“Y-yes, perfectly all right, thank you,” she managed.
“Good, I thought you’d feel better with some food inside you. Sleep well.”
She stared at the closed door, wanting to go after him, knowing she could not. What she felt had nothing at all to do with food, and everything to do with Harry Morant.
Sleep well,
he’d told her. Harry hoped she would, but he put no faith in it. For an hour at most he’d managed to distract her, stop her fretting about her lost baby.
He’d succeeded in distracting himself more. He groaned.
Whatever had possessed him to feed her?
He wasn’t going to do it again. Not until they were safely married.
From now until their marriage, if she wanted to starve herself, he would let her. Probably. It was only a few weeks away. She wouldn’t do herself that much damage. Probably.
He crossed the hall to his bedchamber and rummaged around in the drawer till he found what he was looking for. He’d noticed it last time he was here, a small bell with a handle. He tied it to a loop of string, tiptoed back across the hall and attached it to her door handle.
If she opened the door, the bell would wake him up.
He knew he ought to just cross the hall and get into bed with her, chastely, as he had the past two nights. She slept better if he did. The lilac shadows around her eyes had faded considerably since he’d started to share her bed.
Harry, on the other hand, wasn’t well rested at all.
And when he was short on sleep, his self-control wasn’t as reliable. And after the last hour, his self-control was considerably challenged.
He wasn’t sure it was possible for him to share a bed with her any longer. Not without making love to her. And she wasn’t ready for that.
He needed physical relief. Desperately.
He was fairly certain much more holding her without making love to her would kill him. He would explode.
It had taken every shred of strength he had to pull away from her and stride coolly from the room.
But she’d said no, even though he knew that she wanted him. And Lord, how the thought of her wanting him fired his blood anew.
But no was no. In Harry’s code that was that.
Who was the bastard who’d raped her? The question ate at him. He wasn’t going to get off scot-free, not if Harry had anything to do with it.
No man who forced a woman deserved the title of man.
And a man who would force someone like Nell . . . such a man didn’t deserve to live.
Twelve
E
than squinted over the letter that had arrived that day from Tibby. It was not her usual neat hand. She must have written it in a hurry. And in the rain, for the paper was crinkled in spots, and some words were blotchy where the ink had run.
My dear Mr. Delaney,
I must confess to some concern as to the tone of your last letter, particularly when you were talking about this woman you are courting. Far be it from me to criticize a woman I’ve never met
Ethan frowned. Never met? Who the hell did she think he was courting?
but it seems to me that she does not value you as she ought. You are a fine, decent, honorable, intelligent man, Mr. Delaney, and the equal of any one in the land.
Ethan read that part again, savoring the sound of the words: fine, decent, honorable,
and
intelligent. He didn’t know another living soul who’d describe him in those terms. Someone might describe him as fine. Or decent. And possibly honorable. But never all three at once and never with the word “intelligent” attached.
Never accept inferior treatment, and do not look down on your background for the things that cannot be changed, and for which you cannot be blamed. What is important is what you have done with your life, and the skills you have learned, and most of all your heart. If this woman does not value this about you, my dear Mr. Delaney, she is not worthy of you.
Here the writing got very blotchy indeed. The rain must have set in, he thought. That would explain the odd way she’d ended it.
I say this as your former teacher, to whom your welfare and future happiness is important.
Yours most sincerely, Miss Jane Tibthorpe
Ethan grinned as he carefully folded her letter and put it in the box with all her letters.
So Tibby didn’t like the sound of this woman he was courting, eh? A touch of the green-eyed monster perhaps? “I hope so, darlin’. I hope so indeed,” he said as he closed the lid of the box.
“She might yet entertain feelings for me after all, Freckles, so what do you think of that?” The dog thumped her tail on the floor.
“Aye, and she reckons I’m intelligent, too. Not bad for a formerly illiterate Irish clod, eh?” And with a jaunty step he headed off to the vicarage.
“
N
ow, Vicar, what can you tell me about some fellow called Lochinvar?” Ethan moved his only remaining knight. “Checkmate,” he declared and sat back.
