The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,52
and valets. If any visitor has a secret, we stand a good chance of learning it.”
Marcus drained his second cup of tea. “I can talk to the tenants and see if anyone has noticed a stranger in the area.”
“I will come with you, if you want to leave now,” Nick said. It was too early to talk to most of the guests, but country farmers kept different hours. “Not a word of this to anyone, though. Our only advantage lies in keeping everyone here, and making the killer nervous about why we haven’t reported the highwayman. If the party disperses, we’ll be no closer to finding an answer.”
Ellie stood up, leaning over the desk to hand Nick one of the pieces of paper Lucia had brought her. “Before you go off looking for danger, sign this. If you demand that the party stay intact, we need some rules for our…other agreement.”
He took the sheet. It was their agreement — brief, direct, and in writing. It stated that if Ellie did as Nick wished until the thirteenth of June, her debt would be forgiven. But Ellie had added an addendum: no one could find out about their arrangement. If gossip started to spread, he would let her go immediately.
He looked up and met her eyes. “This is not what we agreed to.”
“No, but if you don’t agree to this, I vow I will murder you myself.”
She wasn’t teasing him. “Why is the gossip so important to you? From what I’ve heard, gossip has never bothered you.”
“Gossip has never bothered me because I was always able to control what they said. But I cannot control you, can I?”
Nick snorted. “I’m sure you’ll try. You didn’t answer my question, though.”
“It would be obvious, if you knew anything of the ton.”
That was a statement that should have insulted him, but he considered it a clue, not a barb. Realization dawned fast. “Your sisters.”
“My friends as well. And my servants, if you want all of it. They are so discreet because they know I can procure jobs for them anywhere they like — but if my reputation goes, so go those opportunities, and so goes their loyalty. I could risk any scandal I wanted at nineteen…”
“…Except for eloping with a merchant’s son,” Nick interjected.
She ignored him. “But I have other responsibilities now. I’ll give you what you think I owe you — as I said, perhaps atonement will help me. But if you are seeking to humiliate me in public, and ruin other lives along with mine, you’re not the man I once loved.”
The man she once loved. She said it so matter-of-factly — both the love and the dead, past-tense nature of it. He didn’t want her love to be dead. He didn’t want everything between them to be the past.
But she was right about one thing. If he ruined her in public, it would ruin his honor along with it. And as much as he had dreamed of her groveling at his feet in the middle of Almack’s, a public revenge wasn’t worth the cost.
He stole the pen from her hand and signed both sheets with a bold, scrawling stroke — feeling almost like Faustus making a deal with the devil, but he was in too deep to stop himself. Public revenge was off the table — but private revenge, and all the ways he’d imagined taking her, were still open to him.
He handed her the pen. “Sign, my love.”
Her fingers brushed his. There was no hesitation, no fear, no regret in her touch. Her eyes were stark again, but if she saw visions of hell, they didn’t stop her from signing her name.
It was done. He ignored Marcus and Lucia, who both coughed at the same time, and went around the desk to kiss Ellie on the top of the head. “Tonight,” he murmured into her hair. “I will send you instructions later.”
She didn’t betray any curiosity. “Just don’t interfere with dinner.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. There’s no need to add your chef to the list of suspects.”
Ellie grinned at that, just barely. Her amusement should have piqued him. He should have been annoyed that she was spiking his guns with her acceptance of his revenge — she almost seemed to want it, in a way that he had never predicted when he had imagined it before.
But he found he didn’t mind. Now that he knew she wanted him on some level, even if she denied it, he couldn’t imagine having her