they’d been lovingly cared for by Mrs. Tibbet and were made of expensive materials—wool, velvet, lawn, silk. Most of them were far too good to be worn for her day-to-day tasks, including the rich red frock she wore today, but she had little alternative. Elijah didn’t seem to mind, though his was a difficult expression to read. Indeed, at more than one occasion she’d sensed him studying her closely, weighing her up, as if he hadn’t yet finalised his opinion of her. Perhaps because he was chary of her impact on his son.
Sighing, she plucked a sprig off a nearby lavender bush. If only she could clear her muddled thoughts about Julian. Ever since she’d told him about Pip two days ago, he had treated her with cautious civility, and she was growing heartily sick of it. Yet she understood the root of his coolness. She was still married to Pip—regardless of his previous betrothal—and his involvement in his father’s diabolical plans remained in question. She wanted nothing more than to resolve the matter one way or another, but as yet she was too afraid to act. Time was not on her side, though; sooner rather than later she would have to decide a course of action.
Moving away from the icehouse, she headed for the rear of the house. As she neared the corner of the building, she heard scuffling noises and the sound of male voices jesting each other.
“Ha, is that the best you can deliver?” Julian’s voice sounded. “I’ve had a buss on the cheek harder than that fisticuff.”
“Well, you just ain’t courting the right sort of woman,” the other man drawled.
“And you’ve been courting too long, judging by your soft, pudgy body.”
“Soft, eh? We’ll see ’bout that.”
Nellie hesitated as she recognised the voice of Gareth Derringer, the family friend from whom she’d run away because of his startled reaction to her scars. Since then, he’d visited once more, and she’d been properly introduced to him. She’d been embarrassed by her earlier behaviour, and he’d been excessively polite, something not natural for him, she’d sensed. All in all, it had been an awkward encounter, and she had no wish to repeat it. But the sound of Julian’s voice drew her closer, and she couldn’t resist peering around the corner. An overgrown juniper bush shielded her from view as she edged forward to peek through the shrubbery.
Not far away Julian and Gareth circled each other, their bodies crouched in sparring positions. Both men had stripped off jackets, neckties, shirts and boots, and were clad in nothing more than their trousers which were rolled up to the knees. The sight of two seminaked men had Nellie riveted, but it was Julian who absorbed all her attention. Perspiration gleamed on his chest, highlighting the fine curvature of his muscles and the solidness of his shoulders. Dusky hairs tracked over chest and stomach before arrowing down past the waistband of his trousers. His calves were powerfully sinewed, his bare feet solid and strong. Wisps of ebony hair clung to his temples, and his face was flushed with his exertions.
Gareth shot out a punch towards Julian’s head. He ducked and counterpunched, chuckling beneath his breath. “Nice try, laddie.”
“We’ll see who’s the laddie.”
With a sudden lunge, Gareth grabbed him in a bear hug. Julian groaned as his friend squeezed him like a nut before he raised both arms and chopped down hard on Gareth’s neck with his hands. Gareth collapsed to the ground, dragging Julian with him.
Nellie watched on, spellbound, as the two men wrestled in the dirt. Any genteel woman would have been appalled at such barbarity, but she wasn’t appalled, far from it. The sight of Julian’s naked sweaty chest incited a hornets’ nest of illicit desire in her. Heat flared low and heavy in her abdomen. Dampness sprang out on the back of her neck, between her breasts, and even—heaven help her—beneath her drawers. As Julian wrestled with his friend, his trousers stretched tight around his thighs, drawing her attention to his flagrantly virile thews. Nellie swallowed hard as erotic sensations surged over her, followed quickly by hot, hedonistic and deeply disturbing imaginings of Julian gloriously naked and rampant, bending over an equally naked and impassioned woman— herself.
Dear heaven, how could she lust after a man with such a powerful and primitive hunger? What kind of wanton was she turning into? She stepped backwards, her hand to her throat, conscious of the rapid thumping of her heart and the heat writhing in her loins. The injuries she’d sustained must have affected her, she desperately reasoned. This voluptuous sensuality throbbing through her was not her, was someone else.
She’d been an innocent maiden on her wedding night. Being a doctor’s daughter, she was aware of the rudimentary facts of life, but she’d no inkling of what to expect in her marital bed. Pip had been tentative, apologetic, and after it was swiftly over, she concluded that she had conducted herself properly, and that to lie supine and not complain or whimper was how a good wife was supposed to behave. And so she’d done her duty the few times Pip had reached for her.
But now she’d transformed into something else, some shameless creature with primitive, insistent urges. Or perhaps it was Julian who was the cause. Perhaps she’d always carried these latent feelings buried deep within, and it was only Julian who could bring them to the surface.
The idea perturbed her. She screwed her eyes shut, but still Julian’s image floated in her mind. His bronzed body was a thing of beauty, the sculpted lines of muscle, bone and sinew a hymn of virility. And of course it was Julian’s personality who powered this physical charm. It was his strength of character, his passion and his vulnerabilities that made her heart tumble over.
She could not lose her head over Julian. Her father had relinquished all ties with her, her husband had at best abandoned her, at worst connived to do away with her. Had she not learned her lesson? Tenderness was a trap, and she could not allow herself to be snared by Julian’s appeal. She must get away from him. She must make her escape before her desires pulled her into the seductive vortex.
The juniper bush rustled as she spun round and hurried away.
Out of the corner of his eye, Julian glimpsed a flurry of red skirts disappearing around the corner of the house.
“Oof,” he grunted as Gareth’s considerable weight landed on top of him.
“Ha!” Gareth wrestled him into a headlock. “Do you concede?”
Julian grimaced as the ex-soldier began to crush his neck. “Never,” he gasped out.
His opponent was bigger and stronger and knew every dirty trick, but he was also overconfident. Julian made himself go limp, and as Gareth started to chuckle, he jerked his knee up and drove it into Gareth’s flank. The headlock loosened just a fraction, but it was enough for Julian to twist free and roll to his feet.
“A neat recovery, boyo.” Heaving for breath, Gareth raised his hand in acknowledgement. “We’ll call it a draw, shall we, even though I almost had you then.”
“Almost, but not quite.” Julian squinted past the juniper bush, but there was no sign of Nellie. How long had she been standing there?
Gareth plucked his grubby shirt off the grass and mopped his streaming brow with it. “You want to watch out getting the wibble wobbles over a woman. It could be fatal.”
“Wibble wobbles? I’ve no idea what you mean,” Julian scoffed.
“Oh, come off it, man. It’s as plain as the nose on my face you have a yen for Nellie. You were gawking after her so badly just then I coulda slung you a haymaker and you wouldn’t have seen it coming.”
With a scowl Julian grabbed his shirt from the ground and slung it over his shoulder. “Leave it, will you?”
The levity faded from his companion’s face. “My apologies. You’re deadly serious about this one, aren’t you?”
“It matters naught what I feel.” Julian thrust one arm into the sleeve of his shirt and then the other. “She is a married woman.”
“Perhaps, but she married a man who promised himself to another.”
“Regardless of that, in Nellie’s mind she is married to Ormond’s son.” Even though he’d repeated that fact to himself several times, still it came as a shock to Julian. Nellie was not a free agent; she had promised herself to another man, and he had no right to lust after her.
Gareth shrugged. “There is married, and then there is married. She’s not hotfooted it back to her spouse, and the dear Pip has made no apparent attempts to find her. Those facts are more important than any mumbo jumbo some priest might have muttered over them.”
Julian worked the dirt beneath his feet, scuffing the muddy earth between his bare toes. “I must disagree. It would not be honourable to pursue her in such circumstances.”
