Seduced by a Lady's Heart

by Christi Caldwell

  “I blamed my father for my enlistment,” Drake said quietly. As though filled with a sudden disquiet, the other man picked up his glass. He stared into the half-filled contents, seeing a world that only existed behind his eyes. Though Lucien ventured he knew a good deal about those visions there.

  “Captain?” They were the kind of memories that robbed you of sleep and stole your sanity with one loud sound that transported you to the bloody battlefields.

  The marquess gave his head a shake and took another sip. “It was the height of immaturity to enlist. I resented my betrothal to Emmaline and sought to escape my father’s domineering control of my life.” His lips twisted in a hard, bitter smile. “Yet, ultimately it was my decision. I spent years hating my father. Hating myself.”

  Lucien well knew that. He lived with that very same hatred. Perhaps every man who returned did.

  “It took my wife to teach me that hate is futile and useless. We lived, when others died…and to live our lives full of loathing and bitterness is a waste of that life.”

  “You have a reason to live,” Lucien spat. The marquess hadn’t lost his wife and child.

  Lord Drake shifted his hip. “I imagine you do, as well. If you’d but see it.” With that, he shoved himself up from his reclined position and carried his glass behind his desk. “I’m giving you three weeks.”

  He shook his head slowly, uncomprehendingly. “I don’t—?”

  “You’re welcome to a horse in my stables and a carriage.” He sat in his leather seat, the aged chair crackled noisily. “Go see your father, Jones.”

  It wasn’t a suggestion. The marquess commanded with the same decisive firmness he’d evinced on the battlefield.

  He gave his head a jerky shake.

  “I’m not asking you,” the marquess confirmed that which Lucien had already suspected.

  Rage thrumming through his body, filled his legs and brought him upright. He paced in front of the immaculate, mahogany desk. “I have a new life. I have responsibilities—”

  “And the under butler will see to those obligations while you’re gone,” the marquess assured.

  He raked a shaking hand through his hair. He’d not seen his brothers and father in five, almost six, years. But for the one volatile visit when he’d first returned, he’d stormed out, made for London and never looked back. The stricken expressions on his brothers’ faces—faces so similar to his own, as young men—it had been the same as looking into a mirror.

  Only the glass had cracked and he was now the distorted, amorphous figure on the other side of that bevel glass. His father’s insistence had ultimately plunged Lucien into hell. His brothers, however, their only crime was reminding him of what had once been and what would never again be.

  He shook his head again, this time slower with more precise movements. “I won’t go, my lord.” He paused and fixed a hard stare on his employer. “You’ll have to sack me.”

  A wry grin formed on the marquess’ lips. “You know me enough to know by now I won’t sack you.”

  A momentary relief surged through him.

  Lord Drake quelled that elusive feeling with his next words. “But neither are you permitted to stay here for three weeks.” He waved a hand. “If you’ll not go, then take yourself somewhere where you can think clearly and logically, and then hopefully that time to reflect brings you back home.”

  Before it is too late. The words hovered, unspoken in the air between them.

  The set, imperturbable lines of the marquess’ face proved that, once more, Lucien had been robbed of choice yet again. “Is there anything else you require?” The question emerged harsher than he intended…or could help.

  Lord Drake shook his head.

  With a curt bow, Lucien took his leave, closing the door behind him.

  Goddamn you, Eloise. Goddamn you.

  Chapter 12

  A loud bang jerked Eloise upright. She squinted in the dimly lit room, trying to make the numbers out on the ormolu clock atop her mantel. Ten o’clock in the evening. Quiet descended upon her chambers once more and giving her head a shake, she settled back to continue reading.

  Angry shouts and her usually stoic butler’s stammering cries penetrated the perceived peace. Eloise set aside her book of Coleridge’s poems and flung her legs over the side of the bed. She dragged on her modest robe at the foot of her bed, concealing her equally modest nightshift.

