by Louise Allen
‘Nothing,’ Nell said, stepping forward to help with the shirt buttons. ‘Nothing at all. But you started frowning again because you were being sensible and prudent and thinking so much. I do adore your frown.’ She reached up and rubbed the groove between his brows as he chuckled.
‘I cannot imagine any other man feeling his heart leap for joy when his beloved said she adored his frown,’ he mused, tossing aside his shirt. ‘It is a start, I suppose. Nell, what are you doing?’
‘Looking,’ she said from behind him, laying her hands on his narrow waist just above the band of his thin silk evening breeches and smiling when he caught his breath. She ran her palms up his back, her thumbs dipping into the hollow of his spine, admiring the way his broad shoulders tapered to his waist, feeling the shifting muscle beneath the warm silk of his skin.
There was a light dressing over the bullet wound. Nell laid her hand over it carefully. ‘Is that still painful?’
‘Sore, if it chafes, but it is almost healed.’ Marcus shifted but she dodged to keep behind him, laughing as he swore under his breath. Then he feinted with a swordsman’s grace and caught her in his arms. ‘Tease.’
‘I am still looking,’ Nell protested.
‘You have seen my chest already.’ He reached for her nightgown and Nell danced backwards.
‘Take off your breeches.’
‘Stockings first.’ Marcus sat down on the bed and began to drag them off. ‘There are few things more ludicrous than a naked man in stockings.’ He stood up. ‘Now your nightgown.’
Nell shook her head. ‘I know what will happen the moment I take it off, and I want to look at you.’
There was colour on his high cheekbones. ‘Why?’ Marcus demanded, his fingers on the fastenings of the breeches. The thin knitted silk left very little to the imagination. He was finding this highly arousing, she could see, her pulse quickening.
‘Because you are beautiful.’ Nell bit her underlip and saw he was watching her mouth. She ran her tongue over the fullness just as his breeches dropped and he kicked them aside. ‘Oh.’
Strongly muscled rider’s legs, narrow hips, and between his thighs the dark tangle of hair and the weight of his erection, already proof of his arousal. Marcus appeared unembarrassed by her frank stare, standing with his fists on his hips, waiting for her.
‘Hal is the beautiful one,’ he said.
‘He is too frivolous for beauty,’ Nell pronounced, finding her feet could move after all. ‘You have gravitas. Amongst other things.’ She came to stand just in front of him.
‘I don’t feel very grave now,’ Marcus said as he bent to catch the hem of her nightgown and pulled it up and over her head. There was a long silence while he looked at her.
Nell could feel herself blushing under the steady regard. Then she saw the physical effect it was having on him and her eyes widened.
‘You are very lovely, Nell. Do you doubt how much I desire you?’
‘Not at all,’ she said frankly. ‘I can well believe the evidence of my own eyes.’
‘Are you frightened?’ He reached for her, pulling her against his body so she could no longer see, only feel. She wriggled, loving the heat of him, loving the blatant pressure against her belly and the liquid, heavy feeling that was beginning, low down.
‘No. Not at all,’ she said honestly, managing to slide a hand between their bodies and curl her fingers around him. ‘Impatient.’
‘Impatient is my word, you wicked woman, and if you don’t stop that I am going to be too impatient to do this occasion justice.’
Nell opened her fingers and let them sift through the coarse hair, teasing up over his flat belly. With a growl, Marcus swung her off her feet and laid her on the bed. ‘There are definite advantages of doing this in the warm,’ he remarked, looking down at her.
‘On such a soft bed as well.’ Nell wriggled into the downy covers, wondering what he was waiting for. ‘Oh!’ Marcus leaned over, grasped her hips and pulled her to the edge of the bed. ‘What are you doing?’
He did not answer, but went to his knees, parting her thighs as he did so. Nell gasped as the dark head bent, rearing up on her elbows in alarm. ‘No! You can’t, that’s indecent!’
He looked up, laughter crinkling the corners of his eyes. ‘Tell me to stop, then.’
