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‘It’s a graze, not a cut, so it needs no stitching. Get me warm water, cloths, the basilicum powder. Nell!’ Nell opened her eyes and blinked at him as he settled her back against the pillows. ‘Look into my eyes, let me see your pupils.’ Obediently she stared back. Her eyes seemed normal. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
‘Three.’ He laid her back against the pillows, but she kept her eyes on him. ‘It was the dark man, Salterton…I recognised the way he moves. Lord Narborough…’
‘He had taken a sleeping draught. He slept through it all, quite undisturbed,’ Marcus said as the valet set down the water. ‘Allsop, someone attempted to break into his lordship’s bedchamber. Fortunately Miss Latham was passing, heard the window break and frightened him off, but not before he hit her and knocked her down. I imagine he has gone for the night, but just to be on the safe side, go and sleep on the truckle bed in his lordship’s dressing room, will you? Take the pistol from the case in my closet.’
‘My lord.’ Imperturbable, the man bowed himself off, leaving Marcus regarding Nell, suddenly prey to doubts that he could manage this without hurting her.
‘Would you like me to send for the doctor?’
‘No—’ she shook her head, eyes closed again ‘—fuss.’ She lay still for a moment then admitted with a shaky smile, ‘Don’t like doctors.’ Marcus grimaced in sympathy. She was brave and she was unexpectedly strong, but nothing and no one should hurt her. The thought of Nell’s delicate skin being prodded, perhaps patches of hair shaved away, turned his stomach. He found he could not look at her face in case the sight of her distress affected him too strongly.
‘I do not think you are scared of anything, Nell,’ he said, attempting to sound bracing and unworried. ‘Let me see if I can clean it and stop the bleeding, and we’ll review how you are in the morning.’ As he said it, the impropriety struck him. ‘Would you like me to wake Miss Price, or Mama?’
‘They’ll worry about Lord Narborough,’ she murmured, her eyes fluttering open. ‘Things are so scary in the middle of the night. It doesn’t matter. Trust you.’
That, if anything, made it worse. What cause had she to say that? ‘You’re cold.’ He realized that she was beginning to shiver in her thin wrapper. ‘Take this off and have my robe—Allsop’s had it warming by the fire.’
He helped her with the wrapper, untying the belt, slipping it off her shoulders until he could remove it, noticing the plain fabric, worn thin in places, each small tear or hole painstakingly darned. He rubbed his finger over a line of tiny stitches, thinking of Nell in that drab, dark little room, darning a garment no one else would likely ever see until her eyes ached, rather than let her standards drop.
Damn it, how could he have thought for a moment that she was some man’s paramour? Everything she owned spoke of a long, solitary battle against poverty. He did not care how improper it was, he was going to buy her something warm and luxurious and pretty just as soon as he could get to a Bond Street shop.
Nell lay back, too dizzy and queasy to worry about the fact that she was on Marcus’s bed in his thick silk robe, alone in his room with him. The little blade he was using to cut the lint flashed in his hand. ‘He had a knife…’
‘I’m sure he did,’ he retorted, gently parting her hair.
‘Do you think he meant to murder Lord Narborough?’
‘There was another silken rope, on the floor. I may be wrong, but I think his purpose is to frighten us, not to kill. But he would be armed in case of discovery. Hold still.’ The warm water trickled over her ear as Marcus began to clean the wound. Nell bit her lip and tried to keep still. ‘Am I hurting you?’
‘It stings,’ she admitted. He was so gentle, his big hands moving over her scalp as though he was handling a baby. Nell focused her eyes and watched him rinsing the cloth in the water, intent on his work. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, exposing strong forearms dusted with brown hair.
She felt a curious compulsion to raise her hand, stroke the dark pelt. She lifted it, then let it drop. Mustn’t touch him. ‘I didn’t let him in, Marcus. I know it must seem suspicious, my being there.’
‘Why were you?’ She could not see his face, only his chest, so close as he leaned over to tend her head.
If she told him now, on top of this fresh attack, would he believe her innocent? His immediate thought on discovering that she was not a virgin had been that she was Salterton’s lover. When he had found her just now he had accused her without hesitation. How could she convince him of her good faith when he knew who her father was? And yet it hurt so much to lie to him.
‘I couldn’t sleep, I was restless. Your father had been telling me stories of the history of the house and it seemed so romantic. So I decided to walk a little in the Long Gallery. As I was going past Lord Narborough’s door, I heard the noise of breaking glass, just a sudden sharp crack in the silence. I opened the door in case something was wrong, another heart stroke perhaps, and the man attacked me. It was dark,’ she added. ‘My candle blew out but I recognised him. Salterton moves beautifully.’
‘He’ll be crawling like a crippled cat when I get my hands on him,’ Marcus promised with a lack of emphasis that was chilling in itself. He began to sprinkle basilicum powder into her hair. ‘I’ll put a pad on that and then bandage it. It is not as bad as all that blood made it appear—a deep graze rather than a cut—but you are going to have a most piratical appearance. You are being very brave, Nell.’
Her head ached now, a deep throb that made her think about Marcus’s wound. He had shown no sign of it since their arrival here, and yet it must have pained him far more than her head. There was no sign of bandaging under the fine linen of his shirt. She found her gaze lingering on his broad shoulders, on the open V of his shirt, and steadied her voice.
‘It aches,’ she admitted. ‘But it is nothing, I imagine, compared to your shoulder.’
‘Men are supposed to put up with these things,’ he said curtly, apparently focused on winding the bandage firmly around her head. ‘What sort of bastard hits a woman?’
Was he going to refer to the morning and his assumptions about her lover? Marcus was tidying away the bandages now; he could not pretend absorption in his medical activities for much longer.
He got up, cleared the water bowl away then came and sat down by the bed. ‘I have to apologise to you, Nell.’ He met her eyes at last.
‘You do?’ Perversely the tenderness she felt for him, here in the midnight intimacy of his room, did not incline her to make this easy for him.
‘This morning I should not have made the suggestion that I did. And then I leapt to a conclusion that was utt
erly unwarranted. I insulted you and I failed to recognise that you had experienced something…terrible.’
‘Yes.’ She wanted to close her eyes, lie back, sleep. But Marcus was apologizing and she could not, for some reason, bring herself to snub him after all. ‘I had—have—a brother and a sister. But Mama and I lost contact with them when I was seventeen. My brother vanished one day, Mama was ill, there was no money. Our landlord told me he would let us stay, for free if I would…if I would lie with him. I refused. You can imagine the rest.’ She was not going to remember it any more than she could help.