The vicar frowned over the board, then shook his head. “Bless my soul, I never saw that one coming. Excellent, my boy, excellent.”
Ethan repressed a grin. He was looking down the barrel of forty years, but the old man still called him “my boy.” “Do you know who I mean?”
“Lochinvar? Yes, I know,” the vicar said. “This is to do with your lady love, I suppose.”
“Yes, I’d never heard of him, but she knows all about him, it seems.”
“Then your Miss Tibby has a soft spot for a romantic hero.”
“Oh.” Ethan frowned. He wasn’t a romantic sort himself, and certainly no hero. Romantic sorts were handsome and dashing. He was just a battered old tomcat, looking to settle down with a woman he had no business to love. He was banking on Tibby’s fondness for taking in strays.
The vicar quoted, “ ‘So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war; There never was knight like the young Lochinvar’!”
Ethan sat forward. “A fighter, was he? She told me once that when we first met she’d thought me a young Lochinvar.”
The vicar’s brows rose. “Good heavens. What did you do?”
“She was bein’ held hostage by some villains who were after a princess and her son.”
“A princess?”
“The princess was Tibby’s former pupil and she was comin’ to Tibby in secret, or so they thought. But the villains had got wind of it and got there before the princess. I knocked at the door for directions and there was Tibby, white as a ghost, scared to death, and furious with it.” He grinned reminiscently. “A brave little thing, she is. She slipped me a note tellin’ about the men who were holding her prisoner, but I never even looked at it. She gave me such a look for being a big stupid—she didn’t know then I couldn’t read.”
“So what did you do?” the vicar asked, as eager as a boy.
“I snatched her from the hold of the blackguards, tossed her on me horse, and galloped off with her to safety.”
“Wonderful, wonderful! What an adventure,” the old man exclaimed. “No wonder she calls you young Lochinvar. It’s Sir Walter Scott, from
Marmion
, which was all the rage twenty years ago. A long poem,” the vicar explained, seeing Ethan’s blank expression. He quoted, “ ‘Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west! Through all the wide border his steed was the best.’ ”
Ethan brightened. “That’s like me. I reckon I’ve got the best horses in the county.”
“ ‘And, save his good broadsword, he weapon had none; He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone!’ ”
Ethan sat back. “Nope, the man’s a fool. If you’re riding alone, you need to be better armed than that. A knife in your boot, at least.”
The vicar smiled. He fetched a bound volume from the bookshelves, found the page, and handed it to Ethan. “Read it.”
Ethan read it slowly through, stumbling over an unfamiliar word or two, and then sat back, thoughtful. “So, he kidnapped Fair Ellen from her wedding . . .”
The vicar sighed. “Yes. I’ve never understood the fair sex’s fondness for young Lochinvar. I would have thought it would make for a shocking scandal, not to mention a difficult legal problem—getting the first marriage annulled—particularly difficult, I would have thought, when all the bride and groom’s relatives were out to kill young Lochinvar. The Scots, you know, take their feuds very seriously. The whole thing was extremely ill-judged. But there is no accounting for female fancies.”
Ethan agreed. “If it was me, I’d’ve grabbed the woman the first time around, right after her pa told me no, instead of waiting till the last minute, then riding in and upsetting the wedding. Women hate that. It’s their big day. I bet Fair Ellen gave him an earful about it every day for the rest of his life, poor divil.”
The bell jangled on the door handle of Nell’s bedchamber sometime after midnight. Harry stumbled from his bed in his smalls and hurried down the hallway after her.
She was half running, muttering in an anguished voice, “Where is she? Where? Must find her, find her, find her.”
As always the sight of her distress in her sleep moved him deeply. He caught up with her at the top of the stairs and turned her around, catching her in the circle of his arm. “Hush, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Torie is here. She is safe.”
This time she struggled with him. “No, no, not her. Not Torie. Not my Torie,” she muttered vehemently, pushing his hands away desperately, trying to shove her way past him. She was surprisingly strong.
