he could not help but to admire her feet. They were dainty, so small. At least half the size of his own beastly affairs.
“You can trust me, Nellie,” he said at last, daring to use the sobriquet he had once used for her.
She stiffened and attempted to tug her foot from his grip, but he held fast. “Do not call me that.”
He took up the tin of salve, opened it, and applied a liberal swipe over her blisters. “Why not?”
“No one calls me that,” she snapped. “I am Nell. Nellie was a stupid girl. A na?ve twit. A hopeless dreamer.”
He tied a gentle, makeshift bandage around her heel and then looked back up at her. “You still look like Nellie to me. You still taste like her, too. You kiss like her. You smell like her.”
She shuddered. He absorbed the effect his words had upon her, his fingers still lingering on her ankle. He had another foot to tend to, but he was working on more than her blisters, and they both knew it.
Perhaps he was the cruel villain she believed him, but in a different fashion entirely.
Because he could not seem to stop. Jack was selfish and greedy and hungry. He had no mercy when it came to her. He had already waited far too long. He wanted her back, and he meant to win her, to woo her, to earn her, however he must.
“I am not the girl you married,” she insisted. “I never could go back to being her. I do not want to. I have learned far too much.”
He did not want to think about what she may have learned. Some of her knowledge would perhaps have been carnal. The gossips certainly suggested so. He could not dwell upon that which he could not change. She was still the woman he loved, despite her protestations to the contrary.
“You will always be the girl I married.” He endeavored to keep his voice calm and even as he retrieved her other foot and set about performing the same ablutions. “You cannot change that, no matter how much you wish you could. You will forever be my Nellie, the girl who fed me pineapples and grapes from her hand, who read me poetry and fed the birds in the lake, who went galloping across the park with me, who made love with me in the gardens that moonlit summer’s night…”
“Stop,” she ground out. “Stop talking.”
She was not unaffected by him, by their memories, by who they were to each other. He knew that. He sensed it. Yesterday, when she had kissed him back, he had his answer to the question that had been plaguing him ever since he had decided he must return to her regardless of her wishes.
Could he win her?
Yes.
He had hope. She was not a fortress.
“Do you not care to remember, Nellie?” he asked calmly, applying salve to the broken blisters on her other foot.
“Cease calling me that,” she ordered him through gritted teeth.
Her voice was almost desperate. He should take pity upon her, but she was hell-bent upon distrusting him, upon believing the worst of him, upon leaving him for another man.
Never. Not whilst I still have breath in my body.
He wound a bandage around this heel as well. “Cease calling you Nellie, or cease reminding you of what we had?”
“Both.” Her tone was harsh. Cutting. Embittered. “What we had was a lie, and as I have already told you, I am not the same girl you knew.”
“What happened to her?” he asked, caressing her ankle, although he had finished his task.
He could not bear to sever this moment, their connection. If he could not reach her emotionally, he had to believe he could physically. He caressed the protrusion of her ankle bone with his thumb.
“A new Nell rose from the ashes.” She tugged her foot away from him. “One who wants nothing to do with you. Thank you for your kindness. But now please do get out. I wish to dress.”
He thought about offering to play the part of lady’s maid as well, but then decided not to push her too far. When it came to winning back his wife, he would need to wage a slow and steady siege.
He rose and offered her the pot of aloe. “As you wish, my dear. But you may want to use this upon your sunburn. It does wonders to cool and heal your skin—trust me on this matter. I will see you at breakfast.”
Chapter Six
Nell avoided