Before anyone else could come in Nell stood in front of the clock and stooped far enough to make her eyes on the same level as the holes where the key went in. ‘If Papa left something for me to find it must be in there,’ she said as she eyed the case where an automata a past Hancourt must have brought back from his travels stood. It represented a czarina in full coronation regalia and she had never found time to study it closely before, but the incredible detail and opulence of it almost distracted her from the quieter beauty that finally gave her father’s mystery away. ‘There,’ she said softly at last and felt her smile wobble and tears threaten at the thought of Lord Chris hiding it for her before some trip he was about to make, knowing how much she would miss him and hoping to distract her.
‘The belt?’ Lord Barberry asked.
‘Yes, or at least what looks like a clasp on it—it’s my mother’s locket,’ she said reverently. ‘I thought I’d forgotten her, but now I see it I remember how she always wore it. Of course he couldn’t take it with him on an adventure with Pamela, she would have thrown it in the nearest midden.’
‘It’s very fine piece of workmanship,’ he said as he came up beside her to peer at it through the glass and Nell shivered at the image of them reflected in the polished glass. They looked right, she decided and never mind clothes, lies or rank.
‘Can we take it out?’ she whispered, feeling as if she hardly dared breathe on the case lest it shatter and take her newly discovered memories with it.
‘Do you know where your uncle hides the key?’ Fergus asked and how could she think of him as a stiff and stubborn earl when he was standing by her looking as if he wasn’t fit to clean his own steps, and he’d just made such a fool of himself in front of Colm and Uncle Horace surely he felt something out of the ordinary for her? They had told each other so many lies she wasn’t sure she trusted words any more, but this time maybe his actions spoke for him and they were saying something silly and un-Moss-like and quite wonderful. This lurch of heat, tenderness and awe she felt when she thought of a possible future for them must wait a few more minutes though, so they could finally admit it to each other without someone interrupting.
Uncle Horace eventually found the key to the czarina’s cabinet in a puzzle box he and Chris used to play with as boys. ‘Racked my brains to think where he might have hidden it as soon as I realised where that villainous old clock was pointing us,’ he said as he watched Nell unlock the cabinet.
A small gilt pin held the belt in place at the back and it was the work of moments to tug it out and there, at last, it was in Nell’s hand. ‘He used to show me the trick of it until I could undo it,’ she said softly and pressed the neat mechanism that held the clever thing together and there were her parents; young and happy and as full of life as if it had been painted yesterday.
No need for tears this time, not with Fergus at one side and Uncle Horace holding a candle aloft at the other so she could study the finely painted images more closely. Aunt Barbara was warming her toes on the hastily lit fire and Eve had gone to bed, since Colm was still busy arranging the Derneleys’ future with the lords of creation who had marched them off to some anonymous place they kept for awkward problems before they were quietly exported somewhere more convenient.
‘You are very like them,’ Fergus said.
‘Hmm, my father was accounted very handsome and my mother quite plain.’
‘Then account was wrong,’ he argued, his gaze steady as he met hers to assure her that her mother certainly wasn’t plain and nor was she. ‘The very fine artist who painted this took the trouble to see her as she was, instead of listening to such jealous nonsense.’
‘Yes, it’s very like,’ Uncle Horace said, ‘Come and look, Barb.’
‘It is,’ her aunt said as she joined them, finally warm after an anxious wait to find out if all was well with her nearest and dearest. ‘And Barberry is right, you do have a strong look of her.’
‘I’m glad then; he loved her back, didn’t he?’ Nell said. ‘And I suppose he was terribly lonely after he lost her,’ she added with a shake of her head to say it seemed a very small excuse for his obsession with Pamela.
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Fergus protested as if she’d accused him of a betrayal beyond even his record of them so far.
‘No, you’re too strong to need anyone that much, Lord Barberry,’ she told him sharply and why must she snap at him when most of her only wanted to coo words of love and melt in his arms?
‘Not strong, just stubborn, and I need you endlessly, my torment,’ he whispered in her ear and it took a cough from Aunt Barbara to remind them they still weren’t alone.
‘Aren’t you going to take a closer look at what Chris left behind?’ the Duke asked as if he knew she and Fergus were too busy with one another to worry about jewels right now.
‘Do you think there could be more than this then, Uncle Horace?’ she asked half-heartedly and followed her uncle’s gaze over the magnificent-looking czarina. ‘Oh, heavens above, you mean the jewels in her regalia are real?’
‘Are they?’ Fergus asked and wrenched his gaze from her face to see for himself. ‘If those are your mother’s diamonds, please promise never to wear them in public without a private army on hand to protect you,’ he added as if such a vast fortune in jewels was a liability, which looked very close to the mark, she decided, as the cold glitter of them made her shudder with disquiet.
