Free The Marquess Who Loved Me by Sara Ramsey Page B

often in London to partake of Grandfather’s generosity as a youth. The fair ladies at Madame Patrice’s were worth any number of hours spent counting tea chests.”
    Nick had gone to Eton, as his father had before him. But unlike his father, who had been perfectly aristocratic until he fell in love with the wrong girl, Nick was mocked from the start for his ties to the trade. It might not have been so bad — there were other, lower born boys who took the brunt of the bullying — but Nick and his cousin Charles, who was two years older and already the Marquess of Folkestone, hated each other on sight. And even the youngest boys knew to side with a marquess over a merchant’s son.
    Nick had refused to back down and hadn’t left despite their years-long conflict, but his parents hadn’t made the same mistake with Marcus and Rupert. Where Nick had grimly survived Eton, his brothers had stayed in London, learning the trade from their father and grandfather. Little wonder they were inveterate rakes. Nick sometimes felt like a brooding monk by comparison.
    He shrugged. “I’ve had my share of pleasure without needing Grandfather to be my procurer.”
    Marcus snorted. “Grandfather never had to procure for me, brother.” Then he cast Nick a sidelong glance. “If you want me to point you toward some prime houses, though…”
    “No need,” Nick said.
    There was a finality in his voice that would have warned off lesser men. But he and his brothers had been raised as equals. The Folkestone title had seemed destined to stay in Charles’s line, and primogeniture did not apply to their shared inheritance from their grandfather. Marcus wouldn’t yield to him just because Nick now outranked him.
    “Please don’t say you went through with your revenge last night,” Marcus said.
    They had avoided talk of Ellie for five hours — longer than Nick had expected Marcus to refrain from the subject. “She’s not my mistress yet,” Nick said, sharing a truth that, at midnight, would be a lie.
    Their carriage pulled up and Trower jumped down to open the door for them while the driver held the horses. Marcus waited until they were seated and the carriage was in motion before saying, “Your lack of compassion with her surprises me.”
    “It shouldn’t.”
    Again, Marcus plunged past the warning in Nick’s voice. “After everything you’ve done for me and Rupert? Granted, I’d begun to accustom myself to the idea that you would never come home, but you gave me more room to make decisions than most men would have. Hard to believe you could be so kind to us and so…unkind to her.”
    Nick had lain awake the previous night, in the giant bed that had once been his cousin’s, separated from Ellie by a locked connecting door and ten years of regret. She had tried to stuff him into a small room as far from her as possible, but he’d taken a single look at the lumpy mattress and ordered the butler to put him in the master’s chamber instead. At the moment, disregarding her wishes had given him a visceral kick of satisfaction.
    But in the dark, the question of kindness had haunted him. He had always been kind to those who depended upon him — it was his duty and privilege as a gentleman, even moreso when hundreds of people relied upon him for their livelihoods.
    And he had always been kind to Ellie. Even on the day she had destroyed him, he hadn’t done what he wanted to do — couldn’t toss her onto his horse and ruin her publicly just to keep her. When his rational self had considered his revenge on the ship home from India, he had thought that he couldn’t do it. The Ellie in his head was still, always, nineteen, all meek adoration and pretty, fragile need. She’d hurt him badly, irredeemably, and he wanted to do the same to her — but he hadn’t been sure that he could follow through. Ten years was more than long enough for his anger to cool, and while he still hated her for what she had done, destroying a woman was