On the other hand a lecture on morality might be preferable to an inquisition. She had, after all, done nothing wrong.
“That would be delightful,” Nell said briskly. “And I’m sure Harry would enjoy a good gallop. He needs one.” She hoped he could take a hint. She didn’t look at him but concentrated on buttering a piece of toast she had no desire for. She ate it anyway. It was better than meeting that knife-edged glance across the table.
“Excellent,” Lady Gosforth said. “Then we ladies shall have a comfortable coze.”
Harry helped first his aunt, then Nell into the hired chaise, giving Nell a be-it-on-your-own-head look as he did. “She never stops talking,” he murmured.
Nell didn’t mind. It was having to talk about herself that she dreaded. Lady Gosforth was every bit as likely as her nephew to interrogate Nell, and she’d be far less tolerant, Nell was sure.
“My basket!” Lady Gosforth called sharply as Harry was about to close the door. Her dresser, Bragge, passed in a large, covered basket.
Nell stared at the basket, feeling a little sick. It was in just such a basket that Papa had taken Torie away, only without the cover . . .
It was stupid, Nell knew, but for a few moments, she could not breathe.
Lady Gosforth placed the basket on the seat beside her. She undid the catch and flipped open the lid. The basket was lined with blue cotton, not white satin, and contained dozens of skeins of fine white wool.
Nell started to breathe again.
“I knit,” Lady Gosforth explained, seeing Nell staring. “Unfashionable, I know, but it’s useful and it relaxes me. I can’t bear embroidery or all that nonsense. I like to make something that can be used.”
Nell nodded, as if she was listening. One more day, she told herself. One more day and they would be in London. Tomorrow morning . . .
The carriage moved off with a lurch and Lady Gosforth pulled out a thick twisted loop of wool. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked Nell, leaning forward.
“Not at all.”
“Slip your hands into the center of the skein—see how it’s one big loop? Both hands now, hold them apart—that’s it. I see you’ve done this before.”
Nell nodded. “Yes, but not for years.” She’d wound wool with Aggie when she was a little girl, but when Aggie’s fingers had got stiff she’d stopped knitting.
“Now as soon as I find the end . . . Ah here it is.” With brisk movements Lady Gosforth began to wind the fine wool around her fingers, forming the beginning of a little ball. Nell dipped first one hand then the other, releasing the yarn from the loose skein.
For a long time they were silent. They passed out of Marlborough and hit the open road. It was quite pleasant, Nell thought, winding wool and watching the countryside slip by.
“When did you first meet my nephew?” Lady Gosforth asked.
An interrogation after all.
“In a sense, we met in a forest. It was raining, and he was very kind to me,” Nell said. She didn’t want to explain what had happened in the forest. Something special and magical and private had passed between them that day, and she didn’t want to explain it, even if she could. Somehow, she felt it would ruin it if she told. Because in one sense it was nothing, a small, insignificant incident or strangers on a road . . .
“Really, we only met properly when he came to my home—at least, it used to be my home. Firmin Court.”
“When Harry bought it?”
“Yes.”
“That was the first time you met?” Lady Gosforth looked puzzled.
“Properly, yes. To have a conversation, I mean.” The few words he’d uttered in the forest that day couldn’t count as conversation.
“And the next time?”
“In the Pump Room in Bath. You were there,” Nell reminded her.
Lady Gosforth nearly dropped her ball of wool. “You mean that time in the Pump Room was the second time you’d talked to my nephew? The third occasion you’d met?”
Nell nodded.
“Good God!” She wound wool for a long time, frowning. “I would never have believed it. Three times. He told me he’d offered you marriage twice before, and you’d rejected him twice.”
“That’s right.”
“You mean he proposed marriage the first time he met you?”
Nell nodded. “He was just being kind, though. I’d just lost my home and everything I owned.”
Lady Gosforth frowned. “A man who is still unmarried at the age of nine-and-twenty does not propose to be kind, young woman. Otherwise he would be married long since. And the Harry I know does not ask for anything. Ever. Let alone after he’s been rejected twice.”
“This last time, he didn’t exactly ask me,” Nell pointed out dryly.
“Yes and that’s even more extraordinary.” She regarded Nell thoughtfully. “I think there’s more to this than the two of you are letting on.”
Nell braced herself.
“But no matter, I dare say it’s none of my business,” Lady Gosforth said briskly. “I wanted to talk to you about Harry and also Gabriel. Do you know who I mean?”
“His brother,” Nell said.
“His half brother, yes.” She fixed a stern gaze on Nell. “You do know the circumstances of Harry’s birth, don’t you?”
Nell nodded. “Yes, he was very careful to explain it from the beginning.”
“Good. You know there is a schism in the family?”
“No, I know very little about his family, apart from the occasional mention of Gabe—and you, of course.”
Lady Gosforth nodded. “I thought as much. Did he tell you that when I first met Harry I wanted nothing to do with him.”
