He met her eyes; her gaze didn’t waver but remained fixed on his face. “What about Thomas? They know and respect him—and, what’s more, he’s clan himself.”
Her eyes narrowed a touch. “Thomas—as you must know as well as I do—has all he can handle with his daughters. I’m not going to ask him to come and rescue me. I wouldn’t do that to him, much less to Lucilla.”
Marcus inwardly winced at the implied rebuke. His twin sister had given birth to twin girls five months ago, and both Lucilla and Thomas were, indeed, fully engaged with caring for the tiny but demanding bundles of joy. “Indeed. You’re right.” No help there. He frowned. “What about Norris?” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs; her remaining brother was surely the right person to defend her. “I know he’s younger than you, but only by about a year—which means he’s what? Twenty-five?” Old enough.
Her lips firmed into a line. Her eyes narrowed further. “I’m twenty-five—he’s not yet twenty-four. But he left. He’s pursuing his own life in St. Andrews, and I’m not about to call him home—besides which, none of the men in the clan would pay the slightest attention to him.”
Niniver paused but felt compelled to push. “I need someone with standing. With a status that will command attention at least, if not outright obedience.”
She needed someone like him; that was so obvious it barely needed stating.
Abruptly, she stood. When he started to rise, too, she brusquely waved him back; the last thing she needed was a crick in her neck. She started to pace back and forth across his hearth. She only paced when she was agitated or anxious; she’d worked to break herself of the habit—it revealed too much—but in this instance, she wasn’t sure she cared.
She’d steeled herself to do this—to hide her reaction to him, to ignore the waves of prickling awareness that washed over her skin whenever he was near. She’d told herself she could face him and ask him to honor his promise even if he wasn’t attracted to her, as she, so very definitely, was to him. She’d pushed herself to do it, and she’d done it and asked, but for some reason, he was now reluctant.
The realization didn’t please her at all. Now that she was there, making her case, she wasn’t about to let him off any hook she could find. “I had hoped”—pausing and facing him, she enunciated the words evenly, endeavoring to remove all emotion from them—“that you would see your way to assisting me in dealing with this situation as a favor to a neighbor.”
His face was all chiseled angles and planes, sharply prominent cheekbones above lean cheeks. His lips were mobile, fascinatingly so, but as he looked up at her, his blatantly squared chin left no doubt of his ability to remain unmoved. The arrogance born of supreme confidence etched his features, yet as she met his eyes, she saw that her comment had reached past his façade; even though he gave no sign, she knew she’d prodded him in a sensitive spot. Neighborly assistance, if requested, was taken for granted in the country.
She’d avoided him for months, and if her senses’ preoccupation with his appearance—with every little thing about him—was any guide, that had been one of her wiser decisions. Even though she’d remembered his promise, she’d previously hesitated to ask for his help precisely because of the unnerving attraction—avid and compelling—she felt for him. Because that attraction was obviously one sided. He was a Cynster; she knew what sort of man he was—a gentleman descended from a noble line and with all the natural arrogance and confidence that background bestowed. If he’d harbored any interest in her, he would have approached her—he would have let her know.
Just as her idiot clansmen were doing, but doubtless with more panache.
His dark gaze had locked on her. “How, exactly, do you imagine I, as a neighbor, might aid you?”
She swung around and continued pacing; she hadn’t actually thought that far, but since he’d asked… “If you would come to Carrick Manor and spend time there—long enough for the others to notice, or for you to have a chance to…” She vaguely waved.
“Redirect their thinking?”
“Yes—exactly.” She glanced at him as she turned. “Intimidation wouldn’t go amiss, either.”
Marcus pressed his lips tight, fighting a grin. Then his thoughts rolled on, and he sobered. “How long do you imagine this…communicating of your disinterest in marrying your clansmen will take?”
She frowned. “A week? Two?”
