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Satisfaction filled him until he felt puffed up with it, like one of those red-faced, booted landowners who boasted about the size of their turnips and whom he used to laugh at when he was a lad. The image of himself in such a guise made him smile. I’ve turned into Farmer Worthorne, he thought with secret amusement. Who’d have thought it? Sebastian would have one of his laughing fits. But Minnie would understand; she would see what had attracted him to Duval Hall and why he wanted to stay.
There were tall weeds and marsh grasses growing in the channel beyond the sluice gate, clogging it up. Under the influence of his new enthusiasm, Marcus had stripped off his shirt, and taking up one of the picks, had been intent on digging them out. The cold air on his bare skin, the sheer joy of doing something physical and useful, had gone to his head. His men, amused at first, changed their minds when they saw that this was no token effort by a feeble London gentleman.
Marcus was in earnest, and they admired him for it. They redoubled their own efforts. He could at that moment have led them anywhere, he thought, and they would have followed him.
“Sir.”
He looked up, squinting through the lock of hair that had fallen in his eyes. One of his men was pointing toward the causeway. Two women were making their way on foot across it; one of them was Hettie, and the other…He peered more closely. It was Portia as he rarely saw her, her fair hair coming loose from its pins, her cloak flapping out behind her and disclosing a dress the color of a tropical ocean. A dress that looked more like a nightdress.
As always when he saw her, he wanted her. He expected he always would. But he’d come to accept that it was not that simple after all. He had brought her here to Norfolk—for her own sake, he told himself—but now that she was here, he wondered what he was going to do with her. His plan had been to keep her here. He’d imagined, in his willful ignorance, that she would grow fond of Duval Hall.
And fall in love with him.
But now, thinking of her under his roof, he began to doubt.
Would she begin to hate him and long for London and her expensive life and her high society friends? The sorts of things he could not give her, would probably never be able to give her. Portia’s life was as different from this as the sun and the moon, and now his reckless action had all the potential to become a disaster for them both.
But he wasn’t going to give up yet.
He knew very well that there was something he could give her that she wouldn’t get anywhere else. Something she craved. Perhaps he should take this opportunity to remind her of it, and what she would be missing if she went back to London.
“Best pack up now,” he called to his men, handing one of them his pick and wiping his hands on his breeches. “You’ll be wanting to get home before the weather closes in.” The air was already beginning to feel clammy; the fog could not be far away. He picked up his shirt, dusting it off, and with a smile deliberately slung it over his bare shoulder.
His men glanced at each other. “Master, are you going up there like that? In front of the ladies?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Certainly. Do you think I’m overdressed?”
They chuckled like schoolboys. Marcus left them, climbing up the bank and onto the track above the channel. The causeway was not far away, and he strode toward it, and Portia.
There was a misty stillness to the air, and Marcus knew it would get worse as the fog rolled in. He was on the causeway now, his long strides eating up the distance. They had seen him approaching and were waiting for him to reach them. He cast an already knowledgeable eye over the tide and saw that it was a way from full yet, although in another hour or two it would be lapping at the place they were standing.
Portia stood very still. Not many gentlemen, he supposed, strolled into her presence wearing breeches and boots and nothing else.
“My lady,” he said, giving her his most formal bow, and lifting his head, met her eyes.
They were wide. Her gaze slid over him, while behind her Hettie held up a hand to her mouth to hide a smile.
“Marcus, you are half naked!”
He was fully aware of it, and that there was mud halfway up his boots and smeared on his breeches. But then he’d been digging, not strutting down Bond Street, and he was not ashamed of it.
“My shirt was damp,” he said nonchalantly. “I didn’t want to catch cold.”
She looked at him suspiciously. “And this way you won’t?” She began to fumble with the ties of her cloak. “Take this and put it on. The wind is bitter.”
He reached out and closed his hand over hers, stilling her efforts. “I don’t feel the cold. I’m hot-blooded, or so I’m told.”
There was a flicker in her eyes as if she was remembering things she’d rather not. She looked away so he couldn’t see, clutching the cloak about her like a suit of armor.
“If you die of a cold, then you will cheat the hangman at least,” she said shrewishly.
He laughed, knowing she was trying to distract him from the fact that his body was affecting her just as it always did. She was fighting herself, trying to pretend she didn’t want him to swing her up in his arms and take her to his bed.
“I’m not going to die, Portia,” he said, slipping an arm about her waist and pulling her to him. “I have a great deal to live for.”
She went rigid, unyielding against him. Her eyes were like blue glass, cold and haughty, refusing to show her feelings, refusing to give an inch. After a moment he released her.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked, as if nothing had happened.
