Untouched

She laid her hand on his forearm. Lord Sheene’s shirt was warm under her hand and hinted at the lean muscles beneath. The marquess in full health would be a magnificently powerful man. “What about the gardening?”

“Later. Neither of us is going anywhere.”

Perhaps not. Although after Saturday, Grace might no longer be here. An ominous shiver chilled her blood.

He noticed her trembling. “Are you cold? Would you rather go inside?”

“No.” Back to the cottage which still reeked of his uncle’s overweening evil? Lord, anything but that. She’d rather stay outdoors and freeze. “Why is your uncle so determined to keep you here?”

He gave a grim laugh as he led her under the archway and into the woods. Wolfram stood, stretched, and trotted after them. “Greed. As basic and banal as that.”

After the gothic horrors she’d faced, she’d expected some convoluted history of family enmity. “Greed for what?”

“Money, of course. When my parents died, Lord John was named guardian. He’s run the Lansdowne interests ever since. For a younger son whose fortune was only respectable, the sudden wealth was dazzling. When I reached my majority, he was set to lose it all.”

“But you fell ill.” Her fingers tightened on his arm.

“No, I lost my mind,” he said with sudden harshness. He was tense under her touch. “When I was fourteen, I went mad.”

“You’re not mad now,” she insisted. “You haven’t suffered an episode in seven years.”

“Every year, my uncle sends two doctors to examine me. They confirm I’m unfit to govern myself and, more significantly, my inheritance.”

“Lord John must pay them.”

The sourness left his expression and he gave a short but genuine laugh. The sound rustled through her like a warm wind. “Mrs. Paget, your cynicism threatens to outstrip mine.”

She didn’t smile. “Your uncle took little trouble to hide his true nature.”

He sighed and turned onto a path Grace had followed just after she arrived. When she’d been terrified of the man with the frightening eyes. How long ago that seemed. Yet it was only a few days.

“While I’m alive and confined, my uncle plays the man of importance.”

The word alive struck her. “And if you die?”

“The title goes to my cousin Hector. If he meets his maker, a string of younger brothers line up for the marquessate. My father produced one sickly descendant and Lord John has thrown only girls, four of them. Uncle Charles hatched a brood of six husky boys before he broke his neck in a hunting accident.”

“And Lord John returns to being merely a younger son.” Her fingers clenched in his sleeve. How could he bear what his uncle did to him? Her belly cramped on a surge of futile rage. “He wants you healthy but under his control? Like an animal in a menagerie? It’s obscene.”

“Yes, Grace, it’s obscene,” he said in a flat tone.

“And he thought if he got you a woman…”

“I’d accept imprisonment.”

The ruthlessness stole her breath. She stopped and looked searchingly up into Lord Sheene’s face. She’d always found his features compelling, even when she’d been half-unconscious with dread and laudanum.

Now she saw so much more. Courage that battled for health and competence. Strength to resist his uncle’s machinations. Honor, so when his freedom brought harm to others, he resigned himself to imprisonment.

“My uncle thinks to use you to control me,” he said quietly.

At that moment, she realized he was determined never to take her. If he came to her bed, he betrayed his deepest principles. She was safe.

And her safety meant she was lost.

What was she to do? Subvert the integrity that sustained him? Or save herself?

She abhorred the choice she must make.