Two days would be too long for him. He understood what she was suggesting, but acting as a shield for her would, of necessity, mean spending that time all but glued to her side—and he could all too readily predict the outcome of such enforced propinquity. Blue balls wasn’t a condition most men courted, and he was no exception.
She was looking at him hopefully. He hardened his heart and raised the point to which she seemed oblivious. “You said you’re twenty-five. As you’re now also lady of your clan, I assume you’ve considered your prospects for marriage. Why not simply make your choice now and be done with it?”
She halted in her pacing and stared at him; the expression on her face wasn’t one he could interpret. Then she stated, “I have no intention of marrying. Not now, not later.”
Something within him jerked to attention; he slapped it down. Now was not the time to go leaping on challenges—especially not challenges like that. He frowned. “Why not?” Greatly daring, he asked, albeit more gently, “Don’t you want a husband and children?” His sisters, his female cousins, those of marriageable age, talked of little else.
But Niniver swung away and paced across the hearth; when she turned back, her expression was composed. “What I wish for is not the point. As lady of the clan, I can’t marry.”
His frown deepening, he continued to study her. “I still don’t see why.” He made the statement without inflection, an invitation to explain if she would.
She sighed; her luscious lips twisted in a grimace. “I’m the only one holding the clan together—if I hadn’t been there to elect as lady, the clan would have fragmented. I didn’t realize how near a thing it was, but Sean and Ferguson both eventually told me.” She halted and looked down as if studying the flagstones. After a moment, she went on, “Papa gave his life to the clan. He held it together, and I can’t, in all conscience, not make the best attempt I can to do the same.” She raised her head and met his gaze. “And given I’m a female, that means not marrying, because any man I marry will expect to replace me as head of the clan, and if such a thing occurred, the clan would almost certainly break apart.”
He held her gaze while he considered that conundrum. The challenge had just become even more challenging… What was he thinking? He honestly wasn’t sure, and with her pacing back and forth within arm’s reach, he wasn’t at all confident his normal mental prowess would return any time soon.
Niniver sensed him drawing back; she couldn’t have said how—she simply knew. And while casting about for arguments with which to sway him, she’d just had the most hideous thought. Too hideously awful to think about now; she bundled it to the back of her mind, but its mere existence only underscored her need—her escalating desperation to secure Marcus’s help. Before she lost her courage, she baldly asked, “Will you help me?”
He didn’t reply. After a second, he glanced away from her.
And her temper slipped its leash.
Sorely tried by the day’s events—poked and pricked by the confrontation in the stable yard, fueled by the realization that she couldn’t deal with the escalating situation by herself and truly had to plead for help, spiked by the sudden thought of what might occur if she didn’t secure effective help and successfully dissuade her would-be clan suitors, and now scraped raw by the understanding that all she’d pushed herself through to be standing where she was—having revealed all she had—had gained her nothing…her temper spiraled out of her reach.
Her lips set. With a furious swish of her skirts, she turned and paced away across the fireplace. The sound of her boot heels striking the flags testified to t
he emotions roiling inside her.
“Niniver.”
She halted. He’d sounded weary. Bored? And resigned.
Facing away from him, she filled her lungs and raised her head. He was going to refuse to help.
Her temper boiled over.
She looked up and raised her hands to the ceiling. In a voice that shook, she implored, “Can I count on no man at all?”
She whirled, intending to look scornfully back at him—
Her hand, swinging down, powered by the violence of her turn, collected a tall candlestick that had been sitting on a small shelf projecting from the mantelpiece. The candlestick went flying.
She was still turning when she heard a solid thunk. She came fully around as the heavy candlestick clattered on the stone floor.
Marcus, eyes closed, sat slumped in the chair.
“Oh, my God!” Had she killed him?
Heart thudding, she rushed to his side. His head lolled; grasping his shoulders, she tried to press them back, but his weight was too great for her to shift. Hauling aside her skirts, she crouched by the chair and tried to look into his face.
