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When he lifted his head, she was as breathless as she had been after her ride. ‘I wanted to talk to you,’ she managed, before she lost what nerve she had left. ‘I wanted to say about last night. I am sorry, I know I placed you in a difficult position. I need you to know that I would never presume upon that…I do not want you to think that I expect anything. Anything at all.’ Only he had just kissed her. What did that mean?
‘No,’ Marcus said, standing up, lifting the weight of her loosened hair in his hands for a moment before letting it drop. ‘I know that. I recognise innocence when I see it.’
‘I am not innocent,’ she began. Harris had taken that from her.
‘Innocence,’ he repeated. ‘Other people’s actions do not count, Nell.’
‘You believe me, then?’
‘I acquit you of throwing out lures, of being any man’s mistress. I believe you did not let Salterton in last night.’ He smiled at her a little ruefully and ran his finger down her cheek. ‘But I know you still have secrets.’
‘Oh.’ The impulse to confide in Lord Narborough had not survived the night and she felt none to confess now. ‘I am sure you have too. Everyone has secrets.’ She had to ask. ‘Marcus, why did you kiss me just now?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, getting up abruptly. ‘Insanity, probably. I suppose you have lost all your hair pins?’
The abrupt turn of topic back to the banal braced her. ‘All of them. I will tie it into a tail with my pocket handkerchief.’ There was a spotted mirror over the fireplace. Nell turned to it, feeling the physical separation as she moved away from Marcus. She raked her fingers through the tangled mass, trying not to meet his eyes in the glass.
At least he was honest with her; he knew she was hiding something. And he kissed her and did not know why? She would not have thought that Marcus Carlow had any impulses he could not account for. Perhaps it was simply lust and he did not want to frighten her with the truth. But whatever the reality, that morning’s coolness had gone and with it the weight of unhappiness that had balled into her stomach.
‘How is your head? I should have asked sooner, but the sight of you on that mare quite drove it out of my mind.’ He made no move to approach her.
‘Sore when I touch it, that is all. There, that will have to do.’ She looked a raggle-taggle Gypsy.
‘Are you tired of riding?’ Marcus asked.
‘I suspect I am going to be very stiff tomorrow,’ Nell acknowledged ruefully. ‘But no, I am not tired.’
‘We can go the long way home,’ he offered. ‘Through the woods and up over Beacon Hill at a nice sedate pace. You will like the view.’
She led Firefly to the mounting block herself before he could help her, gathering up her mired skirts and settling into the saddle. The mare, now she was in company, was behaving as though an out-of-control gallop through the meadows would never occur to her.
‘We are very respectable now,’ she observed as they walked out of the yard onto the road.
‘I am,’ Marcus retorted. ‘I am also far too much of a gentleman to describe what you look like, Miss Latham.’
She was beginning to be able to read the humour behind his more flattening remarks and to see beyond the frown when it was turned in her direction. ‘You already mentioned hedges,’ she pointed out meekly, earning a flash of amusement before his face was straight again.
He turned off within sight of the turnpike gate, taking a track up through the fields towards the edge of the beech woods that climbed the steep scarp. Even in January the golden-brown dead foliage clung to its twigs and the horses’ hooves brushed through the great drifts of last year’s leaves as they climbed, following the track as it zigzagged back and forth.
A jay flew, screeching, as they passed. In the distance the laughing cry of the green woodpecker mocked them and, faintly, Nell could hear the thud of axe on timber.
‘Cutting firewood,’ Marcus said, following the direction of her gaze. ‘Or bodgers. Wood turners and hurdle makers working in the woods,’ he explained. ‘This way.’ He put Corinth to the bank and urged him up, then turned to watch as Firefly, agile as a cat, scrambled up beside them, buried to the hocks in the thick, rustling leaf carpet as Nell clung to the pommel.
Now they were deep in the woods, the tall, straight grey trunks of the beeches looming above and around them like pillars in a cathedral. The air smelled
fresh and spicy, full of the aromas of dead leaves and bruised stems as they passed along the narrow path.
And then they were out into the open on close-cropped grass dotted with gorse, the yellow flowers still blooming despite the cold. ‘Like climbing up a bald man’s head,’ Nell said as they reached the gently rounded summit.
‘Don’t be so disrespectful of our Beacon Hill,’ Marcus chided, smiling. ‘An Armada fire was lit here. Look, you can see for miles over the Vale of Aylesbury.’ He sat, one hand nonchalantly on his hip, utterly at home and relaxed, she realized. Corinth, knowing a familiar stopping place, cocked one hoof up and slouched rather less elegantly than his rider.
‘Mmm. Sunshine.’ Nell turned up her face to the sun. There was no warmth in it, but the sight of a clear sky was a luxury after London’s smog.
‘It will snow later if that reaches us.’ Marcus pointed far to the west to the bank of dark, big-bellied cloud. ‘It is going to get much colder.’
They were on the edge of the scarp. It was like standing on a cliff with the Vale below instead of the sea. The chalk hillside that rolled away to either side of them was deeply indented with dry valleys, beyond each another bald crown, all a little lower than the one they stood on.
‘Someone has lit fires.’ Nell pointed to the trickles of smoke rising straight up into the still air. ‘Is that the bodgers?’