‘Stop! Ah…no, don’t stop.’ Nell fell back, limp and gasping, unable to do anything but endure the delicious onslaught of tongue and lips as he worked his ruthless, wicked magic. Her body was burning, melting, twisting like metal in the forge and he was the alchemist, transforming her into liquid gold, into…exploding starlight.
Nell came to herself to find her head on the pillow and her body pressed into the bed by the hard weight of Marcus. Tiny aftershocks still quivered through her body and she arched up, instinct pressing her against him so the quivering became a new, demanding ache as he shifted, poised to take her.
His face was stark as he looked down, predatory even, but she saw the tenderness in his eyes and smiled, curving her arms up around his neck to pull his head lower for a kiss.
‘Are you certain, Nell?’ Marcus asked, and she felt the strain in his muscles as he held himself back, knew that if she shook her head he would leave her despite his need for her.
‘Love me, Marc,’ she whispered.
‘Always.’ His lips brushed hers then he lifted his head again, their eyes locked as he surged slowly into her. Deep in the back of her mind, she had feared her body would resist him, that the terror of the past would sweep back and take over, but those ghosts had gone, exorcised by his tenderness, and she opened to him, revelling in the knowledge that he was filling her, completing her. They were one and, whatever happened after this night, they always would be.
‘Marc?’ he queried, his voice almost harsh with the effort he was using to keep himself still now he was within her.
‘Yes, Marc,’ she murmured, a little dazed, lifting her head to kiss the corner of his mouth. ‘My Marc.’
‘Ah, Nell.’ His eyes were almost black as they watched her, holding her as he began to move and she found the rhythm and went with him, drove him and was driven, gasped and clung and was lifted higher and higher until it all unravelled and she was crying out against his mouth and she felt him shudder and pull away, leaving her, and she was lost in the darkness with just his voice to cling to. ‘Nell, oh my God, Nell…’
Nell woke to find herself wrapped around something hot and large. She blinked for a moment, confused, trying to wake up from the dream of ecstasy and Marc. Marc. She had let go, allowed herself to think of him like that, dreamt of him taking her, loving her.
The pillow against her cheek moved and she blinked again, trying to focus.
‘That tickles. You have indecently long eyelashes, Nell.’
‘Marc?’
‘Who else did you expect, might I ask?’ He sounded more amused than affronted, his voice rumbling in his chest under her ear.
‘I thought you were a dream.’ She pushed herself up on one elbow and looked down at him. The lamps were still burning and in their light she could see he was lying on his back, as relaxed as a big cat, his hair tousled on the pillow, one arm flung out above his head, the sheet clinging, like a sculptor’s attempt at decency, to his hip bones.
‘I am solid reality,’ he protested, laughing at her.
‘I recall parts being extremely solid,’ she said naughtily, sliding her hand under the sheet, revelling in his gasp as her questing fingers found him, already more than half aroused.
‘Nell, that is disgraceful behaviour. Can you not see I am quite exhausted?’ Marc’s attempt at severity was deeply unconvincing. Her fingers tightened at the root and began to pull upwards. ‘Even if that is not!’
‘Oh, dear. I am wide awake,’ she said with a pout that made him gasp with laughter. ‘Whatever is to be done?’
‘Why, you will have to do all the work.’ He shifted across the bed a little and lay back watching her from under heavily lidded eye
s. ‘Ride me, Nell.’
It seemed outrageous. She pulled away the sheet and straddled his narrow hips, tightening her thighs along his flanks then lowered herself, inch by inch as he groaned, his eyes closing. The feeling of power was overwhelming. Nell inched lower, her hands splayed on his chest, his nipples hard under her fingertips as she teased them out of pure instinct. Then she was lodged securely, the whole hard silken length of him tight within her.
There were muscles she did not know she had that she could tighten, she discovered by accident as she hung, breathless above him, tiny movements that wrenched a groan from his throat. ‘Nell, this it torture.’ His voice belied the word. This is bliss, it said.
But she could not resist any longer. Nell began to move, slow at first, then faster, driving them both up, up, while his fingers tightened on her hips and his body bucked under hers and then as the whirlwind caught her again he spun her over, so he was on top for two hard thrusts before he pulled free and her cry was lost in his shout of triumph and the world spun out of control again.
