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‘I cannot stay here for days! I have employment that will vanish if I am away. Today is Saturday, thank goodness, but on Monday—’
‘I will write to Madame Elizabeth informing her that the Countess of Narborough requires your presence,’ he continued as if she had not spoken. ‘It would take less than the very broad hint I will give her of future patronage, should she continue to employ you, for your post there to be secure.’
Lady Narborough and the Misses Carlow would not thank him for having their choice of milliner dictated! Or perhaps he would send his mistress there. Nell eyed him, her thoughts concealed behind a mask of composure, then could not resist a jab at his assumption of control.
‘Madame does good business providing for the convenients of rich city merchants, as well as their wives,’ she observed. ‘But perhaps the mistress of a viscount expects a milliner of the top flight?’
Lord Stanegate—Marcus—gave a snort of laughter, surprising her. She had expected one of his quelling looks. ‘You remind me of a small matter of business I must conclude. Convenients indeed, what a very mealy-mouthed euphemism, Nell.’
‘Birds of paradise, lightskirts, Cyprians, demi-reps?’ she countered. ‘Is that free-spoken enough for you, my…Marcus?’
He smiled again. What a very attractive smile he had, especially when his eyes held that wicked twinkle. He was not, she guessed, thinking about her. Not with that look. She felt a fleeting twinge of envy for the woman he was contemplating and a sensual frisson of recollection.
‘Where was I?’ he continued. ‘Ah, yes, we have dealt with your employer. On what terms do you settle with your landlord?’
‘Weekly, in advance. But—’
‘We will pay him for, let us say, a month to keep your room.’
‘A month! But that is ridiculous, I cannot—’
‘You say but and cannot too often for me, Nell.’
‘What am I to say, then? Yes, Marcus? Anything you say, Marcus? Whatever you say, Marcus, however ridiculous? You are too used to having your own way, my lord! I cannot, and will not, stay here a month, and that is that.’
‘We are not staying here, we are going into the country, to Stanegate Court, our family seat in Hertfordshire. There we can consider this puzzle in tranquillity, my father can rest—the local doctor is excellent—and the girls can stop dragging their mother around every shop in London.’
‘You do not need me for that. I know nothing more than I have told you.’
‘I do not believe you. You are a liar, Nell,’ he said, still smiling that smile she had thought so attract
ive just a moment before. ‘You know it and I know it. You have secrets you are not telling me.’
But they are secrets I hardly know myself and do not understand, she wanted to say, closing her lips tight on the words. ‘You cannot force me to leave London and to go into the country,’ she said at last, realising as she spoke that her very lack of denial increased his suspicions.
‘Of course I can. How are you going to stop me? Young women are kidnapped all the time, but rarely into comfort as a houseguest. Will you run to Bow Street and lay an information against Viscount Stanegate? Will you protest that I forced you into this house last night, that I forced you to converse and take tea with my sister and her companion?
‘And after that brutality you took supper and allowed one of our maids to tuck you up in bed without a murmur of protest? They will be appalled at such a tale.’
‘You chose to be sarcastic, my lord.’ Nell glared at him, trying to see a way out. ‘Well, now I realize how foolish I was to have stayed and will walk out of the front door. What will you do about that, pray?’
Marcus shrugged. ‘If you chose to try and escape, I will have you bundled into a locked carriage, transported to Stanegate, locked up in one of the estate cottages and guarded, but you won’t do anything that foolish, will you, Nell?’ All the amusement had gone out of his eyes.
‘It would certainly give you cause for complaint, if you found yourself in the presence of a magistrate eventually, but who would they believe, do you think? Or would you prefer to go home, unprotected, and see if your dark man has done with you, knowing that I am in the country, too far away to call upon?’
A tirade about the inequality of their positions was not going to help. ‘You think that this is more than a practical joke, don’t you?’ Nell said at last when she had her seething temper under control. ‘You believe Salterton means real harm in sending that rope—and it was not intended to scare Lord Narborough into thinking it was a snake, it has some other meaning. You suspect you know what lies behind this.’
It was Marcus’s turn to fall silent. Nell wondered if he meant to answer her at all. Then he said sombrely, ‘I may be wrong, but if I am correct it is an old story, a nightmare that should have been long forgotten. You know all about old nightmares, do you not? I can sense it.’
The shudder that ran through her must have been visible to him. He seemed suddenly focused, as though he would read her mind. The piercing grey eyes were hooded; he knew he had scored a hit. An old nightmare. Yes, that is exactly what I feel stirring. But it is coincidence, surely, that has brought me here? If it is not, if Salterton knows who I am—then he knows my real name. He knows more than I do about my past.
‘You are afraid.’ It was a statement.
‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I dislike mysteries. I dislike insecurity. And that man makes me think of knives.’ And I am afraid of you and your family because Mama spoke your name with hate and yet you have all been kind to me, so now I do not know what to trust. But the man in front of her had not been kind. He had been autocratic, bad tempered, sexually domineering—and yet… ‘And I dislike not understanding you,’ she snapped, provoking another of his disconcerting laughs. ‘And I do not want to be kidnapped, you arrogant man.’
‘All you need to understand about me, Nell, is that I will keep you safe.’
From the dark man perhaps. Salterton. But from him? Marcus Carlow wanted her safe entirely for his own purposes and she was certain he had not told her them all.
