The Marquess Who Loved Me Read Online Free

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.
    He would come, though. And when he did, she would find a way to be so calm, so remote, that he couldn’t possibly affect her again.

C H A P T E R T H R E E

    How was she more beautiful than he remembered? She’d been pretty at seventeen, even lovelier at nineteen — the toast of the season in ’02, when her father had belatedly, begrudgingly brought her out in a bid to make her forget Nick. She’d vowed that nothing could induce her to marry someone else. But by the end of the season, she was married to — and, three days later, widowed by — his cousin. And Nick was somewhere in the Atlantic, wishing he could drown his love for her as effectively as she had suffocated her love for him.
    She had been beautiful that season, even on the day when she’d tossed him aside for a title. But beautiful wasn’t quite the right word now. She was too fierce for mere beauty. Her hair was down, shockingly so — an homage to the famous portrait of Queen Elizabeth, surely. He knew it was a coincidence that it was exactly the way he liked it. As she navigated the turns and dips of the first country dance, her hair flared around her like a curtain of fire. She was pale, though. Paler than she had been before he removed his mask.
    The Virgin Queen would not show