The Marquess Who Loved Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

shrug.
    Salford sobered. “If he looked at Madeleine or my sister like he looks at you, I’d have his head. But you’ve never wanted a champion, have you?”
    Salford was too perceptive by half. “Thank you, my lord, but I can manage the marquess.”
    “Promise me — if you can’t manage him, promise you’ll tell me.”
    She nodded once. The gesture was a lie. Salford probably knew it was, but he didn’t call her on it.
    She walked toward the doors, taking as direct a line as she could through the dwindling dancers. Nick leaned against a pillar, calm again — lounging ever more obviously by the second as she approached. He wouldn’t admit jealousy, just as she wouldn’t admit discomfort.
    But his eyes burned even as his body relaxed.
    When she reached him, she dropped into a curtsey, made even more grand by the way her heavy skirts pooled dramatically around her. “My lord,” she murmured.
    “Lady Folkestone,” he drawled. “Never thought I’d see you curtsey to me.”
    “I hope you enjoyed it,” she said, coming to her full height. “I shan’t do it again.”
    “No?” he asked. “Then I’m glad you wore that dress for it. Your breasts are wonderful in it. Especially when you bend to offer them to me.”
    Her pulse quickened. “I assure you — if I were offering them, you’d know it.”
    He smiled, that cruel smile she hadn’t seen before tonight. “Save your offerings for someone else. If I want what you have, I’ll be taking it whether you offer or not.”
    She raised an eyebrow. “Has no one in the last decade explained nobility to you? You are a peer of the realm, not a feudal baron. There’s no droit du seigneur that allows you to take any woman you want.”
    Nick shrugged. He was dressed more modernly than any of her guests, by over three hundred years — but his devastating face belonged on a battlement, not a ballroom. “You know I wasn’t born to this. But I will take what belongs to me.”
    This was quickly turning into a rout — and Ellie was not the victor. She stopped bantering. “Take your estate, then. I meant it when I said I will be gone in the morning.”
    “And I meant it when I said you owe me. Shall the repayment start now, or do you wish to hide for another hour?”
    The certainty in his voice confused her. Beyond their broken engagement, there were no other debts between them. “I owe you nothing. And I wasn’t hiding.”
    “Don’t lie. Aren’t we beyond that?”
    God, his voice was cold. When had it become something that could freeze her so ruthlessly? He must have had the seeds of this when she knew him, but he’d never used it on her.
    But he wasn’t the only one who had hardened. She would match him, cut for cut, until he left her alone.
    “I wasn’t hiding,” she repeated. “I was letting you stew. You’ve had a decade to stew, I know. But it’s ever so much more entertaining when I can watch.”
    That was the final shove that broke through his ice. He grabbed her arm, his fingers turning to fire on her flesh. “Now,” he ground out, already propelling her through the door. “We talk now.”
    She was right. Hell surely awaited her. Perhaps she shouldn’t have pushed him, tried to force a reaction out of him. She’d gotten what she wanted, though — a glimpse of his temper and, beneath that, the stubborn, passionate man she’d loved.
    The man she’d loved and thrown away, when she was young and stupid and desperate for her father’s approval.
    She’d waited forever for him to come back, wishing he would give her a chance to make amends. But now that he was here, she wasn’t sure she could stand seeing him again.
    He dragged her through the foyer and past the servants she’d trained to stay out of her affairs. No one tried to save her. He pulled her up the stairs by instinct, but when he reached the landing, he paused.
    “Left,” she said. “Third door from the end is my salon. No one will disturb us there.”
    “Father always said