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‘What was his name?’ There was a pain in her hand. Nell looked down and saw Marcus’s hand gripping her fingers. He followed her gaze and released her with a muttered curse.
‘Why?’
‘The man needs dealing with. I would ensure he was never able to do that to a defenceless woman again.’
‘Harris,’ she said. The name had been that of a bogeyman for so long. It was a liberation to find that speaking of it to this man began to disperse the terror. She could see her landlord now as an unpleasant, manipulative bully, not the ever-present monster he became in the endless dark nights.
‘He will be long gone. Mama and I had to get away. We left, but then she became worse. It was a nightmare, and when it was all over, by the time she was better and I was sure I would not bear Harris’s child, then we realized we had lost all contact with the others. It was not a very nice part of London we found ourselves in,’ she added with considerable understatement.
‘My sister, I hope and pray, is still in respectable employment. My brother may be dead, I do not know.’
Marcus had repossessed himself of her hand and she let him hold it. Warmth and strength seemed to flow into her and she felt her eyes closing again.
‘Oh, Nell. The carriage and then the Long Gallery. I was not gentle. I can imagine you never want another man to touch you again.’ His grip opened and she curled her fingers into his to hold him.
‘So I thought,’ she agreed, beginning to drift towards sleep now. ‘I find it depends on the man.’
Marcus was halfway to his feet. At her words, he moved sharply, as though caught off-balance, and his free hand brushed the side of her breast. She opened her eyes as he snatched his hand back, his face stark. ‘I am so sorry, Nell, that was an accident.’
They both seemed to have stopped breathing, still linked by her grasp on his left hand. Nell managed to find enough air for two words. ‘I know.’ He was standing there, tall and strong and worried for her, her blood on his shirt where he had held her in his arms, his big, elegant hands that had tended her wound stilled with the fear that his touch would terrify her.
Nell felt tears welling up at the back of her eyes and swallowed them away, making her voice light. ‘You know, it is a very long time since anyone just held me. I think…I think that would be nice.’
‘Nice.’ The frown lines between his brows vanished. ‘You would like me to hold you?’
‘Mmm. In your arms. In bed.’ Her eyes were growing heavy again and the room was drifting away, along with vague inhibitions. She shouldn’t ask that of him, she knew, but somehow she couldn’t quite recall why not. ‘I think I would feel safe then. I think I could sleep.’
Nell was almost asleep already. What he should do, Marcus knew perfectly well, was to pick her up, carry her back to her own room, ring for her maid and leave her.
And if she woke in the night, alone, in pain, worried that her attacker might return? That should not matter. All that should matter was decorum and propriety.
‘Well, be damned to that,’ he muttered, tugging off his boots and throwing his waistcoat and neckcloth onto the chair. He would stay with her tonight, and he would show her that it was possible for a man to be gentle, to touch a woman without an ulterior motive.
She was asleep now, honey-brown hair loose on the pillows, the rakish bandage incongruous around her head, no colour in her cheeks. He turned back the covers on the far side of the bed then lifted her across, settling her snugly, before sliding in beside her, still in his breeches and shirt.
It took some arranging to get his arm around Nell without touching her breasts or jolting her head, but he managed it at last, ending up with her left cheek on his shoulder and one arm over his chest. He suspected that his own arm was going to be numb by morning, but it was worth it to experience the soft warmth against him, the silky slide of her hair touching his neck, the cold toes curling confidingly against his stockinged feet.
‘Are you asleep?’ he murmured.
‘Yes,’ she replied, making him smile as she burrowed a little closer. ‘You are so warm, Marcus.’
‘And your feet are so cold.’ But then she was truly asleep, her breath whispering through the open neck of his shirt to tease the skin. He had never before lain with a woman like this, innocently. With innocent intent, he corrected himself. What he felt was not at all pure, and strangely, it was not the obvious things that were inciting the need to run his hands over her body, to kiss her, to rouse her to passion. It was those small, cold feet, the feel of her hip bone jutting against him, the dark shadows under the down-swept lashes that reminded him that she needed feeding up, resting. It was the things that reminded him that this was Nell.
He wanted to look after her, pamper her, indulge her. And make love to her until she forgot those damned men who haunted her and filled her life with ever-present fear, forgot everything but the feel of his body possessing her, the scent of his skin in her nostrils, the heat of his mouth on hers.
‘Oh, well done,’ he muttered into the darkness, contemplating the painfully insistent erection he had managed to conjure up. Think about Salterton, think about Father, think what you are going to do in the morning. He settled Nell firmly against his side and willed himself to sleep.
Nell woke to the four soft tings of the little French clock on the bedside table and lay blinking in the light of the lamp Marcus had left burning. He was asleep, his right arm holding her against his body where she must have lain for hours, warm and safe.
The colour burned warm in her cheeks as she remembered asking him to stay with her, sleep with her. Hold her. She must have been almost feverish to have dared do such a thing.
He was still dressed. Her bare leg brushed against the heavy cloth of his breeches, her side was pressed to his shirt. She had trusted him instinctively and he had been gentle and caring, the antithesis of Harris, the opposite of what she had come to fear any man would be like.
He was frowning in his sleep, she realised, smiling at those sharp lines between his brows. She was becoming rather fond of that expression. It no longer seemed forbidding, more the sign that he was worrying about his family, worrying about her. Caring.
Nell shifted a little and winced at the stiffness in her neck and the jolt of pain in her bandaged head. Would he let her see his own wound, judge for herself how well it was healing? She thought not. Being injured appeared to be a physical affront to him, she thought with a smile, remembering his indignation at the pain, his own weakness. A weakness he had overcome through sheer, bloody-minded determination instead of allowing his body time to rest and heal.
She risked letting the tips of her fingers stroke across his chest. ‘Marcus,’ she whispered, her eyelids drooping again. ‘Love…’
