“Do your worst to me, Nellie,” he invited, his grin deepening. “Perhaps I may even like it.”
The bounder. Of course he would turn their conversation back to the erotic. And of course her pulse would increase and her entire body would flush with awareness. Why,oh why, did this man have to affect her so?
Her lips twitched with the urge to smile, but she could not afford to encourage him. “You wish, my lord.”
He waggled his brows with comic effect. “I have a great many wishes. Would you care to hear them?”
She had to put an end to this lighthearted moment. “Save them for your next marchioness, I beg you.”
His grin vanished, and she knew a pang of loss. He looked suddenly, unaccountably sad. “Twelve days, Nellie.”
“Twelve days to freedom,” she countered.
“Or twelve days to happiness.” He stood, leaving his sketchbook and charcoal in the grass at his feet. “May I join you?”
She wanted to deny him, but doing so would only prove what she was doing her utmost to refute. “I suppose I cannot stop you.”
“Allow me to carry that for you,” he offered gallantly, reaching for the basket.
She was reluctant to relinquish it, but he was already sliding the wicker handle from her arm. “I have been carrying it myself for the last three years,” she could not resist pointing out to him.
Nor could she seem to keep the bitterness from her tone.
She still resented his absence. His return had not changed that.
“I should have been here,” he said, as if reading her mind. His expression was somber. “I never should have gone. I should have stayed and fought for you.”
Part of her wished he had. Part of her was relieved he had not.
How would she have withstood him?
“The ducks are likely hungry,” she said instead, continuing down the path. “We ought not to keep them waiting.”
He sighed behind her, but the crunch of his soles upon the gravel told her he was following. She did not spare him a glance over her shoulder, keeping her gaze trained upon the lake. A warm breeze blew the scent of mown hay to her. The ducks were swimming on the smooth surface of the water, the swans not far. As she neared the water’s edge, the ducks began quacking and swimming toward her.
“They are well pleased to spy their breakfast arriving,” Jack observed, stopping at her side. “It looks as if we have an entire duck family to feed today.”
A male and female duck were in the lead, a trail of seven half-grown ducklings fanned out behind them in the water. She had watched the babies grow all summer long, from tiny balls of fluff to the almost mature ducks they had become.
“There was originally nine of them,” she said softly as the ducks came closer. “Two disappeared somewhere along the way.”
“Poor mama duck,” Jack said, but his gaze was on Nell instead of the ducks.
Something inside her shifted. Melted. The way he was looking at her made her think of how reckless she had been with him. Of the warmth of his seed inside her body. Even now, his child could be growing in her womb. The notion was not nearly as unwanted as it should be.
She cleared her throat. “It is nature’s way, I suppose. The fox needs his dinner as well as the duck.”
“True,” he agreed. “Nellie, no matter what happens in the next twelve days, if there are repercussions, promise you will tell me.”
Repercussions. A baby.
Jack’s baby.
She bit her lip against a wave of pain and longing she had no right to feel. “I would never go to Tom carrying another man’s child. You need not fear I would keep such a thing from you.”
His jaw clenched, and he looked as if he wanted to say more, but then he nodded and turned his attention toward the lake. The ducks had reached the edge and made it to the grassy bank, ready for their corn. Trying to distract herself, she reached into the basket.
But Jack had the same idea. Their fingers brushed, and a jolt skipped up her arm, past her elbow. She snatched her hand away as if he had burned her. Would it always be this way? Their physical connection so unbreakable? She could not help but to wonder.