The next time she woke, she knew where she was and who she was with and every glorious thing that had happened since she had opened the door to find Marc there, his hands gripping the door frame. Those hands were drifting across her body now, tracing the swell of her belly, tickling up her ribs, playing with her nipples, which tightened into hard knots of exquisite—
‘Marc! Are you in there?’ The shout was accompanied by a thud on the door from a clenched fist.
Nell opened her eyes with a small shriek. Beside her, Marcus threw back the sheet and vaulted out of bed, stark naked, strode across the floor and unlocked the door.
‘What the devil?’
Nell’s second shriek was muffled as she slid down under the covers at the sight of Hal, snow melting on his coat as he shouldered into the room past Marcus. ‘We’ve got him, as near as damn it. One of the keepers saw him at the back of the stables and he took off towards the Aylesbury Road—not the woods. His tracks are plain if we can get on them before they are filled with drifting snow again. Get dressed—you can’t go chasing after him stark boll—’
There was a muffled sound that Nell had no trouble interpreting as Hal receiving a cuff round the ear from his older brother.
‘Er, sorry, stark naked.’
‘Well, get out of here and find the guns and I’ll be right down,’ Marcus growled. ‘Can’t you show a bit more discretion, damn it? This is a lady’s bedchamber, not a cavalry barracks.’
‘Quite, of course. Only you weren’t in your room so I assumed…’
‘Hal!’
‘Sorry, Nell.’ The door closed with a discreet click.
Nell peered cautiously over the top of the sheet. Marcus was pulling on his breeches and looking remarkably cheerful.
‘You’ll have to marry me now.’
‘Nonsense. Hal is hardly likely to be gossiping about this.’ Nell slid out of bed with a harassed glance at the clock—just past six—and began to pick up scattered clothing. She straightened to find Marcus looking at her with an expression that sent goosebumps scuttling up and down her spine. ‘Stop that!’ she protested, diving into the comfortingly chaste nightgown.
‘Well, don’t bend over dressed in nothing but your very delightful skin if you do not want me transfixed,’ he said mildly, picking up the bundle of clothes. ‘I can hardly believe our friend is so foolish as to be seen in broad daylight and then to leave plain tracks… He must be getting desperate.’
‘Oh God.’ Nell sat down with a bump on the edge of the bed. You will know when, the dark man had said. This was a decoy and now she must go, warm from sharing her bed with Marc, and deceive him while he and Hal hunted their enemy in the wrong direction.
‘Marc—’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll find him, deal with him. And then I’ll come back and we will talk, Nell.’ There was a wealth of meaning in his voice and a tenderness as he stroked her cheek in farewell that had her choking back tears. He would not feel like that when he discovered what she had done after all her protestations that he could trust her.
‘Be careful,’ she said, covering his hand with hers for a moment. ‘Come back safe.’
But he would be safe, that was her one consolation. The danger would be at her side and it was up to her now to convince Salterton that this persecution must stop. Whatever her father had, or had not done, she was the only Wardale able to deal with the consequences now. Nell scrambled into her warmest clothes, praying that Marcus would believe she was acting for the best. But even if he did not, she thought, it would make no difference. She could not marry him. Somehow that was not much comfort.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Another rope.’ Hal held it up, dark with moisture, a sordid threat dripping limply in his hand.
‘He’s damned arrogant, I’ll say that for him.’ Marcus swung up into the saddle, scanning the meadow behind the stable block. ‘Look at this trail.’
‘He wasn’t expecting to be surprised and thought the snow would soon blow in to fill the tracks,’ Hal countered, stuffing the rope into his saddlebag. ‘And it will, if we don’t get a move on.’
‘This isn’t a cavalry charge.’ Marcus caught up with him, then held Corinth to a steady canter. ‘Look out for an ambush.’
‘Speaking of which.’ Hal sent him a quizzical look. ‘Are you walking into parson’s mousetrap?’
‘I hope so. If she’ll have me.’
‘You think Nell might refuse you? She’d be mad to.’
‘You said she was sensible not to have me when we last spoke of this.’
‘That was before I had seen you together, and before I knew you were lovers.’