‘I’d sooner have this locket than all the Lambury Jewels put together,’ she said at last.
‘Truly?’ Fergus said, one eye on the large stones that could outfit several countesses.
‘They seem gaudy and rather soulless to me,’ she said truthfully.
‘From the look of them in the family portraits I have had nothing else to do but get acquainted with these last few weeks, the Barberry jewels can’t hold a candle to these,’ he warned softly, ‘but you might like them better.’
‘Never mind what you’re going to do with them right now, let’s lock the cabinet up until we can get a jeweller in to remove them and put them in a bank vault while you and Colm decide their fate,’ Uncle Horace said with an expectant look at his duchess to say it was time to be tactful. Nell silently agreed with him and waited impatiently for them both to leave the room.
‘And you will make sure Colm doesn’t come after us with a horsewhip, won’t you, Auntie dear?’ she murmured as the Duchess was on her way to the door.
‘Of course, my love, a lady should always be left in peace to dictate terms to the love of her life,’ Aunt Barbara whispered back and sailed off to bed as if there was no single Earl standing in the red drawing room and staring down at their niece as if he couldn’t get enough of the sight of her.
‘Do you expect me to thank you for interfering in my affairs and nearly getting yourself shot?’ Nell asked when they were alone at last.
‘Not unless you’ve changed out of all recognition since you took up your new life, Miss Hancourt,’ he said with a frown at her workaday old gown.
‘I could have managed very well without you,’ she said crossly and shot him one of Miss Court’s best frowns because this wasn’t the most romantic of interludes so far and even Miss Court had her dreams.
‘Are you as rude as this to all your suitors?’
‘No, only you,’ she said grumpily.
‘And I recall you being so to poor Moss on more than one occasion as well.’
‘I would never have been so discourteous if you hadn’t goaded me into it,’ Nell defended herself.
‘You saved that for your noble employers, then?’
She snorted inelegantly at the description of my Lord Barberry as a noble in anything other than fact. ‘Noble indeed, and it’s just as well I don’t intend to have any more of them, since you put me off the whole breed.’
‘And your days of acting the governess are well and truly over, madam.’
‘Perhaps I shall take to the stage instead,’ Nell managed to say airily. He was holding her at a distance again, as if they had only ever been impossible together, whatever rank they were pretending to have at the time, and she didn’t like it one little bit.
‘My mother became an actress to save her family from want and went back to it to keep me fed and healthy. She’s worth a dozen of any duchess I ever met except your aunt and I refuse to be ashamed of her even for your sake.’
Nell’s heart thumped a fluttering, hard beat. He had just said even for her sake, hadn’t he? So maybe he did love her. She stared up at him as if she might read the truth in his eyes and gasped in a great breath because she might faint if she didn’t and this wasn’t the time for such missishness. ‘I truly admire Lady Rivers for doing as she did. She is obviously a lady of spirit and resource; why wouldn’t you be proud of her?’
‘You really mean that, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do; why would I say it if I didn’t?’
‘Forthright as ever, Miss Court?’ he said with a rueful smile she almost took as a compliment. ‘I’m not ashamed of my mother and never will be,’ he added as if he intended setting out rules for the future when this was all about trust for her.
‘Lord Chris’s daughter wouldn’t have a leg to stand on if she wanted to condemn Lady Rivers because she once had to work for a living,’ she said steadily and met his eyes with a challenge to stop judging her by polite society’s rules when it had done neither of them many favours in the past.
‘It’s not your fault your father loved unwisely, Nell,’ he said earnestly.
There it was; that real, true love and trust in his eyes and voice that she wanted so badly this felt like the most crucial conversation of her entire life. Of course, his rock-like determination to keep her safe came from the true heart of him. She could excuse it because he’d watched his beloved mother be sneered at and looked down on because she didn’t fit the exact mould of a nobleman’s wife, but she didn’t intend to let him protect her until she was stifled. She had been an independent woman too long to meekly submit to being cosseted for her own good and put in a glass cabinet like the imitation czarina.
‘My father would have done far better to love a lady who deserved his devotion,’ Nell said absently because Fergus Selford was far more interesting right now.
‘He ruined your life.’
‘No, he ruined his own life and Colm and I had to become stronger than he was as a consequence.’
‘Too strong to think the world well lost for love like he did?’ he asked huskily.
‘Too strong not to love anyway. We know we can live outside the tight limits of polite society because we’ve done it most of our lives. How many of our kind could say that, Lord Barberry?’