“Come to bed,” he said, and when she continued to fight him, he scooped her off her cold, bare feet and held her against his chest.
She stared past him with blank, heartbreaking eyes. “Is she dead, is she? My Torie?” Tears slid down her cheeks.
Her silent, blind grief tore him apart. He carried her back down the hallway and to bed. He held her against him, her face resting on his chest, wet with tears. He kissed them away, tasting the salt and wishing he could take away the pain.
He told himself that in the morning she would remember none of this.
It didn’t help. He held her against him, rocking her, murmuring reassurance and comforting lies, soothing her with words and hands until the storm of midnight grief had passed. Finally she lay limp and exhausted in his arms, her breathing slowed, and she slept the sleep of the weary. And Harry, exhausted, slept, too.
In the morning he took her riding in the park, to blow the cobwebs away. Riding helped when you were tense. And Nell was so tense she could snap.
The search had been going on too long.
Masculine voices sounded in the hall as Nell emerged from her bedchamber, washed and changed after her ride in the park. The exercise had done her good.
Curious to see Harry’s friends, she came quietly halfway down the stairs and paused.
What would they think of their friend marrying a fallen woman? she wondered. Not that she cared what they thought, as long as they found Torie. But it might matter to Harry.
One was Rafe Ramsey and the other Luke Ripton, but which was which?
The taller of the two men was extremely elegant, with a superbly cut dark blue coat, highly starched shirt points, an intricately tied neck cloth, buff breeches, and gleaming boots. His attire bore all the hallmarks of a dandy. What distinguished him from that fraternity, she thought, was his broad shoulders, not the result of tailor’s padding, and his strongly muscled horseman’s thighs.
He must be Rafe. She’d got the impression from Harry that Rafe was coolheaded and deceptively indolent. Nonchalant was a word he’d used and this man certainly gave that impression.
Harry had called Luke their “fallen angel” and when she saw his face, she understood why. He was darkly beautiful and somehow tragic-looking, with dark eyes and cheekbones a woman would weep for. His thick dark hair was tousled, and he wore his neck cloth carelessly knotted. He seemed full of restless energy, for he moved the whole time, snapping his whip against his boots, pacing back and forth as they talked, and punctuating his sentences with lively gestures.
The clock chimed in the hall for quarter to eight. Nell took a breath and continued her way down the stairs.
She knew to the second when Harry caught sight of her. Their eyes met and she warmed under his gaze. She was aware of his friends looking but she didn’t care. She felt pretty when Harry looked at her like that. Cooper had braided her hair again and this time she’d woven a primrose yellow ribbon through it.
Harry came forward and took her hand as she descended the last few steps. “These are my friends, Nell: Rafe Ramsey and Luke Ripton. Gentlemen, my betrothed, Lady Helen Freymore.”
“How do you do, Mr. Ramsey, Mr. Ripton.” Nell curtsied, pleased that she’d guessed correctly.
“Delighted to meet you, Lady Helen,” Rafe Ramsey said. He had curiously heavy-lidded eyes of a piercing pale blue. They rested on her coolly. Uncomfortable eyes, she thought as he raised her hand to his lips. She wasn’t sure she liked Mr. Ramsey.
“Harry told us about your problem,” Luke said bowing over her hand. He looked at her with intense, dark eyes. “We’ll do our best to find your baby, I promise.”
Without warning Nell found herself tearing up. She gave him a wobbly smile, nodded, and squeezed his hand.
Harry stepped forward and put an arm around her waist.
“Let us go into the breakfast room,” Rafe suggested. “Harry promised if we got here at this impossible hour, he’d feed us, Lady Helen.”
They all went in to the breakfast parlor. Harry’s friends seemed to know their way around his aunt’s house, she thought, watching them head straight for the array of covered dishes on the sideboard. They seemed very much at home.
“We’ve known Harry and Gabe since school,” Rafe explained. Those uncanny eyes must have noted her surprise. “We’ve run tame in Lady Gosforth’s various homes since we were raw striplings.”