The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,13
looking at some point over his shoulder, her patience flared out. She tossed the rest of her whisky down her throat, standing before the burn reached her belly. “If you won’t talk, I have guests to see to. Perhaps in another ten years we can repeat this charming scene. Until then, I wish you very happy.”
She leaned down to set the glass on the small table between them. His hand shot out to grab her wrist. He kept her pinned there, bent awkwardly at the waist, her face mere inches from his.
“This isn’t the conversation you promised me,” he said. “And this time, I won’t let you leave until we’ve had it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Ellie felt all the questions, all the anger, all the tears of the last ten years eating their way out of the secret places where she had buried them. His silent judgment had affected her more than she realized. She damned him for it. She tried to pull her hand away, but now that he was in a position to claim something of her, he didn’t seem willing to relinquish it. She couldn’t match him for strength.
But she would never let him see her cry.
“What good is conversation?” she asked, her voice bitter. “I broke our engagement and married your cousin. You inherited when he died, yet chose to stay on the other side of the world. I think we’ve made our intentions to each other quite clear.”
“And yet,” he said. His fingers tightened on her wrist. “And yet the fact that I haven’t forgiven you means that I haven’t forgotten you, either.”
She dipped her head, unable to look in his eyes anymore. She could have said the same to him. She had imagined saying it on any number of nights, when she had lain awake and wondered if he would ever return, if he dreamed of her as she dreamed of him.
His free hand came up and brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, tucking it behind her ear. He had done that frequently when they were younger, during their secret courtship, when they’d rambled the countryside unchaperoned and her hair had turned to shambles in the wind.
If only he’d eloped with her when she had begged him to, before she went to London and was lost to the social whirl. If only she’d eloped with him at the end of that season, rather than giving in to her father’s threats and promises.
She raised her head. His hand slid naturally to the curve of her cheek. She waited just a moment too long to tilt her face away, but she didn’t examine her reasons. “Let me go, Nick.”
She heard the pleading note in her voice and hated herself for it. If he heard her desperation, though, it spurred him on. He released her wrist — but only long enough to sweep the table away with his foot, sending it crashing to the floor.
Ellie stumbled backward, the sudden violence surprising her. Her whisky tumbler missed the soft landing of the thick Axminster carpet and shattered against the nearby hearth, covering the stones with glistening shards of glass. She saw the damage in an instant, then turned back to Nick. His eyes matched the wreckage, with the warmth of a fire and the cruel edge of a razor.
She should have been frightened as he uncoiled from the chair, a cobra about to strike. And maybe she was frightened — but it wasn’t the intensity in his eyes that scared her. She feared the hot swirl of emotion rising up within her. She’d learned how to control it all, locked it away where it could never hurt her again. But it only took a few minutes with Nick to sweep the first of those barriers away.
She wouldn’t survive if her barriers disappeared entirely.
So when he touched her cheek again, she jerked away like his hand was a brand. “I cannot do this, Nick,” she said, forcing the words out through clenched teeth.
“Marcus said you’d given up on me coming home. Are you looking for another Charles amongst our guests?”
Ellie frowned. “Did you come back because you thought I might marry again?”
He laughed, dark and dangerous. “Marry as many men as you like. I’m not here to leg-shackle myself to you.”
She pretended, even to herself, that his statement didn’t disappoint her. “Then why are you here?”
“Business, of course. I’m still the merchant you threw over for a marquess, even if I have the title now.”