‘I can,’ he said rather unsteadily, as if this was another caveat they had to get out of the way before they admitted their feelings to one another and he was getting as impatient with them as she was. ‘I made it my mission to live without my title and the trappings of an English earl when I went to Canada and stayed there although my little cousins needed me. Beware of a man with a mission, Miss Hancourt; he tramples on innocents to get what he wants.’
‘I don’t think your cousins are that easily downtrodden, my lord.’
‘What about you, Miss Court?’
‘Didn’t I just finish telling you how hard I am to cast out and bring low?’
‘So you did, then please will you finally agree to marry me?’ he said. He looked caught between horror she might say no and hope she would agree as he stared down at her with so many complex emotions in his fascinating blue eyes she felt as if she could stare into them like a bewitched idiot for hours on end.
‘Why?’ she asked at last.
‘I love you.’
‘Hmmm, I wonder,’ she said, forcing the words past her galloping heartbeat and a vast, dangerous hope that was making her clench her hands into fists at her sides so she wouldn’t throw herself into his arms and agree to anything if he’d only keep saying it.
‘How can you doubt it? I have just made such a fool of myself when I thought he was going to shoot you that I suspect even your brother has to know I love you more than life itself by now.’
‘You were either furious or mocking most of the time I was Miss Court and not much different since I owned up to being my true self,’ she argued.
‘You always were your true self, isn’t that what you just told me?’ he said impatiently. ‘And you don’t look that different to me, if you’re dressed in Bond Street’s finest or that gown you wore back at Berry Brampton.’
‘I look completely different when I’m dressed up in all my finery,’ she said defensively.
‘Your hair is beautiful, but it always was,’ he said coming to stand behind her and looking at the only traces of the new, fashionable Nell available tonight.
She felt the heat and proximity of him and forgot what they were talking about, until he cocked his head on one side as if eyeing up a masterpiece in need of some restoration. ‘I would like it a lot better if it was down about your shoulders, of course. I’ve always wanted to run my hands through it and find out if it feels as soft and seductive as it looks.’
‘I’m not beautiful, Fergus,’ she said stiffly.
‘You are to me; I can’t look at any other woman and think her anything but pallid and uninteresting next to you and I want you endlessly, Nell. You’re lucky my mother knows a bit too much about lusty young gentlemen and taught me to control my urges and burn in duchesses’ drawing rooms. I want to throw you down on the chaise over there and teach you how bitterly a man can long for you and you alone right now, so be more careful what you say because I’m too close to proving how lovely you are to me by actions if you won’t believe the words.’
‘Oh, you idiot,’ she said, with a soft sound between a laugh and a sob. ‘I want you so much I feel as if every inch of me is screaming for your touch. I don’t know how to say it more politely, but if you really mean to love me I wish you would just get on with it, Lord Barberry.’
‘What, here and now?’ he said as if startled the notion could enter her head.
Nell turned away from the shadowy look of them in a nearby mirror the wrong way around and felt Miss Court was being left behind in that fine old Venetian glass, frowning with disapproval as Nell’s inner demon boldly stared up at the Earl of Barberry and considered the idea very seriously indeed.
‘Best not, perhaps, Colm might not take to you as I want him to if he catches us being very improper indeed on one of my uncle’s fine couches.’
‘Come and be improper on one of mine then, Nell?’ he breathed as if one of them might shatter soon if she didn’t.
‘Haven’t you got the upholsterers in? That’s what you told my aunt and uncle just now.’
‘One or two of them are still serviceable and I seem to have slept on most of the ones that are this last fortnight, so at least I know which will not shoot a spring out of place at the worst possible moment.’
‘Arrange it then, my lord,’ she demanded boldly, still not quite sure why she still hadn’t admitted she loved him and felt truly desperate to marry him now she knew he loved her back.
‘I ought to demand you wed me first.’
‘I dare say you ought,’ she said, examining her highly polished fingernails as if it didn’t matter very much if he refused to be scandalous with her tonight or not.
‘Meet me at the side gate in half an hour and don’t forget to bring keys, because you’ll have to creep in and get yourself into the right bed on your own tonight. I’m not inclined to let your brother shoot me if I have to break into your uncle’s house to let you back in with the dawn.’
‘An hour,’ she challenged, because it would take her that long to wash, pretend to take to her bed then redress as soon as her maid had gone to bed herself.
‘Three-quarters,’ he argued as if that was the outside limit of his patience.
Nell wanted him so urgently and was beginning to read his darkest frowns and grimmest glowers as the sign of the controlled emotion they truly were. She nodded and agreed to their first compromise as lovers, then went off to get ready to seduce and be seduced by the first and last one of those she ever intended to have.