LITMIR.BIZ

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matter. Trust you.’

      That, if anything, made it worse. What cause had she to say that? ‘You’re cold.’ He realized that she was beginning to shiver in her thin wrapper. ‘Take this off and have my robe—Allsop’s had it warming by the fire.’

      He helped her with the wrapper, untying the belt, slipping it off her shoulders until he could remove it, noticing the plain fabric, worn thin in places, each small tear or hole painstakingly darned. He rubbed his finger over a line of tiny stitches, thinking of Nell in that drab, dark little room, darning a garment no one else would likely ever see until her eyes ached, rather than let her standards drop.

      Damn it, how could he have thought for a moment that she was some man’s paramour? Everything she owned spoke of a long, solitary battle against poverty. He did not care how improper it was, he was going to buy her something warm and luxurious and pretty just as soon as he could get to a Bond Street shop.

      Nell lay back, too dizzy and queasy to worry about the fact that she was on Marcus’s bed in his thick silk robe, alone in his room with him. The little blade he was using to cut the lint flashed in his hand. ‘He had a knife…’

      ‘I’m sure he did,’ he retorted, gently parting her hair.

      ‘Do you think he meant to murder Lord Narborough?’

      ‘There was another silken rope, on the floor. I may be wrong, but I think his purpose is to frighten us, not to kill. But he would be armed in case of discovery. Hold still.’ The warm water trickled over her ear as Marcus began to clean the wound. Nell bit her lip and tried to keep still. ‘Am I hurting you?’

      ‘It stings,’ she admitted. He was so gentle, his big hands moving over her scalp as though he was handling a baby. Nell focused her eyes and watched him rinsing the cloth in the water, intent on his work. He had taken off his coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, exposing strong forearms dusted with brown hair.

      She felt a curious compulsion to raise her hand, stroke the dark pelt. She lifted it, then let it drop. Mustn’t touch him. ‘I didn’t let him in, Marcus. I know it must seem suspicious, my being there.’

      ‘Why were you?’ She could not see his face, only his chest, so close as he leaned over to tend her head.

      If she told him now, on top of this fresh attack, would he believe her innocent? His immediate thought on discovering that she was not a virgin had been that she was Salterton’s lover. When he had found her just now he had accused her without hesitation. How could she convince him of her good faith when he knew who her father was? And yet it hurt so much to lie to him.

      ‘I couldn’t sleep, I was restless. Your father had been telling me stories of the history of the house and it seemed so romantic. So I decided to walk a little in the Long Gallery. As I was going past Lord Narborough’s door, I heard the noise of breaking glass, just a sudden sharp crack in the silence. I opened the door in case something was wrong, another heart stroke perhaps, and the man attacked me. It was dark,’ she added. ‘My candle blew out but I recognised him. Salterton moves beautifully.’

      ‘He’ll be crawling like a crippled cat when I get my hands on him,’ Marcus promised with a lack of emphasis that was chilling in itself. He began to sprinkle basilicum powder into her hair. ‘I’ll put a pad on that and then bandage it. It is not as bad as all that blood made it appear—a deep graze rather than a cut—but you are going to have a most piratical appearance. You are being very brave, Nell.’

      Her head ached now, a deep throb that made her think about Marcus’s wound. He had shown no sign of it since their arrival here, and yet it must have pained him far more than her head. There was no sign of bandaging under the fine linen of his shirt. She found her gaze lingering on his broad shoulders, on the open V of his shirt, and steadied her voice.

      ‘It aches,’ she admitted. ‘But it is nothing, I imagine, compared to your shoulder.’

      ‘Men are supposed to put up with these things,’ he said curtly, apparently focused on winding the bandage firmly around her head. ‘What sort of bastard hits a woman?’

      Was he going to refer to the morning and his assumptions about her lover? Marcus was tidying away the bandages now; he could not pretend absorption in his medical activities for much longer.

      He got up, cleared the water bowl away then came and sat down by the bed. ‘I have to apologise to you, Nell.’ He met her eyes at last.

      ‘You do?’ Perversely the tenderness she felt for him, here in the midnight intimacy of his room, did not incline her to make this easy for him.

      ‘This morning I should not have made the suggestion that I did. And then I leapt to a conclusion that was utterly unwarranted. I insulted you and I failed to recognise that you had experienced something…terrible.’

      ‘Yes.’ She wanted to close her eyes, lie back, sleep. But Marcus was apologizing and she could not, for some reason, bring herself to snub him after all. ‘I had—have—a brother and a sister. But Mama and I lost contact with them when I was seventeen. My brother vanished one day, Mama was ill, there was no money. Our landlord told me he would let us stay, for free if I would…if I would lie with him. I refused. You can imagine the rest.’ She was not going to remember it any more than she could help.

      ‘What was his name?’ There was a pain in her hand. Nell looked down and saw Marcus’s hand gripping her fingers. He followed her gaze and released her with a muttered curse.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘The man needs dealing with. I would ensure he was never able to do that to a defenceless woman again.’

      ‘Harris,’ she said. The name had been that of a bogeyman for so long. It was a liberation to find that speaking of it to this man began to disperse the terror. She could see her landlord now as an unpleasant, manipulative bully, not the ever-present monster he became in the endless dark nights.

      ‘He will be long gone. Mama and I had to get away. We left, but then she became worse. It was a nightmare, and when it was all over, by the time she was better and I was sure I would not bear Harris’s child, then we realized we had lost all contact with the others. It was not a very nice part of London we found ourselves in,’ she added with considerable understatement.

      ‘My sister, I hope and pray, is still in respectable employment. My brother may be dead, I do not know.’

      Marcus had repossessed himself of her hand and she let him hold it. Warmth and strength seemed to flow into her and she felt her eyes closing again.

      ‘Oh, Nell. The carriage and then the Long Gallery. I was not gentle. I can imagine you never want another man to touch you again.’ His grip opened and she curled her fingers into his to hold him.

      ‘So I thought,’ she agreed, beginning to drift towards sleep now. ‘I find it depends on the man.’

      Marcus was halfway to his feet. At her words, he moved sharply, as though caught off-balance, and his free hand brushed the side of her breast. She opened her eyes as he snatched his hand back, his face stark. ‘I am so sorry, Nell, that was an accident.’

      They both seemed to have stopped breathing, still linked by her grasp on his left hand. Nell managed to find enough air for two words. ‘I know.’ He was standing there, tall and strong and worried for her, her blood on his shirt where he had held her in his arms, his big, elegant hands that had tended her wound stilled with the fear that his touch would terrify her.

      Nell felt tears welling up at the back of her eyes and swallowed them away, making her voice light. ‘You know, it is a very long time since anyone just held me. I think…I think that would be nice.’

      ‘Nice.’ The frown lines between his brows vanished. ‘You would like me to hold you?’

      ‘Mmm. In your arms. In bed.’ Her eyes were growing heavy again and the room was drifting away, along with vague inhibitions. She shouldn’t ask that of him, she knew, but somehow she couldn’t quite recall why

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