“I am fine.” She held up a staying hand as if to ward him off. “Do not come any nearer. I merely forgot my feet were blistered. Your salve does wonders when one is seated, but the effect is not nearly the same when one is moving about.”
“You should be resting,” he insisted, irritated with her.
Angry with her.
For her stubbornness. For failing to take proper care of herself. For chasing after Sidmouth. For refusing to believe him.
“I have blisters. I shall live.” She made a dismissive gesture.
Blast her.
“You are also sunburnt.” He allowed his gaze to roam over her, taking in her dress for the first time since entering the library. It was silk, sky-blue, and fit her gorgeous silhouette to perfection. She looked every bit the elegant marchioness rather than the wild, wicked woman about whom gossips loved to wag their tongues.
He wondered which Nell was the real Nell.
She was a cipher, his wife.
“I used my pearl powder, and it is quite hidden now,” she said, bending to retrieve the book she had held in her lap, which had thumped to the floor in her haste to rise.
So she had applied powder, he thought grimly. He had noticed it when he had been near enough to kiss her. The freckles he loved had been scarcely visible on the bridge of her nose. More evidence of the care she had taken with her toilette, all for Sidmouth.
Jack wished the bastard had a second nose for him to break.
Nell rose to her feet, wincing again. Jack reached for her, placing a staying hand on her waist when it looked as if her knees went weak.
“Be careful,” he said.
With her free hand, she pushed at him. “Cease touching me, Needham. I will not have you pawing at me when Tom arrives.”
“God forbid,” he told her acidly.
She clutched the book in a tight grip. “I will not have you presiding over my meeting with Tom as if you are some draconian chaperone. Have you nowhere else to be?”
Like hell he would allow her to be alone with Sidmouth.
“Darling, I will eat my riding boots before I leave you alone with your lover,” he drawled, hating the word on his tongue.
Lover.
Hating the man.
Hating the situation.
Hating himself.
But not hating Nell. No, he could never do that. He loved her far too much. He always had. Always would. And he would fight for her, too. Fight for her as he should have done so long ago.
“Why do you persist?” Nell hissed at him, her eyes flashing indigo fire.
“Because you are my wife,” he returned. “And because I love you. I loved you three years ago. I loved you on the day I made you mine. Good God, I think I loved you from the moment I first met you. I have never stopped loving you, Nell. Believe what you will of me, but do not doubt the way I feel for you. Not ever.”
He had not meant to say the words aloud, nor with such broken vehemence. Not here, not now. The timing was…bloody dreadful. No other way to describe it. What a seasoned charmer he was, telling his wife he was in love with her when her lover was about to arrive at any moment.
He should have told her yesterday when he had been kissing her senseless beneath the warmth of the setting summer’s sun. When she had been pliant and acquiescent in his arms. When she had been kissing him with a ferocity that shook him to his core.
And Nell? Her lips parted. She looked stricken. Then as if she was about to say something…
“Lord Sidmouth,” Reeves announced at the threshold of the library, breaking the tenseness of the moment.
