The children, uncharacteristically chastened by the atmosphere in the room, began to troop out in front of her.
“Can’t we have tea?” Horatio asked.
“Not here,” Helen replied at once. “We will drive on to Audley Park.”
“Miss Milsom,” said Sir Marcus’s voice behind her.
She almost pretended not to hear. But pride forced her to pause and turn.
He stood just outside the open doorway in the same position she had first seen him. “Allow me to introduce you to Mrs. Robinov and explain—”
“I believe Mrs. Robinov has seen quite enough of me,” Helen interrupted. “You may explain whatever you wish in my absence. Goodbye, sir.”
She hoped he caught the finality of her words. She certainly caught the flare of anger in his eyes as she turned away. He was not a man so easily cowed.
The parlor door snapped shut.
“Go and wait in the carriage for Miss Milsom,” he ordered the children in a voice that brooked no disobedience.
She swung back to him, outraged that he would dare command the children under her care, but they were already trooping to the door behind her, and before she could say a word, Sir Marcus took hold of her arm and all but dragged her to the side of the stairs, where they could not be seen from the front door.
“How dare—” she began in fury, shaking herself free.
But he interrupted, rage at least equal to her own, spitting from his eyes. “How dare I what? Try to be reasonable? Try to explain a misunderstanding to a ridiculously stubborn woman only too happy to believe the worst of me?”
“On the contrary, I have no interest whatsoever in your character,” she retorted. “Or your person!”
At that, something changed in his eyes. The anger did not die, but was layered with something else, equally heated. And although he had let her break away from him, he stepped nearer again, crowding her into the staircase wall.
And her body recognized the nearness, the overwhelming attraction of his. Her quickened breath no longer had anything to do with fury but with the flame of inconvenient desire.
“Really?” he said softly, mockingly, “Really, Miss Milsom?” His gaze dropped to her lips, and butterflies dived into the sudden heat of her stomach.
Dear God, what would his lips feel like on hers? All his passion concentrated on kissing her? Everything in her leaped in treacherous welcome.
And then his eyes changed once more, overlaying everything with a strange desperation. He moved suddenly, grasping the back of her head. His body touched hers, and her knees threatened to buckle.
“I don’t believe you,” he said deliberately, and kissed her.
Nothing in her life had prepared her for this kind of kiss, wild, deep, invasive. It shocked her, overwhelmed her. But before she could even work out what it meant, it was over.
He tore his mouth free and stepped back, and she had to grab at the wall to support herself.
“Go,” he snarled. “And think of me what you will. Some of it will be right.”
She all but stumbled past him, ignoring her sudden, perverse urge to stay, to comfort whatever pain inspired that look and those words. It was too dangerous. He was too dangerous to her, and she had her duty to the children.
She fled to them, feeling like a coward. She barely heard anything or saw anything until she sat in the carriage with them once more.
But as it drove out of the yard, she glimpsed Sir Marcus standing at the inn door, frowning after them.
*
By the time Marcus returned to the inn parlor, he had calmed his anger and his ardor. Ruefully, he even understood something of Helen’s anger at him. Of course, she knew nothing of his promise to Ilya Robinov. She only thought he’d been pursuing Anne on her impulsive escape from parental pressure. But her judgment still left him both fuming and hurt. How could she imagine he would simply lie to her? Did she imagine all men were like the paltry Philip Marshall? Well, if she thought so little of him, he was sorry to have wasted all the time and emotion he had.
“What a strange creature,” Dorothea said as he came in. “Who on earth is she? Miss Marshall says she is a friend.”
“She is the governess to Lady Overton’s children,” Marcus said shortly. “And clearly thought she was preventing some kind of elopement, or at least a forced marriage, by charging to Miss Marshall’s rescue.”
Dorothea blinked. “The marriage of Miss Marshall to…?”
“To me,” Marcus said grimly and swung around to the hunted Anne. “Miss Marshall, be assured that while I’m certain you are a most estimable young lady, I have absolutely no desire to marry you, and even less intention. Be easy.”
Anne’s eyes widened impossibly. Her mouth fell open. “You mean you haven’t offered for me?”
“No, nor ever will.”
“But…but Mama said you had spoken to her…”
“I can count the number of times I’ve spoken to your mother on one hand,” Marcus said irritably. “I may once have agreed with her on the subject of your beauty, but marriage never entered our discussion, or even my head. I think we both agree such an alliance would be ludicrous.”
“Marcus!” Dorothea protested, although she seemed to have difficulty in preventing laughter.
But Anne broke into a positively radiant smile. “Oh, how wonderful!”
“Isn’t it?” Marcus agreed wryly. “I only wish I had found the time to tell you so before you bolted.”
“Miss Milsom told me,” Anne confided. “But I did not believe her. She is very clever, isn’t she? I don’t know how she knew I would be here.”
Or contrived to extricate herself so quickly from Steynings with the children in order to play chaperone and foil, presumably, his evil plans. She must have heard he had left, and decided it was on Anne’s account. How dared she even suspect such a thing of him? How could they be so wrong about each other?
“Tea,” Dorothea said decisively.
A little later, with most of the tea consumed and the young people playing a noisy game of cards in front of the fire, Marcus finally banished Helen Milsom from his mind and asked the all-important question of Dorothea.
“What will you do?”
“I have a little money, enough to buy a cottage in some peaceful village. But, of course, there are processes to go through since the solicitor does not know me personally, and to be frank, Marcus, I find myself temporarily embarrassed. So much so that I must beg you for a loan to pay my account here.”
“There is no need to even to ask”
“I knew I could count on you! It may be we can go back to Russia later on, but I’ve no idea if there will be anything left of Ilya’s estate. Well, Kenneth’s now.”
“What happened?” Marcus asked quietly.
Dorothea gazed into her almost empty teacup. “Somehow, we survived the initial invasion, and the troops passed us by. We burned our own crops to prevent the French having them. Ilya came home—you know he had been leading a militia—to protect us during the retreat. We had to flee while the French marauded through the estate, the house, but there was a skirmish that killed most of them, sent the rest flying in disorder. But Ilya was injured.” She swallowed. “We took him back home to die among the rubble.”