He had not troubled to pull on his robe and Tallie regarded him unashamed and admiring. ‘What are you doing? That panelling is new, is it not?’
Nick turned back and opened what she could now see was a pair of doors above the dado level, then stepped aside to repeat the action on the next length of wall.
Tallie gasped. Revealed by the opening doors was a large oil painting, a scene of a classical temple with a nymph placing an offering before the altar.
‘But that is one of Mr Harland’s canvases …’ She swung her feet out of bed and ran to Nick’s side as he opened one panel after another. ‘And that, and that one and that is the Diana picture! Nick, have you bought all the paintings he did with me as the model?’
In answer Nick swept a hand around the room. The locked panels were open to reveal six scenes of the ancient world, each with the slender blonde-haired figure of the new Lady Arndale gracing it. ‘It seemed the safest way of keeping them from prying eyes, and, when I saw them, how could I resist?’
He watched, hardly conscious of the smile on his face as he regarded his wife walking slowly around the room gazing up at the luminous pictures, her hands pressed to her flushed cheeks. Each image was lovely, but none matched the real woman he knew. For a moment he shivered at the thought of how he would be feeling now if she had refused him. To possess those still images and know that he had lost the one being who completed him as a person. Unbearable.
Tallie turned slowly to face him and he felt his spirits soar again, the unthinkable vanishing in the warmth of her smile. ‘There is still one space.’ She gestured at the central panel between the windows.
The half-formed idea he had entertained but never thought through came to his lips before he could check it. ‘Perhaps you could … no.’ No, the idea of his Tallie exposed to the eyes of any other man again, even the apparently sexless Harland, was unbearable. Then he saw her face and could not have felt worse if he had struck her.
‘Tallie, darling, I am sorry, I would not have you go through that again for anything. I am a thoughtless beast.’ He caught her in his arms, burying his face in her hair. Damn it! This business of being in love was far harder than he had ever imagined. You opened up your every thought and feeling to another and they to you—and that made it so easy to hurt them. He was aware of her slender body shaking against him. He had made her cry.
‘Tallie, sweetheart … You are laughing.’ She struggled to get her expression under control. ‘You were teasing me?’
Instantly she looked all contrition. It was incredible the way she could hide every feeling or let down every barrier and expose her soul to him. ‘I am sorry. It was just your face when you were contemplating it, and then instantly you came all over-possessive. I think perhaps people would expect a nice conventional portrait of both of us for the main reception rooms, but I have a much better idea for this wall.’
‘Yes?’ Nick said cautiously, telling himself that he had better learn fast how to deal with this infuriating minx of a new wife before she ran rings around him.
‘It was Mr Harland’s suggestion, and I have to admit that I have thought of it often since he made it.’ Nick waited, hands on hips. ‘He said, the first time he saw you—when I, of course, did not see you—that he would like to paint you as Alexander the Great. I found it a powerful image,’ Tallie added reflectively.
‘Alexander? I suppose I must be flattered, but you do not want a picture of a man in armour in the bedchamber, surely?’
‘Oh, no, not in armour.’ For some reason Tallie was edging away from him round the edge of the bed. ‘In the antique style, carrying a shield and sword and wearing sandals.’
‘And what else?’
‘Why, nothing at all.’
‘You little wanton! You expect me to pose naked for some da—blasted artist?’
‘Why not? What is sauce for the goose …’
Nick stared at her. The thought that Tallie could think of him with quite the same physical admiration that he thought of her—in fact, had thought about the image Harland had conjured up with a no-doubt idle suggestion—that was powerfully erotic. He felt his body tighten and stir and caught the spark of wicked acknowledgement in his wife’s eyes.
‘Madam, this gander is not for plucking. And if you need any convincing about just who is master in this house, I am afraid I am just going to have to show you all over again.’ He grinned as she dodged laughing away from his reaching arm and then tumbled of her own accord onto the big bed, stretching out her hands to him.
‘Of course, my lord, if you dislike the idea we will say no more about it …’
Nick let himself be pulled down onto the bed then rolled Tallie over to hold her trapped tightly beneath him. ‘For some reason, my adorable new wife, I suspect that this show of meek obedience is just that—show. I have no doubt that I am going to be cajoled, lured and tricked into Harland’s studio.’
Tallie attempted a hurt pout and only succeeded in looking adorably flustered. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not in the least. I fully anticipate years of enjoyment from your wiles, my love—and from attempting to take your mind off further schemes. Like this, my very dearest love …’
And Tallie, gasping with delight in his arms, could only murmur against his lips, ‘I do love you so, Nick. So very, very much. And for ever.’
* * * * *
The Marriage Debt
Chapter One
The tall man in the frieze coat sat cross-legged on the hard bench, put his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands and thought. It required some concentration to ignore the shackles on his legs, the cold that seeped out of the damp walls, the rustles and squeaking in the rotten straw that covered the floor and the constant noise that echoed through the long dark corridors.
A few cells away a man was screaming an incoherent flood of obscenities that seemed to have gone on for hours. More distantly someone was dragging a stick across the bars of one of the great rooms, a monotonous music that fretted at the nerves. A boy was sobbing somewhere close. Footsteps on the flags outside and the clank and jingle of keys heralded the passing of a pair of turnkeys.
Long ago his father had said he was born to be hanged. At the time he had laughed: nothing had seemed more improbable. Now the words spoken in anger had been proven right: in eight days he would step outside Newgate gaol to the gallows platform and the hangman’s noose.
One small mercy was that they had put him in a cell by himself, not thrown him into one of the common yards where pickpockets and murderers, petty thieves and rapists crowded together, sleeping in great filthy chambers as best they might, fighting amongst themselves and preying on the weakest amongst them if they could.
Apparently his notoriety as Black Jack Standon was worth enough in tips to the turnkeys for them to keep him apart where he could be better shown off to the languid gentlemen and over-excited ladies who found an afternoon’s slumming a stimulating entertainment. The sight of an infamous highwayman who had made the Oxford