He didn’t look dead. She was fairly sure he was still breathing.
Fighting back panic, she pressed her fingers to her lips—then reached out and wriggled her fingers beneath his neckerchief, searching for a pulse…
There!
Strong and steady, his pulse throbbed beneath her fingertips.
She exhaled and, slowly, drew her fingers free.
She remained crouched beside the chair, waiting for him to stir…but he didn’t.
Tipping her head, her gaze tracking over his face, examining his unresponsive features, she frowned.
After a moment, she straightened and rose to her feet.
She stood looking down at him for several more seconds. Eyes narrowing, lips compressing, she debated whether she dared…
She decided that she did—that she would.
Turning, she headed for the door.
CHAPTER 2
Marcus returned to consciousness slowly. Awareness dripped into his mind, drop by drop, until at last, he was back in the world.
Eyes closed, he tried to remember…
He’d been talking to Niniver. About her problem.
He’d been about to tell her that he would think about how best to aid her, and that he would call at Carrick Manor in the next day or so to discuss the possibilities. He’d intended to ask his father’s advice, although he hadn’t been about to tell her that.
Then…blankness.
And now he was…lying on a bed somewhere, fully dressed, soft mattress and covers beneath him, with a feather pillow cradling his aching head…
He opened his eyes and saw Niniver sitting in a chair a few yards from the bed. Late afternoon light streamed through the window and lit her fair hair to a silver-gold. She was looking down, plying a needle, stitching something.
His arms lay above his head. He shifted and tried to lower them—and realized his wrists were bound with a fine silk scarf that had been looped around the post at the head of the bed.
The movement drew Niniver’s attention. Her gaze collided with his.
“Oh, good! You’re awake.”
He would have sworn she added a silent “thank heavens” after that.
He watched her lean down and put her sewing into a basket, then she straightened in the chair—and looked at him uncertainly.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Did you clout me over the head?”
Her eyes widened. “No! Well…not intentionally.”
He squinted at her. “ Unintentionally?”
“If you recall¸ I was angry. I lost my temper.”
He vaguely recalled her increasing agitation, then memory strengthened. Can I count on no man at all? His lips thinned as he recalled the stark emotion in her voice; that jabbed at him now, as it had then. “I remember.”
“I threw up my hands”—she demonstrated—“and whirled around, and I hit the candlestick off the mantelpiece shelf. It struck you on the head. You have a lump above your left ear.” Her soft blue eyes traveled his face, her concern openly deepening. “I had no idea you would stay unconscious for so long. Are you all right?”
He grimaced. He swung his legs and hips around and shifted to sit on the edge of the bed near the bed’s head. There was enough slack in his silken bonds for him to tip his head and, with his fingers, explore said lump. He grunted. “What is it with you Carricks that every time you need help, you knock me out?”
She frowned. “Who else knocked you out?”
“Thomas.” He fought a wince as he palpated the tender area. “When the Bradshaws fell ill and he came to fetch Lucilla from the grove, I was keeping watch. Rather than waste time arguing with me, he knocked me out.” He gritted his teeth. “In exactly the same spot.” Apparently Fate, using the Carricks as pawns, knew the precise spot on his otherwise hard head where a sharp tap could render him unconscious for an hour or so—thus rendering him amenable to Fate’s plans.
That consequence hadn’t escaped his notice. Lucilla had been meant to go with Thomas. Presumably Fate and The Lady meant him to be exactly where he was. Getting knocked unconscious when he’d been about to vacillate seemed a fairly clear indication.
Lowering his bound hands—he’d get to them in a moment—he glanced around. “Where am I?”
“Carrick Manor.”
He caught her gaze, then pointedly dropped his to the pale blue silk scarf knotted about his wrists. “Are you really this desperate?”
He glanced up in time to catch her “Did you really need to ask?” look, but she contented herself with uttering a terse “Yes.”
