The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,6
before she showed how much it cost her to stay on that throne. “I had so nearly forgotten you, after all.”
“‘My lord,’” he repeated. “I heard in London that your father died a year ago. Pity. I would have liked to watch him as I took my place in the Lords.”
In another world, she might have liked it too.
“Why are you here?” she asked. “You vowed not to return until you had forgotten me, and yet you still seem to remember my name.”
“It would have been better if we had both forgotten.”
“You can forget me just as well here as anywhere else. Welcome to your home, Lord Folkestone,” she said, calling him by his title for the first time. She was gratified to see him flinch. “I’ll remove myself to London in the morning. If you’ve anything to say, please direct it to my solicitors.”
She stood, ready to descend to the dancing floor. She saw Lord Norbury hovering nearby — the escort she’d requested for the first dance, since he was attending without his wife and needed a partner. But Nick took her elbow before she could walk away.
“We have unfinished business between us, Ellie. Whatever else you may have forgotten, I assume you remember why I left. You owe me a conversation.”
He hadn’t come all the way from India to converse with her. The very idea was preposterous. And if anything, he owed her a conversation — or at least a chance to explain herself.
She couldn’t do it here, not in the middle of her — his — ballroom. He wanted something from her — something she would not like, if she correctly read the menace in his tone. But whatever he wanted, she couldn’t consider it when her heart still raced from his return. Changing the battlefield and giving herself time to regroup would at least put her on better footing.
She nodded, pretending that she was entirely unaffected by his touch on her arm. “The servants will see to it that you have a room and whatever accoutrements you require. Shall we adjourn until morning, my lord?”
He stepped closer, destroying the distance her words had attempted to create. For a dizzy moment she thought he would kiss her. His eyes looked the same as they had before past kisses — suddenly warm, intent, focused on her and only her. He leaned in, his lips almost touching hers. Hers parted of their own accord, ready physically even though she knew it was the worst thing that could possibly happen to her.
He wouldn’t — he couldn’t — kiss her in front of half the ton.
As it turned out, he didn’t kiss her. Her lips were impertinent enough to be disappointed. Instead, he turned and whispered in her ear. “I don’t wait for you — not anymore. Entertain your guests, but we will be having our conversation tonight.”
He was gone before she could protest, striding back up the carpet to the double doors. He didn’t leave, though. He leaned against a pillar beside them, as though guarding the room — or preventing her escape.
She shivered.
Norbury was at her side an instant later. “Is that man bothering you?” he asked. “I will ask the guards to see him out.”
Ellie shook her head. The final notes of the processional sounded again. She stepped over the mask that lay at her feet and gave her hand to Norbury. “It’s Folkestone,” she said briefly. “We’ve no cause to remove him, and even if he could be gotten rid of, I doubt those ornamental guards are up to the task. Shall we begin?”
Norbury was startled. It was evident from the sudden tightening of his grip on her hand and the chill in his voice as he said, “I thought he planned to remain in India.”
Ellie shrugged. “Didn’t we all?”
She feigned boredom, so well that Norbury didn’t press. He never pressed, at least not with her. They had never been lovers, but they had been friends for half a decade — and anyone who remained her friend knew when to leave well enough alone.
As the music started, she felt Nick watching, and frowning, from the opposite side of the room. She let her mind go blank. Her thoughts flowed away like water, as she had trained herself to do in those awful months after her wedding and sudden widowhood. She would dance the country dance, then a waltz, then a reel — every dance she had the stamina for, if it kept Nick away.