  Whatever…? If it was her blasted brother-in-law with his zealous opinions about her actions and inactions, she’d have him tossed on his ear this time, she would. She pulled the door open and started down the corridor. With every step she took, Forde’s shouts grew frenzied in volume and passion.

  “How dare you, sir? Her Ladyship is—”

  “Oh, she’ll receive me, Goddamn it.”

  Her feet drew to a sudden halt at the familiar, gruff baritone. She widened her eyes. Oh, dear.

  “Find her now.”

  For one moment of sheer cowardice, she cast a longing glance down the corridor toward the safety and peace of her chambers.

  “If you do not leave this instant,” Forde rumbled, “I will have you forcibly removed.”

  That threat propelled her forward. Eloise sprinted the remaining length of the corridor and halted at the top of the stairwell. She rested a trembling hand along the top rail. As if he felt her presence, Lucien looked up, volatile rage simmering in his eyes. She chewed her lower lip a moment and then managed a forced smile. “H-hello.” She gave a halfhearted wave. “S-so lovely of you to call.”

  The butler, Forde, stared up at her as though she’d sprouted wings and intended to fly the distance down to the front entrance.

  Lucien took a step forward, effortlessly striding past the ineffectual, aging butler. “This is no social call.” That seething whisper carried in the generous foyer like a shot in the dead of night.

  She bit back a sigh. First her horrid brother-in-law, now her long ago friend. Did no one pay social calls, anymore? “Oh.” She took a tentative step, pausing at the top step. “Then perhaps we might wait until the morn—?”

  “Oh.” Poor Forde. He gulped nervously.

  She took pity on the graying servant who’d likely just added a handful of additional silver streaks to his coarse hair. “Forde, it is quite all right,” she assured him. Or lied. By the seething tension emanating from Lucien’s taut frame, she rather suspected it was not at all…all right.

  The loyal servant hesitated.

  She gave him a reassuring smile and with that, he moved with stiff steps…until Eloise and Lucien were—alone. “You do know you really shouldn’t come around at this late hour frightening my servants, Lucien. It isn’t at all well-done of you.”

  “I don’t give a damn what it is,” he hissed, rocking forward on the balls of his feet as though he were one wrong comment from her away from stalking up the stairs.

  She swallowed hard. “I gather you are here following a conversation you had with the marquess.” Her fingers quaked in an involuntary tremble and she buried them within her dressing gown to keep from revealing her unease.

  His black eyebrows met in a punishing line.

  Oh, dear, he was a good deal more menacing than she recalled. She mustered a smile. “I take it he was as supportive and kind as the papers purported him to be.”

  And that proved to be the one Eloise-comment that set his feet into motion. He boldly climbed the stairs as effortlessly as if he were the master of her modest townhouse—a role she’d gladly have him in forever. She scrambled backward. Well, mayhap not in this icy, domineering role he’d assumed since he’d terrified poor Forde. “What are you doing?” she asked as he continued his slow, menacing climb.

  His silence was all the more infuriating. And terrifying. Her heart hammered hard and she retreated another step. She didn’t believe he’d hurt her, but his unpredictability made him dangerous. Her heel caught the hem of her robe and she teetered precariously.

  She threw her arms out sear
ching for purchase when Lucien closed the distance, easily catching her to him. He folded his arm about her and braced her against his chest. “You bloody fool. Are you trying to break your neck?”

  Oh help her. Her eyes slid closed of their own volition and she soaked in the comforting feel of his form pressed to hers. Until she left this Earth she would recall the moment—his powerful body strong, powerful, heated. “Wh-why would I try to break my neck? That’s utter nonsense.” Her weak-hearted attempt at levity did little to diminish the hardness in his dark gray, now very nearly black, eyes. “Perhaps we should meet in my receiving room?”

  He jerked and it was the moment he remembered himself. As a butler in the Marquess of Drake’s employ, he likely knew the frequent gossip to fly about a household. Lucien gave a brusque nod, setting her away from him.