He considered her for several silent seconds, but he knew better than to try to fight Fate. The throbbing in his head was subsiding; he inclined his head in acceptance and discovered that didn’t hurt. “All right.”
Rapidly, he canvassed where he and she were now, what they wanted to achieve, in the short term at least. He refocused on her. “How did you get me here?” With a wave of his fingers, he indicated the room and the bed. “Obviously, I didn’t ride here and climb the stairs on my own.”
She looked a trifle guilty. “Sean was with me—he’s the head stableman.”
“Strange. He always struck me as a sane, sensible man.”
Somewhat to his surprise, she rose, bringing her head level with his. “Stop sniping.” She folded her arms and regarded him severely. “Sean’s a rock. I don’t know what I would do without him. And if you hadn’t been so obstreperous over keeping your promise to help me when I asked, I wouldn’t have had to drag him into this.”
He was impressed—entirely unnecessarily—by her immediate defense of Sean. Eyeing the martial promise in her eyes and the uncompromising set of her lips and chin, he was reminded of the conundrum she posed. Delicate, fragile, and ethereal she might be, but there was a strong streak of bloody-minded, steely stubbornness in her, too. All the surrounding gentry were quietly admiring of the way she’d handled being lady of the clan ever since the Carrick clan had done the unexpected and elected her to the role. He doubted she’d expected it, but she’d made a good fist of things thus far.
And, clearly, her position and her ruling of the clan was one element of the challenge Fate had handed him.
Was he really going to do this?
Apparently, he was. “In the interests of setting our stage, as it were, how many here know I was carried upstairs unconscious?”
“Sean and Mitch smuggled you up the back stairs. No one but them knows you’re here.”
“Good.” He knew both men slightly from evenings at the local inn. They were sensible and practical, and they didn’t gossip, even in their cups.
Niniver had been eyeing him uncertainly. “You might have a bruise or two. You’re rather large and heavy, and they had trouble getting you around the landing.”
Presumably that explained the pain in one hip and at the point of one shoulder. He tried
to think—to plan—but his wits were still a trifle disconnected. But she was there, and he was, after all, there at her bidding. “So I’m here, where you wanted me to be.” He looked at her. “And it appears that I’m helping you with your current problem.”
She met his gaze. Rather than looking guilty, he sensed she was hiding her delight.
“So”—he arched his brows—“how do you propose we proceed?”
She blinked, then sank into the chair again. Clasping her hands in her lap, she fixed him with an earnest look. “As I suggested at your house, if you stay for a time, and just generally be about, then the others will see and know you’re here, watching, and they’ll stop pushing.”
Possibly. “I live a bare four miles away. I can ride back and forth—”
“No.” Her lips set mulishly. “That won’t work.”
He studied her expression—one hundred percent determined. “Why?” She wasn’t a flighty female; there had to be a reason.
Again, she bit her lower lip; he wanted to tug it free. With his teeth. Apparently, that thought didn’t show in his face. After another second of studying his features, she released that fascinatingly plump lip and said, “The manor is a clan house. Tradition dictates that the house is always open to clan members, so the doors are never locked. Not even at night.” She paused, then went on, “As I said, several of the men have grown…pushier of late. Their rivalry urges them to do things, to act in ways they normally wouldn’t, and…it’s an old tactic, isn’t it? A sure-fire way of forcing a marriage. And it’s hardly difficult for any clan member to learn which room in the house is mine—and I’m the only family member living here now, the only person with rooms on this floor.”
His blood had run cold. He stared at her, but no matter how much he wanted to reassure her, to dismiss her fears—to tell her they were fanciful and wave them away—he couldn’t. Because they weren’t. This was an isolated pocket of the country, and matters like clan marriages were still—occasionally—settled in the age-old way. If her clansmen were intent on claiming her hand—and it sounded as if several believed they had a chance no matter her protestations—if they deluded themselves into believing they could get away with it and they tried to force her…