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He was still amusing himself by making her blush, and laugh, when they returned to the drawing room. ‘You make those prodigiously pretty bonnets my sisters wear?’ he asked.
‘I make similar bonnets, sir.’
‘These fingers are that nimble?’ He lifted her hand as though to examine it and she pulled it away, folding her hands together in her lap.
‘It is a matter of practice and some natural aptitude. Lady Verity is just as skilled with a needle and has a far more artistic imagination than I,’ Nell said, turning his attention back to his family and taking the opportunity while Verity fetched her latest embroidery to move to sit next to Lady Narborough.
‘How proud you must be of your sons,’ she murmured.
‘Indeed.’ The countess watched Hal intently. ‘How I wish they would settle, though.’ She sighed, then smiled. ‘Now, Miss Latham, you have an excellent eye for colour. What do you think I should do about the curtains in here? This green has faded sadly and I am not convinced it was the right choice in the first place.’
Almost an hour later, when the tea tray had been brought in, sounds from the hall heralded Marcus’s return home. Nell was helping her hostess, carrying a cup of tea to Lieutenant Carlow, when the door opened.
Mr Carlow’s hand was over hers on the saucer, his smile warm as he thanked her, as Marcus came in.
‘Hal!’ His smile as he greeted his brother was broad. His eyes as they rested on Nell, were like fresh-split flint.
Chapter Fourteen
‘Hal!’ He had never been happier to see his hellion of a brother, and never been so close to wanting to strangle him. Hal had been in the house, what, a few hours? And there he was, smiling at Nell with that look in his eyes, his fingers all over hers.
And was she retreating in blushing confusion from a man she must know, with one glance, was a rake? Was she shaken and trembling after what had happened in the folly with him?
Oh, no. Miss Latham was smiling at his brother. Miss Latham was glowing. Miss Latham had never, he was damned sure, looked better in her life than she did at this moment, her hair gleaming in the candlelight, her skin soft and creamy, her figure admirably displayed by a gown that brought out the green in her eyes. And her mouth, soft and full with that delicious hint of a pout curving in appreciation of whatever outrageous flummery Hal had just spouted. The mouth that had opened under his that morning, the mouth that had trailed fire along his jawline.
Marcus smiled. Damn it, he knew he was smiling as he strode into the room, hand out to Hal; he could feel the muscles in his cheeks ache. But she had seen something in his face. Nell put the teacup down on a side table and retreated in a whirl of skirts to a seat on the far side of his mother, her eyes cast down, her hands in her lap, the picture of modesty.
‘Hal,’ Marcus said again, his fingers closing round the brown hand held out to him
as his brother got to his feet. They embraced, hard, no need for words. Hal was back, alive, unmaimed. Under his hands, his brother’s body felt slighter than he remembered, the lines of his face when he pulled back to look at him properly were fine-drawn with fever. He read the message in his eyes: Don’t fuss, don’t ask. He would, of course, but not until they were in private and the others could not hear.
‘You look well,’ he said instead, slapping him on his shoulder and taking the seat next to him. ‘All that lying about in bed, I suppose.’
‘Of course. Dreadful bore, but I caught up on my reading,’ Hal drawled.
Marcus was not deceived. If Hal had been ordered to his bed—and stayed there—then he had been ill indeed and being kept from active service would have fretted his nerves raw. But there would have been diversions, he had no doubt. And pretty girls to play at mopping his fevered brow, and bottles of wine smuggled in against doctor’s orders.
‘Strategy and the Classics?’ he suggested.
‘But of course. French novels,’ Hal added in an undertone. With a grin he turned back to the rest of the family. He knew his duty as the returning son: it was to suffer himself being fussed over for at least a day while they satisfied themselves that he really was safe and well. He picked up his teacup and proceeded to regale his mother and sisters with tales of Lisbon’s shops and amusements and tease all three of them with hints about presents he had brought back.
Marcus caught his father’s eye and nodded reassuringly, seeing the older man’s shoulders relax. Lord Narborough had never had the easiest of relationships with his younger son, who could not recall his father fit and vigorous as Marcus could. The two found it hard to talk to each other and the earl’s disapproval of Hal’s wilder excesses resulted in a certain coolness.
Honoria and their mother were drawing Nell into the conversation about Portugal now. Didn’t it occur to Mama that exposing Nell to Hal was not a good idea? Their guest was ignoring Marcus now, smiling and asking Hal questions, her apparent embarrassment when he had come into the room quite gone.
Marcus collected a cup and went to sit down, listening, studying his brother’s face until his anxiety began to give way to a certainty that Hal really was on the mend.
With that reassurance, and not the slightest interest in the Lisbon pastry shops which seemed to so intrigue Verity, he let himself think about Nell. He had come back after an uncomfortable morning of soul-searching to apologise, to make her an offer of a partnership in a shop, a respectable business. Her talent and work, his money—a fair exchange with no obligations on either side beyond those that were strictly businesslike.
He would find something that would keep her safe and comfortable and not in any danger of being tempted to fall into the clutches of some man. A man like his brother. Like himself. Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His conscience was giving him hell. What had he been thinking of to equate Nell with the likes of Mrs Jensen and the rest of the muslin company? She would make a very good courtesan, he had no doubt, crossing his legs as the memory of her untutored passion came back with inconvenient force.
She was intelligent, thoughtful—oh yes, with time she would be magnificent, not because she was naturally wanton, but because she was the sort of woman that a man would be comfortable with and she would try to do her best whether she was trimming hats or learning sophisticated bedroom tricks.
Hal’s rich, slightly wicked and utterly infectious laugh had them all smiling. And of course, Marcus thought, his own smile congealing on his lips, she has to storm back into the house after his crisis of conscience, straight into the company of a man who could most certainly teach her any bedroom trick she could possibly want to learn.
And why was she looking so damned lovely? He had come back braced for a furious, tear-drenched woman yet she appeared to have emerged from an experience that had shaken him severely looking not just untroubled, but blooming.
Marcus drained his cold tea and studied the tea leaves in the bottom of the cup as though to read his future there. He thought he could make out a gallows, which felt about right. What had happened up there in the woods? I do not lie to you, she had said, a thread of bitterness running through her voice. And he had looked at her and seen truth and pain and need in her eyes. Need for him that had called up an answering ache in his chest, the impulse to hold her, love her, claim her.
