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‘Not weak like that.’ Nell swayed back, away from his wicked, tempting mouth. ‘I am an independent woman. I must stand by myself, not come to lean on a man. You are too big,’ she complained, feeling suddenly tired and querulous. ‘I just want to sit back and let you fight my battles, and that will not do.’
‘Nell, you have agreed to let us help you,’ Marcus began. He was stroking the soft skin on the inside of her wrist. Nell closed her eyes for a moment, imagining his mouth there.
‘And I am very grateful a
nd fully intend it to be a business relationship,’ she said with as much firmness as she could manage. ‘I cannot be a dependent.’
‘I am not asking you to be a dependent, Nell, I am asking you to—’
‘No! No,’ she repeated, more gently. ‘Do not say anything that we will surely regret as soon as it is said. I will stay with your family until I can set up my business, and I am so grateful for that, I cannot properly express it.’
Marcus sat back on his heels and shook his head at her, frowning. ‘And then, every Quarter Day,’ she persisted, ‘I will meet with your man of business and we will discuss profit and loss. I hope to be able to return you a respectable sum for your investment. And when your friends lament the amount their mistresses cost them in millinery and haberdashery, you will tell them of an elegant establishment you know where, if not exactly dagger cheap, one may find a stylish bonnet at a keen price.’
‘And you will be content?’
‘Of course. I will be too busy for foolish daydreams about…passion. And so will you be.’
‘I see.’ Marcus got to his feet. ‘How very practical you are, Nell. You pour a positive bucketful of cold water over heated dreams.’
‘That is how it has to be.’ Nell managed a smile. ‘I cannot afford dreams.’
‘I would give them to you if I could,’ Marcus said, and for a moment the tenderness in his eyes was almost more than she could bear.
‘I know,’ she managed, the smile still intact.
He stooped and she did not try and avoid his mouth, or the gentle touch of his hand as he cradled the back of her head and held her for his kiss. It would be the last time, the last dream.
She would remember every detail, she told herself as his mouth moved over hers with possessive tenderness. The taste of him, the texture of his skin as she laid her palm against his cheek, the scent of him, the leashed power under her other hand where the muscles of his arm clenched with the effort he was making to hold back, the sweep of his eyelashes as she opened her own eyes to look into his face.
And then those thick dark lashes lifted and he broke the kiss.
‘Wise Nell,’ he murmured. And was gone.
Chapter Seventeen
For that day, and the next, a strange calm lay over Stanegate Court. Hal and Marcus rode out, deployed the keepers and the grounds staff on patrols and searches, and found nothing.
The Gypsies had moved, the keepers told him, only ashes and hoof marks to show where they had been. ‘And wagon wheels,’ Randall the head keeper reported. ‘Not like their usual tilt carts, something bigger.’ He shrugged. ‘Gone now anyway, my lord.’
Marcus doubted it. Moved, certainly, but the Romany tribe was still around somewhere. ‘A pity,’ he said. ‘They have sharp eyes; they might have seen someone.’
He was restless, urgent for action, frustrated by the dark man’s ability to melt like a ghost into the woods. And Nell’s presence in the house did not help. He wanted her more with each passing day and she, it seemed, might want his lovemaking, but not his love.
‘Are you going to marry Nell?’ Hal asked as they sat on their horses on Beacon Hill, scanning the hillsides for some betraying trickle of smoke.
‘No.’
‘Ah, the scandal,’ his brother said. ‘No doubt you are wise. You are the heir, after all.’
‘I have not put it to the touch; she will not allow me to ask.’
Hal’s gasp of astonishment would have been flattering if it was not followed by a snort of laughter. ‘Sensible woman.’
‘Indeed?’
‘Don’t poker up with me, Marc. She wants to be independent.’
‘She was independent and on the edge of poverty. I fail to see the virtue of independence for a woman under those circumstances.’
