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‘Lost me?’ The slope was steeper now, Nell told herself. That was why she stumbled, had to put out a hand to steady herself.
‘Calm yourself, I do not kill women either,’ Salterton said. ‘He will not want you back, that English aristocrat, after you have lain with me.’
‘You think you can seduce me? You?’ Nell put every ounce of contempt she could manage into her voice. ‘You can force me, no doubt. But seduce me?’
‘Oh, yes. It may take a little time, but I am a patient man. A very patient man.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ Nell demanded. She was breathing heavily now, despite her best efforts at control. Her breath was making clouds in the freezing air and her throat was raw.
‘I owe the Carlows nothing but misery and death,’ he said simply, so simply that at first she thought she had misheard him. ‘It is a long story and an old one, but then, as I said, I am a patient man and I do not forget.’
‘Or forgive, apparently,’ Nell said tartly and heard him laugh softly. ‘And why involve me?’
‘Why, you are a part of the thread too—you and your brother and your sister.’
‘They are alive?’ She stumbled again, badly this time, and he caught her by the shoulders, holding her so she could not turn to face him.
‘Don’t you know, Helena?’
‘No. No, I do not,’ she admitted. ‘Nathan vanished—did you kill him?’
‘Perhaps.’
Nell stifled a sob and pulled free, walking on ahead. He is not going to make me cry. He is tormenting me. Nathan is safe, Nathan is alive; they both are.
‘You should ask Miss Price,’ he said. ‘She has secrets too.’
He was trying to unsettle her, torment her. Diana Price could know nothing of Nathan. After a moment, when she regained her composure, she said, ‘This thread you speak of is silken, I presume, and makes a rope to hang a peer with?’ She heard a grunt of assent. ‘And the rosemary is for remembrance?’
‘What rosemary?’
‘You did not send a sprig of it? To Lord Narborough?’
‘No,’ he said, and for the first time she thought she had unsettled him, just a little, but he said nothing more.
Almost at the bottom of the slope now, she could see meadows through the trees and guessed they must be downstream of the lake where the party had skated. Where was he taking her? Should she try and escape, or should she stay passive and hope to learn more?
‘Here, turn to the right.’ There was a hut of some kind nestled in the edge of the wood. A shepherd’s night shelter perhaps, for when the flocks were brought down to the water meadows to graze. ‘Go in. It is not locked.’
Nell pushed open the door. It was snug enough, although dark, without a window. The thick planks overlapped to keep the worst of the draughts out, and a pallet heaped with blankets lay against one wall. Nell eyed it nervously.
‘Sit down on the stool and put your hands behind you.’
With a sigh of relief she did as she was told, sinking down on the three-legged stool in front of a small hearth. She had hardly settled when her wrists were lashed together, not brutally, but with a ruthless efficiency—and what felt like a soft cord. Salterton had left the door open for light while he knelt to strike a flame and touch it to the pile of dry kindling on the hearthstone.
‘It is very dry,’ he remarked as though reading her thoughts. ‘There will be no smoke to guide your gallant lover here.’
‘He will find you,’ she swore, looking down at the sweeping brim of the slouch hat.
‘I doubt it. When the time comes, I will find him. I will find all of them.’ Salterton got to his feet and shut the door, leaving the interior of the hut lit only by the flickering flames. He sank down on his haunches beside the hearth and tossed his hat onto the pallet. In the firelight his face was a mask with dark, glittering eyes, the lines made harsher by the shadows.
But he was, she could tell, a disturbingly handsome man with a feral grace about him and the edge of wild danger in every movement. It was a strange co
ntrast with the calm irony of his voice. It would not do, Nell told herself, to underestimate his intelligence.
‘Why will you find them?’
‘To deliver an old foretelling,’ he said, and it seemed to her that a nerve jumped on one of the beautiful high cheekbones as though he was in pain. He lifted a hand and touched his forehead for a moment.
