The Marquess Who Loved Me - By Sara Ramsey Page 0,70
the time between the words he’d hurled at her and the moment he had awoken.
“I’m unrepentant myself,” he said.
That drew a laugh from her. “How shocking, my lord.” Then she dropped her hand to his chest, covering his heart. “I hate you, too. For destroying me then, and for coming back to do it again.”
She sat up before he could grab her. It was only as she moved that he remembered that he had spent himself inside her — against every plan he had and all common sense. He reached for her hand, but she swatted it away. “We’ve hurt each other enough for tonight, don’t you think?” she said briskly, pulling herself up to stand over his naked body.
He stood up to join her, not bothering with his breeches. “I am sorry that I did not remember the consequences. I will be more careful.”
She looked confused for a moment. He dropped his eyes, pointedly, to her belly. She rolled hers. “Never fear. If I must, I’ll take your bastard to the Continent when our arrangement is over.”
He could see her, suddenly, heavy with his child. In that dream she was in his bed, in his home, laughing. She would imagine herself on an island, alone, where he could never touch her again.
He reached for her. She stepped back. “Let’s cut bait, Nick. We hate each other, we’ve behaved abominably to each other for over a decade, and we wouldn’t even be discussing a pregnancy if you hadn’t arrived motivated only by revenge. I’ll grant you, the physical pleasure is wonderful — you’ve gotten better, Claiborne,” she said, in a condescending tone that made him wish he could throttle her. “But until you stop either worshiping me or dragging me through the mud, there is no future I see in which I would want to give a child over to you to be raised.”
She wasn’t even talking about marriage. She was talking about a bastard child — their bastard child — as though its bastardy would be inevitable. His anger rose. “I’ll stop worshipping you and dragging you through the mud when you stop shutting yourself off and pretending you’re the coldest bitch in Europe,” he shot back.
She lifted her chin. “I am the coldest bitch in Europe.”
Nick would have laughed, or strangled her, if he hadn’t seen the flash of despair in her eyes. But he let her go rather than pressing her. She wouldn’t crack tonight — in his effort to crack her, he had cracked himself instead.
So he bade her a stiff, kissless goodnight, pulled on his breeches, and poured himself another whisky. Ellie was a mystery — and he wanted to solve her.
But the bigger mystery, without hope for a clean outcome, was why he had told her he hated her — and why his heart still screamed the opposite.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next morning, Nick wasn’t in the mood to discuss his impending demise. To be fair, he wasn’t in the mood for much of anything beyond finding Ellie and trying, again, to unearth whatever feelings she hid behind her mask.
But even though Nick had spent more time obsessing over Ellie than pursuing whoever wanted him dead, he could still force himself to consider that issue instead. It had taken a renewed urgency overnight. While he had lain in his chamber, mostly sleepless, his would-be assailant had struck a different target.
“Have there been any other fires in the area?” he asked Marcus.
Marcus had just joined him the breakfast room, and he speared a forkful of ham from the sideboard before replying. “No fires. I rode into the village after you dragged me out of bed this morning. No one has heard anything suspicious. The timing is good for someone wanting to escape notice, though. You’re the most interesting bit of gossip around. It is easier for a stranger to pass through unremarked when everyone is more interested in what your return might mean for them.”
Nick raked a hand through his hair. It was only eight a.m., and he had been in the breakfast room for half an hour waiting for Marcus’s report, but his hair still smelled of smoke. His batman had awoken him at six with the news that the shed where they had kept the highwayman’s body was on fire. The staff had contained the blaze, thanks to a stableboy who smelled the smoke before the fire spread to other outbuildings. But the shed, and the body it housed, were destroyed.