The Lord and the Wayward Lady

‘What! Murder? Why, that is simply ridiculous!’ The shock of the threat propelled her into motion, pacing away from him in agitation. Nell came up against a large globe on a stand and spun back to face the viscount. ‘The earl is obviously in bad health and he must have overstrained himself getting out of his chair or something. Conspiracy? That is nonsense. What is there in a length of rope to harm a grown man? What is it anyway? A curtain tie?’

‘A silken rope,’ he said slowly, with a weight to his words that made her feel she should read some significance into them. And at the back of her mind, sunk deep in her memory, something stirred, sent out flickers of unease as if at the recollection of a childhood nightmare.

Nell shrugged, sending the discomfort skittering back into the darkness. Somehow, she did not want to explore that elusive thought. ‘Take me to Bow Street then,’ she bluffed, as though that in itself was not enough to have her instantly dismissed without a character. ‘See if the magistrates think that innocently delivering a parcel justifies being locked up and abused.’

‘Abused? In what way do you consider yourself abused, Miss Smith?’ Lord Stanegate sat there, hands folded, apparently relaxed, looking as unthreatening as six foot of well-muscled angry man could look. ‘I can ring for a cup of tea for you, while you consider your position. Or I could send for my sisters’ companion, should you require a chaperone. If you are cold, the fire will be laid. Only, I will have an answer, Miss Smith. Do not underestimate me.’

‘There is no danger of my doing that, my lord,’ she responded, keeping her voice calm with an effort. ‘I can see that you are used to getting your own way in all things and that bullying and threatening one defenceless female, however politely, is not something you will baulk at.’

‘Bullying?’ His eyebrows went up. ‘No, this is not bullying, Miss Smith, nor threatening. I am merely setting out the inevitable consequences of your actions—or rather, your inaction.’

‘Threats,’ she muttered, mutinous and increasingly afraid.

‘It would be threatening,’ he said, getting to his feet and walking towards her as she backed away, ‘if I were to force you back against the bookshelves, like this.’ The back of Nell’s heels hit wood and she stopped, hands spread. There was nothing behind her but unyielding leather spines.

Lord Stanegate put one hand on either side of her head and glanced at the shelves. ‘Ah, the Romantic poets, how very inappropriate. Yes, if I were to trap you like this and to move very close—’ he shifted until they were toe to toe, and she felt the heat of his thighs as they brushed her skirts ‘—and then promise to put my hands around your rather pretty neck and shake the truth out of you—now that would be threatening.’

Nell closed her eyes, trying to block out the closeness of him. Behind her were comforting scents from her early childhood: leather and old paper and beeswax wood polish. In front of her, sharp citrus and clean linen and leather and man. She tried to melt back into the old, familiar library smell, but there was no escape that way.

‘Look at me.’

She dragged her eyes open. He had shaved very close that morning, but she could tell his beard would be as dark as his hair. There was a tiny scar nicking the left corner of his lips and they were parted just enough for her to see the edge of white, strong teeth. As she watched he caught his lower lip between them for a moment, as though in thought. Nell found herself staring at the fullness where his teeth had pressed; her breath hitched in her chest.

‘Well?’

‘No.’ The thought of his hands on her, sliding under her chin, his fingers slipping into her hair... And the memory of Mr Harris came back to her and she shuddered, unable to stop herself, and he stepped back abruptly as though she had slapped him.

‘Damn it—’

‘My lord.’ The butler was in the doorway. ‘Dr Rowlands is here and Lady Narborough is asking for you. She seems a little anxious, my lord.’

Nell saw, from both their faces, that a little anxious was a major understatement. Without a word, Lord Stanegate turned on his heel and strode out after the man. The door banged shut behind him.

Her fingers were locked tight around the edge of the shelf. She opened her hands warily, as though they were all that were keeping her on her feet, then realized that the slam of the door had not been followed by any other sound. They had not locked it again.

Where was her reticule? She ran to the sofa and found the shabby bag, her skirts swinging wildly against the upholstery as she hastened to the door. It opened under her hand, well-oiled hinges yielding without a sound. Then she was into the hall, under the shelter of the arc of the sweeping stairs.

But the butler was by the front door, giving orders to a footman; so there was no escape that way. Nell shrank back into the shadows.

‘Wellow!’ a clear feminine voice called from a room to the right of the front door. The footman walked briskly past Nell’s hiding place and through the green baize door as the butler went to answer the call.

‘Yes, Lady Honoria?’

As he went inside the room, Nell tiptoed forward, steadying herself with one hand on a side table bearing a silver salver. The second post had obviously arrived. Ears straining, Nell glanced down.

Lady Honoria Carlow read the direction on the topmost letter.

She stood transfixed. Carlow? That was the name that her gentle widowed mother had spoken with such hate when her control cracked and she fell into sobbing despair. The name at the heart of the darkness in the past, the things that had happened when she was only a tiny child, the things that were never spoken of clearly, must never be asked about.

Lord Narborough’s family name was Carlow? Why she must fear that family she had no idea, but they undoubtedly would know and if they found out who she was they would never believe she had acted in innocence.

Nell tiptoed across the marble, her worn shoes making virtually no sound. The door was on the latch, she opened it and was out into the busy late-morning street. A few brisk steps and she was behind the shelter of a waiting hackney carriage. She kept pace as it set off at a walk, held up by traffic, then slipped into Stafford Street. There, I am safe, she told herself, fighting the urge to run. He will never find me now.

