with her nipples, which tightened into hard knots of exquisite—
‘Marc! Are you in there?’ The shout was accompanied by a thud on the door from a clenched fist.
Nell opened her eyes with a small shriek. Beside her, Marcus threw back the sheet and vaulted out of bed, stark naked, strode across the floor and unlocked the door.
‘What the devil?’
Nell’s second shriek was muffled as she slid down under the covers at the sight of Hal, snow melting on his coat as he shouldered into the room past Marcus. ‘We’ve got him, as near as damn it. One of the keepers saw him at the back of the stables and he took off towards the Aylesbury Road—not the woods. His tracks are plain if we can get on them before they are filled with drifting snow again. Get dressed—you can’t go chasing after him stark boll—’
There was a muffled sound that Nell had no trouble interpreting as Hal receiving a cuff round the ear from his older brother.
‘Er, sorry, stark naked.’
‘Well, get out of here and find the guns and I’ll be right down,’ Marcus growled. ‘Can’t you show a bit more discretion, damn it? This is a lady’s bedchamber, not a cavalry barracks.’
‘Quite, of course. Only you weren’t in your room so I assumed…’
‘Hal!’
‘Sorry, Nell.’ The door closed with a discreet click.
Nell peered cautiously over the top of the sheet. Marcus was pulling on his breeches and looking remarkably cheerful.
‘You’ll have to marry me now.’
‘Nonsense. Hal is hardly likely to be gossiping about this.’ Nell slid out of bed with a harassed glance at the clock—just past six—and began to pick up scattered clothing. She straightened to find Marcus looking at her with an expression that sent goosebumps scuttling up and down her spine. ‘Stop that!’ she protested, diving into the comfortingly chaste nightgown.
‘Well, don’t bend over dressed in nothing but your very delightful skin if you do not want me transfixed,’ he said mildly, picking up the bundle of clothes. ‘I can hardly believe our friend is so foolish as to be seen in broad daylight and then to leave plain tracks…He must be getting desperate.’
‘Oh God.’ Nell sat down with a bump on the edge of the bed. You will know when, the dark man had said. This was a decoy and now she must go, warm from sharing her bed with Marc, and deceive him while he and Hal hunted their enemy in the wrong direction.
‘Marc—’
‘Don’t worry. We’ll find him, deal with him. And then I’ll come back and we will talk, Nell.’ There was a wealth of meaning in his voice and a tenderness as he stroked her cheek in farewell that had her choking back tears. He would not feel like that when he discovered what she had done after all her protestations that he could trust her.
‘Be careful,’ she said, covering his hand with hers for a moment. ‘Come back safe.’
But he would be safe, that was her one consolation. The danger would be at her side and it was up to her now to convince Salterton that this persecution must stop. Whatever her father had, or had not done, she was the only Wardale able to deal with the consequences now. Nell scrambled into her warmest clothes, praying that Marcus would believe she was acting for the best. But even if he did not, she thought, it would make no difference. She could not marry him. Somehow that was not much comfort.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Another rope.’ Hal held it up, dark with moisture, a sordid threat dripping limply in his hand.
‘He’s damned arrogant, I’ll say that for him.’ Marcus swung up into the saddle, scanning the meadow behind the stable block. ‘Look at this trail.’
‘He wasn’t expecting to be surprised and thought the snow would soon blow in to fill the tracks,’ Hal countered, stuffing the rope into his saddlebag. ‘And it will, if we don’t get a move on.’
‘This isn’t a cavalry charge.’ Marcus caught up with him, then held Corinth to a steady canter. ‘Look out for an ambush.’
‘Speaking of which.’ Hal sent him a quizzical look. ‘Are you walking into parson’s mousetrap?’
‘I hope so. If she’ll have me.’
‘You think Nell might refuse you? She’d be mad to.’
‘You said she was sensible not to have me when we last spoke of this.’
‘That was before I had seen you together, and before I knew you were lovers.’
Marcus tightened his lips and rode in silence for a while. It was against his instincts to discuss Nell with anyone and yet, this was his brother and for once Hal looked serious. ‘She doesn’t love me and she can see all too clearly the scandal there would be.’
‘Doesn’t love you?’ Hal sounded incredulous. ‘Then what are you doing in her bed? She’s a good girl, I can tell that. If she’s there, it’s because she loves you.’ He veered off to put his raking bay gelding at a fallen tree trunk.
‘Do I need to tell you, of all people, that women experience sexual desire?’ Marcus enquired as his brother drew level again. ‘It doesn’t occur to you that she may desire me? If she loves me, why not marry me?’
‘Because she loves you, you clodpoll,’ Hal snapped. ‘Do you need it pointed out that some women have as strong a sense of honour as a man does? Nell fears the scandal. Not for herself, I imagine—she can always duck back into obscurity—but for you, for us.’ When Marcus did not answer he added, ‘The two of you are like April and May, even Father’s noticed it, for Heaven’s sake!’
‘He’s noticed what I feel, probably,’ Marcus conceded, still reeling from the novelty of Hal lecturing him. The possibility that he might be right and that Nell really loved him was too important a thought to be explored now.
‘He’s noticed both of you, believe me.’
‘And how is he going to feel about it? He seems to like her.’
‘Pleased?’ Hal ventured. ‘Heal the rift and so forth?’
‘I hope so. But it all depends on her saying yes, which I doubt. She’s damn stubborn.’ Marcus put Corinth to a five-barred gate, then wheeled round to scan the field they had just landed in. The hoof prints ran clear as a blaze diagonally across.
‘Well, that makes two of you.’
Half an hour later Hal stood in his stirrups. ‘Something happened over there, look.’ They cantered up to the area of churned snow in the corner of the high, tangled hedge. Marcus dismounted and squatted down to look.
‘Two horses, one tethered—waiting perhaps? They pushed through the hedge here.’ He clambered through cursing the quickthorn as it pulled at his coat. ‘Two sets of tracks here, heading in different directions. I can’t tell if they’ve both got riders.’
‘We’ll
