The Lord and the Wayward Lady (21 page)

‘The scandal. I would say to hell with it and what anyone says, but I’ll not have anyone hurt you, Nell. We will go away for a long honeymoon, visit Longrigg, the Carlow estate in Northumberland. It will be a nine-day wonder, for those who recall who Helena Wardale is. When we come back there will be other scandals, you will see, and what there is we will face down together.’

‘Truly?’ she questioned. ‘Marcus, the past—’

‘The past is gone into history. We must build a new life, new memories.’

Something very like hope stirred.
We
, he had said.
We.
‘Marcus, do you truly want to marry me?’

‘I love you, Nell.’ He stood by the bed looking down at her, smiling ruefully. ‘I will love you always, whether you’ll have me or not. But say
yes.
You like me a little, I have it on good authority that you love my frown. You seem to enjoy my lovemaking. Could you learn to love me just a little too, Nell?’

‘Learn?’ Her voice was all over the place. She very much feared she was going to cry. ‘I love you already, you idiot man. I’ve loved you for weeks. But I thought it would be wrong, I thought it would hurt you, Marcus.
Marc, darling—don’t look like that…’ The smile had faded as she spoke, his eyes had darkened, he looked as though he was in shock.

‘Don’t I look like a man who has just been given his heart’s desire?’ he asked after a moment that seemed to stretch for ever. ‘Like a man who is realising that he has found his soulmate and that, by some miracle, she feels the same way? I’m not sure quite how to contain so much happiness, what to do with it, Nell.’

‘We could make love,’ she suggested, realising that tears were trickling down her face and that she did not care, she was so happy. ‘Would that make it better?’

‘That would make the end of the world better, Nell,’ he said, smiling at her.

‘And you won’t need to be careful?’ she suggested as he bent to unbutton the long row of bone buttons on the chaste nightgown.

‘No, I won’t need to be careful,’ he agreed, his voice husky. ‘You know, Nell, that night after Salterton broke in here, when I saw your robe with its careful darns, I swore I was going to buy you something pretty and frivolous from Bond Street. Just think what fun we can have shopping,’ he murmured, bowing his head to take her right nipple into his mouth, his teeth and his tongue together making her gasp as it hardened and peaked.

‘We would come back, laden with bandboxes.’ He released it and leant over to tease the other one. ‘And you would try everything on for me.’ His tongue trailed lower as his hands pushed the nightgown apart.

‘And then I would take it all off again?’ Nell managed to gasp as his tongue circled lazily in her navel.

‘Oh, yes. Very, very, slowly. Of course, you’ve got
these nightgowns already and it would be extravagant to replace them while there’s wear in them.’ Marcus gripped the sides and tore. ‘Damn, look at that. Quite unwearable.’

‘I do love you,’ Nell said, a laugh escaping her despite the utter havoc Marcus was causing to her internal equilibrium. He was managing to simultaneously shed his dressing gown and kiss his way along her hipbones. ‘But, Marc, please, I don’t think I can bear this. I want you, now, this moment.’

‘You’ve got me,’ he said, his eyes bright in the candlelight.

‘Inside me,’ she said, and felt herself blushing.

He knelt between her parted thighs, looking down at her, and she blushed more intensely as she saw the heat in his eyes, the intent. ‘I cannot think of anywhere I would rather be,’ he said, lowering himself over her, taking just enough weight on his elbows that she was conscious of every hard-muscled inch of his body.

‘Love me,’ she whispered as he eased into her, inch by aching inch.

‘Always,’ he said against her lips as she curled her legs around his hips to take him as deep as she could. ‘Always.’

And when he brought her to the peak of delight he stayed with her, driving her higher and higher until she was sobbing his name as he lost all control, lost in her body, lost in her love.

‘Sweetheart?’ Marcus stirred drowsily, reaching out a long arm to pull Nell down against his body. ‘What is the time?’

‘Nine.’

‘Nine?’ He sat bolt upright, blinking in the morning light. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘No.’ Nell shook her head, sat up too and carried on carefully pulling threads out of the remnants of the silken cord and sorting them by colour on the white bedspread.

‘What are you doing?’

She turned her head and smiled at him. His hair was rumpled, his chin deeply shadowed with his morning beard and his grey eyes were heavy lidded from a night when they had taken little time for sleep. He was beautiful and he was going to be her husband.

‘We are going to make a new family out of the pain of two old ones,’ she said, hoping she could explain, hoping he would understand. ‘Perhaps one day I will find Nathan and Rosalind, but…’An image of Nathan’s face as she had last seen it, sharp with intelligence and sinful secrets, seemed to shimmer before her and was gone.

‘We will create a new love to heal the wounds,’ Marc murmured, lifting her hair to kiss the hollow under her collarbone.

Yes, he understands.
‘These are so lovely.’ Nell held up the vivid threads that clung to her hand with a life of their own. ‘I am going to embroider my wedding veil with them. Hearts and flowers, not pain and death.’

‘You would make something beautiful out of all that hate and fear,’ Marc murmured, turning her face for his kiss.

‘I don’t remember ever being this happy.’ The silken threads fell from her fingers as she held him to her heart.

‘I swear,’ Marc said against her lips, ‘that, if you will trust me with your heart, you will say that every day of your life.’

‘I trust you,’ Nell said. ‘With my life, with my heart and with my love. We have made a new foretelling, one that will come true, one that will last for our children’s children.’

‘In that case,’ Marcus said, kissing his way down to where her heart beat so strongly for him, ‘we had better make a start on the first of those children, don’t you think?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Nell murmured, and it was the last coherent thing she said for quite a while.