Marcus tightened his lips and rode in silence for a while. It was against his instincts to discuss Nell with anyone and yet, this was his brother and for once Hal looked serious. ‘She doesn’t love me and she can see all too clearly the scandal there would be.’
‘Doesn’t love you?’ Hal sounded incredulous. ‘Then what are you doing in her bed? She’s a good girl, I can tell that. If she’s there, it’s because she loves you.’ He veered off to put his raking bay gelding at a fallen tree trunk.
‘Do I need to tell you, of all people, that women experience sexual desire?’ Marcus enquired as his brother drew level again. ‘It doesn’t occur to you that she may desire me? If she loves me, why not marry me?’
‘Because she loves you, you clodpoll,’ Hal snapped. ‘Do you need it pointed out that some women have as strong a sense of honour as a man does? Nell fears the scandal. Not for herself, I imagine—she can always duck back into obscurity—but for you, for us.’ When Marcus did not answer he added, ‘The two of you are like April and May, even Father’s noticed it, for Heaven’s sake!’
‘He’s noticed what I feel, probably,’ Marcus conceded, still reeling from the novelty of Hal lecturing him. The possibility that he might be right and that Nell really loved him was too important a thought to be explored now.
‘He’s noticed both of you, believe me.’
‘And how is he going to feel about it? He seems to like her.’
‘Pleased?’ Hal ventured. ‘Heal the rift and so forth?’
‘I hope so. But it all depends on her saying yes, which I doubt. She’s damn stubborn.’ Marcus put Corinth to a five-barred gate, then wheeled round to scan the field they had just landed in. The hoof prints ran clear as a blaze diagonally across.
‘Well, that makes two of you.’
Half an hour later Hal stood in his stirrups. ‘Something happened over there, look.’ They cantered up to the area of churned snow in the corner of the high, tangled hedge. Marcus dismounted and squatted down to look.
‘Two horses, one tethered—waiting perhaps? They pushed through the hedge here.’ He clambered through cursing the quickthorn as it pulled at his coat. ‘Two sets of tracks here, heading in different directions. I can’t tell if they’ve both got riders.’
‘We’ll have to split up. Wait the
re.’ Marcus stood while Hal brought the horses through the gate lower down. His gut instinct was telling him something was wrong. They’d been drawn from the house—both of them—on what he was increasingly certain was a feint.
‘I don’t like this,’ he said, remounting. ‘I think we’re being decoyed away. We’ve certainly been led round in a big loop. One lot of tracks are going up into the woods—on this hard ground and with no snow in there, they could double back towards the house.’
‘You take that way, then,’ Hal said. ‘I’ll take this—it looks as though it’s heading for the turnpike.’ He pulled the rifle from its holster and slung it over his shoulder. His eyes, slitted against the snow dazzle, swung from a contemplation of the ground ahead back to Marcus. ‘Watch your back.’
‘And you,’ Marcus called after him as Hal spurred the gelding into a gallop.
As he guessed, Marcus lost the tracks a few yards into the woods. Something was still nagging at him. Nell. Corinth, with his head turned towards home, needed no urging. They passed the point where the way branched off up to the folly, the big hunter eating up the hard ground as the track descended towards the park.
Marcus made for the front door. Then out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mark across the white expanse that covered the lawns. Corinth turned at a touch of the reins, leapt neatly over the skeletal rose border and cantered across to the tracks. Marcus jumped down and set his own booted foot against the clear, fresh footprints. They were unmistakeably a woman’s prints, the marks where her cloak had brushed the snow clear on either side as they headed for the edge of the woods.
Nell. And she had more than an hour’s start. Was she running from—or to—her dark man? Marcus stood, trying to listen to his instincts. All his life, it seemed, he had relied on his intellect to tell him what the right thing was. Now, with Nell, he no longer knew. Was he besotted and his judgement hopelessly awry, or should he listen to the still certainty within him that she was true?
Corinth bent his neck round to butt Marcus on the forearm and he looked up. ‘You know,’ he said to the big horse who pricked his ears and snorted, ‘I had no idea love was going to be like this. I thought, fool that I am, that it was going to be easy.’