Nell looked at her, surprised.
Lady Gosforth arched her eyebrows. “Well, why would I? My brother’s by-blow?”
Nell stiffened. She clenched her fists inside the skein of wool and said nothing.
Lady Gosforth continued. “Gabriel, too. Naturally I took my brother’s side and according to him Gabriel was a cuckoo in his nest, to all intents and purposes a bastard. He was wrong, of course, but my brother was a stubborn and unforgiving man. And certainly someone like Harry—an accident with a maidservant—was far beneath our notice.”
“An accident with a maidservant?” Nell said angrily. “What a vile way to speak of anyone.”
Harry’s aunt gave her a searching look. “It offends you, does it?”
“It does,” Nell said, meeting Lady Gosforth’s gaze squarely.
Lady Gosforth smiled. “Good for you, my dear. It offends me, too, now, but that’s what I thought at the time.” Her smile faded. “Let me tell you the whole story—it’s a tale I think you should know.”
She’d come to a broken thread, so there was a pause while they searched for the new end. Once they’d found it, Lady Gosforth continued
. “Gabriel and Harry were brought up by my aunt Gert, a formidable woman who went her own way in all things.”
Nell frowned. “But I thought—”
Lady Gosforth nodded. “Harry was initially taken in by Mrs. Barrow, my aunt’s cook. His mother had died and he was badly neglected, and there it would have stayed except for the fact that Harry is the living image of his father. The moment my aunt saw the family resemblance she decided to raise both boys as gentlemen—after all it would not do to have a groom who was the living image of the earl. Beside, Aunt Gert had an absurd reverence for Renfrew blood. She said she bred horses and dogs without caring about marriage certificates, and younger sons were no different. And if their father didn’t care for them, she would.”
Lady Gosforth clucked her tongue over such an outrageous attitude, then continued. “When the time came to send the boys to school, Aunt Gert sent them both to Eton, where Renfrews had always gone—the same school as Marcus and Nash, their two older brothers, attended.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what she was thinking—perhaps she thought it would do the boys good to fight it out.”
“Fight it out?”
“Yes. It is a peculiarity of the male sex that once they have done their best to beat each other to a pulp, they will often walk away the best of friends. And certainly the stage was set for a fight.
“Marcus and Nash had been taught to look down on and despise Gabriel and Harry, who no doubt resented their older brothers for their privileged position. It made for instant and bitter enmity. Some of it remains to this day, though Nash has managed to create some kind of bridge between them all. A born diplomat, that boy.”
She sighed. “To cut a long story short, it got very nasty and Gabriel and Harry were expelled. My aunt was indisposed at the time and asked me look after them. I was horrified. I wanted nothing to do with either boy.” She smiled reminiscently and added, “But when I say ‘asked’ it was an order. Something of a martinet, my aunt Gert, and in my younger days I was too nervous of her to disobey.”
It ran in the family, Nell thought dryly.
“Of course, as soon as I saw the two boys I knew my brother was wrong about Gabriel. Both boys have their father’s extraordinary good looks—in fact it is an irony that they each look more like their father than the two older boys. Have you met Gabriel?”
“No.”
“He and Harry are almost identical, but Gabriel has his mother’s blue eyes and her darker hair. Harry’s gray eyes, however, come direct from my late brother. Marcus, the current earl, has the same eyes.” She shivered. “They can be extremely cold.”
They could also burn, thought Nell with a different kind of shiver, and thinking of Harry, not Marcus.
“I remember them arriving on my doorstep, two identical small boys, battered and bruised and stiff and wary. I decided at once that I’d take Gabriel in—he was after all, a legitimate Renfrew, but I had no intention of taking in a maidservant’s by-blow, and I said so. I told Gabriel to come in—I had no idea which was which—and said that the other boy could go around the back and the servants would look after him. He could stay as long as he was useful.”
Nell put a hand to her mouth to hide her distress. It was cruel, but she knew Lady Gosforth would be regarded by many as keeping up proper standards. Most people would not think twice about it.
She could not bear it if anyone treated Torie that way.
Lady Gosforth said ruefully, “I know, but I never thought of him as having feelings. Harry flung away across the road and stood there, glowering, his arms folded, declaring that he didn’t need anyone to look after him.
“Gabriel was furious, of course. He stood on my front step and railed at me and said he wasn’t going anywhere without his brother Harry. He told me that like everyone in his family except Great-aunt Gert and Harry, I was ignorant, stupid, and a horrid old snob. And then he stormed across the road and stood there with Harry.”
She laughed shakily. “It was raining, did I mention that? They got drenched, but nothing could budge them. Harry wasn’t going where he wasn’t wanted and Gabriel wasn’t going anywhere without his brother. In the end, I was frightened they would get sick and Aunt Gert would blame me so I finally said they could both come in at the front door. Gabriel made me promise that his brother would suffer no further insult. I had to cross the road and invite Harry in personally and then he made me promise I would not blame Gabriel for his loyalty. In the end he came so grudgingly, you wouldn’t believe it.”
