The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,58

crowd and raised her brows. “Ashby, why aren’t you attending my guests in the saloon?”

He had the grace to blush. “Just retrieving wine for them, my lady.”

She knew the wine wasn’t kept in the kitchen, but she let the remark pass. Ashby was a good butler, but she couldn’t fault him for being concerned about Nick’s arrival. She couldn’t fault any of them. She had trained them to be loyal to her and her alone — she could guess that Nick’s return, and what it meant for them, were all any of them were talking about.

Nick gestured her toward the door and they walked out into the snow. Several sets of footprints had already stamped paths to the main outbuildings. The coal, lamp oil, and foodstuffs were all stored in the cellars, but the staff still needed to feed the horses, milk the cows, and stoke fires in the orangery and other succession houses to keep the plants from freezing. One outbuilding, though, had fewer footprints leading to it — and a stout lock on the door that she hadn’t noticed before.

Nick pulled a key from his pocket. But before he unlocked it, he turned to Ellie. “I should have prepared you better, but there was nothing I could say in front of the others. I brought the dead highwayman’s body back with us yesterday…”

“He’s in here?” Ellie interrupted. She’d successfully kept the vision of his bloodied face out of her mind that morning, but she wasn’t sure she was prepared to see it again.

“I couldn’t leave him in the ditch. There was no better place to put him. But unless we tell the magistrate to post notices, we have no way of discovering who he is.”

“What do you want me to sketch? I remember his face — there isn’t enough left to draw.”

Nick dropped the key into his pocket and put his arm around her shoulder. “There’s no need to see the face. I know you aren’t accustomed to such things.”

Ellie shook her head to clear it. She wasn’t eager to see the man again, but if she had to, she wouldn’t let herself vomit again. “I’ve seen wounds like that before. I can handle myself.”

Nick’s hand stopped in mid-caress. “Where would you have seen such a thing?

“Did you not hear?” She counted the months. Her father had died a year earlier, but it had taken a month or two for the rumors to spread. If Marcus had written the truth in a letter to Nick, he might not have received it before his ship left India. “I suppose you wouldn’t have. Officially, Father and Richard died in a carriage accident. Sophronia pulled every string she could to sway the reports. But really, my brother shot Father in the head and then turned the gun on himself.”

She said it as one repeated an oft-told bit of minor gossip — as though she didn’t sometimes still dream of her father and wish he had survived. Her nonchalance was a lie, though. In the dreams where he survived, it was only to tell her that he loved her.

And that was as delusional as any other fantasy she could have.

Nick dropped his arm away from her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“When?” she countered. “We’ve had more pressing issues to address. And anyway, it’s all in the past. How he died doesn’t matter, does it?”

But it did matter. There had been no time for deathbed conversions or last confessions. Just her father’s voice from three weeks before his death — the last time she’d given in and taken dinner with him. He had told her to stop mourning and find some purpose other than redecorating “that peasant’s house.”

She’d never admit it, but he may have had a point.

Nick frowned. “Did he ever apologize for…”

“Charles?”

He nodded.

Ellie snorted. “Of course not. He’d have found another Charles for me if I hadn’t become so disreputable and recalcitrant. But I understand him now, better than I did before.”

“What do you understand?”

“He did what he thought was best. Do I hate him for it? Yes. But he wasn’t evil. He just…wasn’t very nice.”

Before Nick responded, Marcus cleared his throat. “I’m sure this conversation is delightful, but may I suggest you continue it in the house? It’s far too cold out here.”

Nick unlocked the door and ushered them into the gloom of the windowless shed. Enough light came in through the door to make out an outline of the body; he added to it by lighting the lantern that