LITMIR.BIZ

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her escape, reminding her, inevitably, that he had the power to do with her what he wanted.

      Marcus strode to the door and then stopped. Nell did not need him pursuing her all over the house. She needed, he was certain, another woman to talk to and there was no one here but strangers she could not trust. As he had shown her she could not trust him.

      Nell ran up the stairs, scrubbing at her face as if she could stop the tears by brute force. Damn him! Now he knew what had happened to her and he would despise her for it. It was always the woman’s fault, of course, the woman who was ruined as a result.

      By dint of sheer willpower, she stopped crying, got the hiccupping sobs under control and looked around. She was somewhere on the first floor, but in her distress she had missed the turn to the wing where her bedchamber was and now she was lost. The old house rambled like a living organism. Passages led off from corridors, doors might open onto chambers or stairs or more corridors. Small flights of steps appeared for no apparent reason.

      At random she opened a door and found herself in a small library. There was a desk in the window, a fire in the grate and a pleasant smell of apple-wood smoke and leather. A book—that would help her compose herself. Nell walked across and began to examine the shelves, taking slow breaths as control returned.

      It was a very masculine selection, she decided, opening a copy of the Racing Calendar for 1810 at random, then replacing it. Heavy bound editions of the Classics did not tempt her either. There was a glass-fronted bookcase on one wall. She tried the handle as she peered in. Locked. The books inside did not seem particularly valuable: a row of matching volumes, each with the date in gilt on the spine. Diaries, she supposed.

      With a sigh Nell dragged her sodden handkerchief out and blew her nose again.

      ‘If you want poetry and novels they are in the main library downstairs, Miss Latham,’ said a deep voice behind her.

      ‘Ah!’ She jumped and spun round. ‘Oh. Lord Narborough. I do apologise, I had no idea this room was occupied, I was just—’

      ‘Looking for somewhere to hide?’ He put down a book, rose from his deep winged chair and held out a large white handkerchief. ‘Here, take this.’

      Beyond trying to pretend nothing was wrong, Nell took it and applied it to what she was certain was her very red nose. ‘Thank you, my lord.’

      ‘Homesick?’ She shook her head. ‘Marcus?’

      ‘Yes. He does not trust me and I am afraid we…argue. I have just slapped his face,’ she admitted in a rush.

      ‘Do him a world of good, I’ve no doubt. Pull the bell, would you be so kind? What we need is a cup of coffee. Now, you sit there, my dear.’

      ‘But, Lord Narborough, you do not understand.’ And what was she going to tell him, exactly? That his son had offered his protection and she had hesitated for long, betraying minutes before refusing him?

      ‘Have you got anything to do with that rope or the rosemary at breakfast?’ he asked her abruptly.

      ‘No!’ Nell bit her lip. ‘I have things I wish to keep secret and Lord Stanegate can tell that. It makes him suspicious. But, I give you my word, my lord, I do not know any more about why you have been sent these mysterious objects than I have said.’

      ‘Well then, we have no need to speak of it any more. Ah, Andrewes. Coffee and biscuits if you please. And, Andrewes, should anyone—anyone at all—be enquiring for Miss Latham, you believe you have not seen her since breakfast.’

      ‘Very good, my lord.’

      ‘Now then.’ He settled back in his chair, steepled his fingers and regarded her benignly. ‘Tell me how to make a hat.’

      ‘But you cannot want to know that, my lord.’

      ‘I most certainly do. Have you any idea how much I pay for hats for three ladies in a year?’

      ‘One hundred guineas?’ Nell hazarded.

      ‘Nearer three. Now, I want to know what is involved in making a hat. I would like to know where my money goes.’

      By the time the gong sounded for luncheon, Nell had forgotten Marcus, her distress, even who the man she was so comfortable with was. They drank coffee, ate all the biscuits; he asked questions about hats, teased her, told her about the latest litter of hound puppies in the stable. She asked about the history of the house and found he was an authority on it.

      ‘Really? A priest hole?’ she gasped, wide-eyed.

      ‘A hidden room, certainly, and it was used during the Civil War—we stood for the king, you understand.’ George Carlow regarded her with a smile. ‘You know, you remind me of someone. I wish I could remember who. There’s something when you smile…’

      ‘Oh.’ Mama. She had always been told that she was the image of her mother, except for her colouring, which was her father’s. If Lord Narborough had been so close to her father, she realized, the realities flooding back, he would have known her mother well also. ‘Listen—wasn’t that the gong for luncheon?’

      The elusive memory escaping him, Lord Narborough got to his feet. ‘So it is. Shall we go down?’

      Nell stuck to his side on the way downstairs, then took refuge between Verity and Honoria at the table. But Marcus was absent. After half an hour, when she felt physically sick every time the door opened, Honoria put her out of her misery by remarking, ‘It’s too bad of Marcus, going off to Aylesbury like that without stopping to see if there’s anything we want from the shops.’

      ‘He’s gone to the bank, darling,’ her mother remarked. ‘And then he’s dining with the Wallaces. You cannot expect him to trail round haberdashery counters for you.’

      ‘Well, if he was going to the Wallaces, he could have taken me,’ Honoria persisted. ‘It is an age since I spoke to Georgina.’

      ‘I believe it was a last-minute decision to go. He is just dropping in on them to take pot luck,’ Lady Narborough said. ‘We will invite Georgina and Harriet over next week if the weather holds.’

      So, Marcus had made an unplanned trip, just to avoid her. Nell shivered, anticipating the look she would see in his eyes next time they met. Pity? Or disgust?

      Nell retired early that evening, the puzzle of her feelings for Lord Narborough driving her back to her mother’s box. She liked the man, she trusted him instinctively. Could she be so wrong about him?

      The diary lay at the bottom of the box. Nell stood, twisting her hands together for several minutes before she reached in and lifted it out. The red morocco cover was scuffed and dull and a brown pressed flower fell out and crumbled into brittle fragments as she opened it.

      Resolutely Nell began to read, the earl’s big handkerchief tight in one hand.

      An hour later she laid the book down, dry eyed and drained. In 1795, her father, William Wardale, Earl of Leybourne, had been convicted of the murder by stabbing of Christopher Hebden, Baron Framlingham, in the garden of the Carlow’s London house. He had been found, literally red-handed, by Lord Narborough. The woman he had been having an affair with had been Hebden’s wife, Amanda. And almost worse than anything, her mother had written on the tear-blotched pages that he had been suspected of spying for the French, although that had never been made known publicly.

      Somehow that, and the name of his lover, had been kept a secret. He was stripped of his title and his lands by Act of Attainder, meaning her brother, Nathan, could never inherit. And so he was hanged.

      Stunned and shaking, now she could see it all laid out so clearly, Nell put the diary back in the box and locked it. No, it was impossible that her unwitting involvement in this was coincidence. Someone had deliberately implicated her in their plot against the Carlows. But why? If her father had been guilty, then he had paid the terrible price for his crimes. His family had all paid it with him. Why should anyone seek to involve her now?

      If

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