  Eloise led the way down the stairs, through the foyer, and down the darkened corridor lit by but a handful of sconces to the receiving room. Lucien trailed behind, remarkably stealthy for one of his commanding size. So much so that she shot a quick glance over her shoulder to be sure he still followed. Fury marked his face and she gulped hard. This is Lucien. Her dearest friend. Once closer than any two souls could be. He’d never harm her. His low growl echoed behind her. She jumped and quickened her strides. Then, he was in many ways a stranger now.

  As they entered the handsomely decorated room with Chippendale furniture, she closed the door softly behind them, knowing her efforts at privacy were futile. She had little doubt that word of this scandalous nighttime visitor would reach her brother-in-law’s condescending ears. “I understand you are upset,” she said, speaking to him the way she had her mare after the poor creature had injured his front hoof.

  He matched her steps. “I am not upset,” he whispered.

  Eloise hurried to place much needed distance between them. Her shoulders sagged under the weight of her relief. She smiled. “Splendid, then! I—”

  “I’m livid.”

  She flattened her lips. “Oh.” Eloise raced behind the rose-inlaid, rectangular table and placed her palms upon the surface. “I needed to reason with you.”

  Lucien continued coming and stopped at the opposite end of the table and leaned across. “But you didn’t reason with me, did you? You forced my hand.”

  Eloise removed her hands and made to step back. “I can explain.” Guilt needled at her conscience once more. She really was very justified in her actions, if he’d but listen.

  “There is nothing to explain, madam.” A gasp escaped her as he shot his hand out and captured her wrist, halting her flight. Her skin tingled at the power of his hard, callused palm upon her skin. She closed her eyes a moment. Not once in all the years that her husband had come to her chambers had she burned from his touch. She’d believed herself incapable of passion and never expected to know the thrill of desire. Until she’d again found Lucien and had at last known his kiss…and his touch.

  “What, do you have nothing to say?” he jeered.

  How very humbling it was to ache for a person so wholly unaffected by you. Forcibly she thrust aside any and all weakness, knowing she required strength in this exchange. “I had no other choice,” she said, angling her chin up.

  Lucien moved a cold stare over her face and then with a black curse that scorched her ears, swiftly released her. “My family is not your business, Eloise,” he said, this time there was no lethal edge to his words, but rather a matter-of-factness that was all the more painful for it.

  “No, they are not my business,” she said softly. “They are like my family.” With her father’s death the same year Lucien had gone off to fight, the bond between she and Lucien’s brothers had only been strengthened. They’d sustained each other, offering and providing solace in some of those darkest times.

  Lucien strode around the table and held a finger up. “Ah, yes.” He paused, then stopped so close she was forced to crane her head back to meet his gaze. “But they actually are my family.”

  She flinched. When had he become so cruel? Had it been the years of fighting? Perhaps he would have returned this same cynical, wary man to his wife and child. Her heart spasmed. No, their love would have restored him to who he’d been. By the expectant glint in his eyes, he anticipated her volatile outburst. Tears, even. She’d not rise to his bait. Instead, she claimed his hand and held it between her own. “I am glad you at last remembered that important fact, Lucien.”

  His body jerked erect at her touch. She expected him to wrench his hand free. Instead, he remained rooted to the floor, gaze fixed on her hands twined with his one. The muscles of his throat moved up and down.

  A gentle hope stirred in her breast that she’d managed to reason with him. Help him see that for all he’d lost, he still had known love. But for the affection of her doting father, that emotion had been rather sparse in her own life. “Your father loves you,” she said. “He—”

  Lucien yanked his hand free, shattering the fragile moment of peace between them. He stuck his face close to hers, fury teeming in his eyes. “I lost everything I was, everything I had, because of him.” He spun away and she thought he intended to leave, but he merely stalked like a savage beast over to the window. “You live in a world untouched by the horrors of the world, Eloise,” he said tiredly. With his disapproving tone he may as well have delivered a gentle rebuke to a child. “With that commission purchased by my father, a path he was determined I take as a third son of little value, I killed men.”