Chapter Two

The rope was safely locked in the bottom drawer of the desk. It might as well have been in plain view on the top and hissing at him like the snake it so resembled for all the good that hiding it away did. Marcus thrust the papers that littered the desk in the library back into their folder and contemplated going into the study. But he felt uncomfortable using it when his father was in town. The older man did virtually nothing on family business these days, but even so, to commandeer his desk felt uncomfortably like stepping into his shoes.

He tried to concentrate on writing to his younger brother instead. He would say nothing of the circumstances, merely that their father had suffered an attack, but was now resting and the doctor was sanguine about a recovery, given time and care.

There was no point in agitating Lieutenant the Honourable Hal Carlow. The last they had heard, Hal was confined to his bed in Wellington’s Portuguese headquarters with a nasty infection caused by a slight sabre wound in his side. His regiment, the Eleventh Light Dragoons, had been sent back to England from the Peninsula the previous year, battered and depleted. Hal, predictably, had pulled strings to find himself some sort of attachment to another regiment out there and had promptly disappeared behind enemy lines on a mission.

Marcus could only be selfishly grateful to whoever had inflicted the wound that was keeping Hal out of trouble, although once convalescent, a bored and off-duty Lieutenant Carlow on the loose was a worrying prospect. As an officer, Marcus was frequently assured, his brother was a paragon, destined for great things and possessing the courage of a lion. Under any other circumstances he was a hell-born babe, determined, Marcus was convinced, to drive his brother to drink or the madhouse.

The sounds of a door slamming and raised voices reminded him that his other siblings were more than capable of achieving that without help from Hal. The redoubtable Miss Price was presumably thwarting one of Honoria’s wilder schemes while attempting to preserve Verity, wide-eyed in adoration of her sister, from the sharp edge of Honoria’s teasing tongue.

He tried to imagine the man strong-willed enough to take Honoria off his hands, and failed. The Season loomed ahead, full of opportunities for one sister to get into outrageous scrapes through unquenchable high spirits and the other, through sheer na?vety, to fall victim to every rake on the prowl.

The fog had descended again, blotting out the promise of the fine morning. Now, in mid-afternoon, it was thick outside the long windows, filling the room with damp gloom despite the blazing fire and the array of lamps.

That damned rope. He wanted to discuss it with his father, but the earl was sleeping. That it had something to do with that old business years ago, when his father had been hardly older than he was himself now, was beyond doubt.

Marcus looked up at the portrait that hung over the fire. Lord Narborough stared back: a virile man at the height of his powers, shoulders square, grey eyes blazing out at the watcher, wig elegant, fingers curled around the hilt of a rapier he could use as readily as he did his fine mind and quick wits.

George Carlow and his friends had faced the Revolution in France, the risk of uprising here, the justified fear of year upon year of bloody war. Close to the inner circles of government, they had existed in a hotbed of intrigue and spying, fighting not on the battlefield but amidst the familiar clubs and balls where the enemy did not wear a scarlet uniform but hid behind the facade of fashion and respectability. His father had plunged into that world of secrets and had lost his health, his peace of mind and his closest friends in the process.

Marcus folded his letter, tossed it to one side, got up and began to pace. That young woman. Miss Smith indeed. Was she an innocent tool of someone—her dark man—or was she involved in whatever mischief this man intended?

Instinct told him she was lying. Smith was not her name, and that was not the only falsehood. He could sense the tension in her as she answered him. And yet, he wanted to believe she was innocent of harm. That was presumably his masculine reaction to a remarkably fine pair of greenish hazel eyes, a glimpse of golden-brown hair and a voice that did provocative things at the base of his spine. Marcus frowned. He needed to listen to his brain for this, not other parts of his body.

She was too thin, he told himself. Even bundled up in that drab gown and shapeless pelisse he could tell that. He was not attracted to thin women. Marcus contemplated Mrs Jensen for a pleasurable moment. She was most definitely not thin, not where it mattered. And she would be waiting for their meeting; she had made that quite clear.

Dressmakers were not fair game for a gentleman, in any case. Miss Smith was a respectable young woman so far as chastity went, he would wager. The flare of anger and alarm in her eyes when he had stood toe to toe with her, that was surely not the reaction of a woman who would try to buy her way out of trouble with her body.

He got up and walked to the spot where they had stood so close, wondering if the faint scent of plain soap truly lingered in the air or if it was his imagination. Imagination, obviously. It was too long since he had given his last mistress her congе, tired of her petulance and constant demands. If the household was more settled, he could still go out tonight, conclude matters with the lovely Perdita. That would stop him thinking about Miss Smith.

Something pale clung to the folds of the sofa skirts. Marcus hunkered down to pick it up and found it was an inch of fine straw plait, a long thread dangling from it.

He pulled the bell rope. ‘Peters, ask Miss Price if it would be convenient for her to spare me a moment.’

His sisters’ companion came in promptly, bandbox neat, calm and collected as always. ‘Marcus?’ She smiled and took a seat as he resumed his. In private they had long since used first names, allies in maintaining order and decorum in the Carlow household.

‘What do you make of this, Diana?’ He passed her the fragment of plait and watched as she studied it.

‘It is a straw plait of course. Hat straw—it is too fine for anything else.’ She rubbed and flexed it between her fingers. ‘English, I would say. Very good quality and an unusual plait. I have never seen anything quite like it.’ She tugged the thread dangling from it and looked at him with intelligent eyes. ‘Our visitor of this morning is a milliner?’

‘She said she was a dressmaker, but it would not surprise me to know that was untrue.’

‘If she is working with expensive materials such as this, then she will be with one of the better establishments. Not necessarily of the very highest rank, but good.’