Nell nodded mistily. She could believe it. The stubborn boy had grown into a stubborn man.
Lady Gosforth gave Nell a watery smile. “Aunt Gert knew what she was doing, sending those boys to me. I’d had four babies, you see . . . but none of them lived . . . And when I saw these two stern little half-drowned creatures, looking just as my brother had as a boy . . . two unwanted urchins standing together, side by side against the world, well, my heart cracked wide open.”
Lady Gosforth put her wool aside and fished in her reticule for a handkerchief. “The more I got to know them, the more I saw what fine boys they both were.” She dabbed at her eyes. “They came to me often then, in the school holidays or when they wanted to visit London. They became the sons I never had. But Harry never forgot that first time. It took him years to finally believe I wanted him and valued him for himself. He’s never felt wanted, you see, and he’s too proud to ask for anything.”
She finished mopping her eyes and blew vigorously into her handkerchief. “And so, my dear, that’s why I find it so utterly fascinating that he asked for you twice.”
Three times, Nell thought.
“After only three meetings—a girl he barely knows. And when you refused him, he just carried you off and made such a scandal you had no choice. The Harry I know and love would never do anything like that . . . Unless . . .”
Nell waited, but Lady Gosforth said nothing, just went on winding wool.
“Unless what?” Nell asked at last.
Lady Gosforth gave her a troubled look. “Do you love my nephew?”
Nell didn’t answer. She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure yet what she felt about Harry Morant. She was too mixed up to know.
She’d thought she knew what he wanted of her. It had seemed quite straightforward. But since last night, she just wasn’t sure of anything.
Lady Gosforth sighed. “Just don’t hurt him, my dear. That’s all I ask. Don’t hurt him.”
After luncheon Lady Gosforth returned to her own carriage, for a nap, she claimed. According to Harry it was her usual custom to nap her way around the country. “Dashed if I know how she does it,” he told Nell as he helped her into the yellow bounder. “Carriage lurching and bouncing the whole way. And then the moment she arrives she goes straight to bed.” He shook his head.
“You’re fond of her, aren’t you?” Nell said.
He looked surprised. “I suppose I am, yes.” He shrugged. “I don’t have much family—just her and the Barrows really. And Gabe, in Zindaria.”
No mention of his two other brothers at all, she noticed. “The Barrows?”
“My foster parents. Mrs. Barrow was my great-aunt’s cook. She took me in when I was about seven and has mothered me ever since.” He grinned. “She still treats me as if I’m seven but she cooks like a dream so I let her.”
“Aggie does the same to me.”
“And Barrow taught Gabe and me everything we know about horses.”
“He must be very knowledgeable,” Nell said.
“Yup, he is. So what did you and my aunt talk about?”
“Oh, knitting, things like that,” she said vaguely.
“Knitting?” He looked horrified.
“We wound wool.”
“Lord. I did warn you.” He glanced at her from under his brows. “Did she tell you anything about me?”
“Not much,” she fibbed. “She told me how she first met you and Gabriel, that’s all. And how she came to love you l
ike a son.”
He looked astonished. “She said that? About me? Like a son?”
“Yes.” Nell watched his face. He seemed shocked.
“Are you sure she wasn’t talking about my brother Gabe?”
“Of course I’m sure. Why would she be talking to me about your brother?”
He shook his head, still apparently amazed. “What else did she say?”
“She mentioned you and your brother Gabriel are close. Do you miss him a great deal?”
“In a way. We’ve always done everything together. But it’s inevitable that when men grow up they go their different ways. He’s in Zindaria with his princess and I have my horse stud to think of now.” He looked at her and added, “And you.”
For a moment Nell thought he was going to kiss her. Her face heated. His kisses were getting all too addictive.
She glanced out of the window. “Oh look,” she said, pointing. “Those two gentlemen are having a race across the heath.” A little off the road, two young bloods were racing neck and neck, making loud whoops of glee.
Harry looked out and as she’d hoped, he was distracted. The finish line appeared to be a low line of bushes in the distance. Three other young men waited next to it, cheering and whooping as well.
“The bay will win,” Nell said. “The chestnut has the better rider, but the bay is the better horse.”
Harry watched a moment. She was right. The bay lagged well behind the chestnut, but his pace was long and sure and powerful. He glanced at Nell’s intent expression and said, “I’ll wager you the chestnut wins.”
“I never make wagers,” she said immediately. There was ice in her voice.
Of course she wouldn’t, not with her history. “Not a real wager,” he said. “Just for a kiss.”
“A what?” Her head jerked around.
“If that chestnut wins, you pay me a kiss.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“What can it hurt? It’s just a kiss. Don’t you have confidence in your judgment?”
The small pucker between her brows appeared as she tried to ignore his gentle gibe.
“Yep,” Harry said softly. “The chestnut’s going to win, and you’re afraid I’m right.”
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