  She flinched, wanting to stop the flow of his words, but needing to hear the hell he’d endured. “Frenchmen not older than you were when I left gutted by my bayonet. Men I called friends, writhing on the fields of battle with their insides splayed open begging to die…”

  Eloise clamped her hands over her ears, but he strode over and, with his hand, removed them, awkwardly clasping them within his grip. “If you are insistent on returning me to the man responsible for the nightmares, then you’ll hear it all.”

  She shook her head, tears clogged her throat, filled her eyes until he blurred before her. “Please.”

  An ugly grin formed on his lips. “What do you know of it? You never held someone in your arms while they died. You never knew the agony as that person sucked in a final breath and was no more…”

  She blinked, fighting to keep from crying, lest he misconstrue her tears as a sign of weakness, but a lone, dratted drop escaped. Followed by another. And another. Until they streamed down her cheeks in a silent, steady torrent. He was wrong. She had known that pain. She’d held Sara and Matthew in her arms and heard that very same uneven, agonizing breath he now described. The memory of that day would forever haunt her. “I know more than you think,” she said on a broken whisper.

  His lips twisted again in that dark, macabre rending of a smile that spoke more clearly than words his doubts. “I’m returning to see my family. Not because I wish to, but because you willed it. There will be no joyous reunion. There will be no grand showing of remorse and repentance between father and son, if that is what you desire, Eloise.” He raked a stare over her that brimmed with resentment and fury. “I leave in the morning and when I return to London, I don’t want to see you. I’ll resume my responsibilities in the marquess’ service and you and I shall continue to move in our different social spheres. I want the memory of you to end with my father. Is that clear?”

  Eloise managed a shaky nod. “Yes,” she said, amazed that he couldn’t hear the cracking of her heart. “Abundantly.” He started for the door. She didn’t know where she found the courage, but she called out, “Lucien?”

  His steps slowed and he turned back to face her.

  Eloise wet her lips. “I just thought I should mention I intend to leave in the morning, as well.”

  “For where?” he blurted, and for that slight moment, there were none of the harsh lines, no frown on his face and he was the Lucien of old.

  “Why, for Kent.” She cocked her head. “To see your father.”

  Chapt
er 13

  She was going to drive him bloody mad. He’d always known it. First when she’d been a girl of six and insisted his toy soldiers dance with her ruffled dolls. Then when she’d insisted on picking flowers in the fields of daisies after they’d gone fishing as children. And now… at his thirty years to her twenty-eight, with her so casually dismissing his rage and cold demands and expressing her intentions to journey to Kent.

  “You’re mad,” he managed to get out.

  She pursed her lips. “Indeed, I am. Livid. But I’ll not allow that to prevent me from seeing your father once more.”

  He drew in a breath, counting silently to five. “I meant insane. Bound for Bedlam.”

  Eloise’s eyes formed moons in her face. “Oh.” She shook her head. “No, I’m the other type of mad. The angry one.”

  He felt his lips turning up in a grin and he quickly suppressed it, refusing to allow Eloise and her charming mouth and sweet spirit to overshadow her betrayal.

  She folded her arms mutinously over her chest, plumping the lush mounds of her breast, drawing his attention downward. “And I’ll have you know, despite your displeasure, I intend on going.”

  Lucien tried to process her words. He really did. However, the burning rage that had driven him to her doorstep and into her townhouse like a madman receded under the sudden realization that nothing but a thin robe and nightshift shielded her slender but generously curved body from his gaze.

  “Did you hear me?” she snapped, her bosom moved up and down with the force of her breathing.

  He stared transfixed by the ethereal sight of her, bathed in the faint candle’s glow. When had Eloise Gage grown from the stubborn, wild child running the hills of Kent to…this enticing, captivating creature with a woman’s curves and a siren’s mouth?

  She waved a hand in front of his face. “Hullo, Lucien.” Fire snapped in her eyes.

  The one constant for Eloise would appear to be the whole stubborn business. He shot his arm around her waist and angled her body close to his. A startled squeak escaped her as he angled her body close. “You always did interfere, didn’t you,” he whispered against her temple.