With his mind in tumult, Eloise shrugged off his touch. “You remember so easily that I’m a lady.” She held his gaze. “Yet so casually forget that you are, in fact, a gentleman.”
No matter how many posts he accepted with the marquess, or the distinction between them now…he had been born a gentleman. Whether he wished it or not.
Lucien stood. He suspected if he stole one more glance at Eloise, in her naked glory, fire in her aquamarine eyes, he would gladly abandon the life he’d established for himself these past two years. With swift movements, he collected his clothes and quickly pulled them on. When fully clothed, he strode over to the door. And for the second time that night, left her.
Chapter 18
They departed the following morning. Eloise stepped out of the inn and held her hand over her eyes to shield them from the blindingly bright morning glare. What had once seemed a miserable and dark journey was now filled with glorious hope. She sucked in a deep breath, allowing the clean, country air to cleanse her lungs.
“Are you ready, my lady?”
Lucien’s cool, perfunctory words slashed into her momentary giddiness. She glanced at him. The tender, gentle lover of the previous evening was gone. In his place was the unsmiling, unyielding Lucien Jones, returned soldier. She favored him with a frown.
Alas, he appeared immune to her displeasure. He tipped his head pointedly toward the carriage. With a toss of her curls, Eloise strode down the cobbled path. She picked her way over the muddied puddles. How could he be so indifferent after what had transpired last evening?
Because nothing transpired, you silly fool. Eloise’s slipper caught the edge of a cobbled stone and she stumbled.
Lucien settled his arm about her waist, steadying her. She stole an upward glance at him. “Thank you,” she murmured.
He gave a brusque nod, his mouth tense.
They reached the carriage and the driver pulled the door open. He held a hand out to assist her up. She hesitated a moment and stole a peak at Lucien. However, he withdrew, fading back a step. A servant once more. Damn him.
She climbed into the carriage with Mr. Nell’s help. He closed the door behind her. Furrowing her brow, Eloise tugged aside the velvet curtain. A servant rushed forward with Lucien’s mount. Of course he wouldn’t join her. Humiliated shame dug at her insides. He found her company so objectionable he didn’t want to share the same carriage.
Feeling her gaze, Lucien looked over at her. She let the curtain go and it fluttered into place. Eloise sat in pained embarrassment at being caught studying him when he should be so very indifferent to her.
The carriage lurched forward and so with the forward movement went her stomach. She lowered her head on the comfortable plush squabs of the well-sprung carriage. For the first time in every single miserable carriage ride she’d taken in her twenty-eight years, she gave thanks for the distraction. Her stomach churned. Even if it was a miserable distraction.
The misery of her roiling belly was vastly preferable to the toe-curling shame of Lucien’s rejection. She groaned and it had nothing to with the jarring bump of the carriage steadily increasing in speed. Instead, it had everything to do with reliving that humiliating moment of Lucien effortlessly setting her away when her body had ached with the pleasure only he could show her.
Eloise slapped her hands over her face and shook her head back and forth. “You are a fool,” she whispered, the words muffled by her hands. The sooner she realized there never was, nor ever would be, anything with Lucien, the sooner she could go back to living her life.
But how could she? How, when he was so very real again? If even a jaded, coarser version of his younger self?
She closed her eyes and sought the blessed oblivion of sleep, welcoming the edge of unconsciousness that drew her in.
The carriage hit a jarring bump. Her eyes flew open as she careened into the side of the carriage. “Oomph.” Eloise winced and shoved away from the wall. She rubbed her forearm and yawned, her muddled mind trying to sort through her whereabouts. Then the conveyance drew to a hard, jerky halt.
“Bloody hell man, have a care!” Lucien’s thunderous shout penetrated her confusion and with it reminded her of the purpose of her journey, their journey, and his rejection.
She groaned…
Just as Lucien wrenched the carriage door open. He did an up and down search of her. “Are you hurt?”
“N—”
The thought went unfinished as he wrapped his arm around her waist and guided her out of the carriage.
Mr. Nell leapt from atop his perch with surprising agility for one so portly. “Many pardons, my lady,” he said. He plucked his cap from his head and dusted it against his leg. “The roads are muddied from the storms and you’d indicated you wanted to make the journey as quickly as possible.”
She opened her mouth.
“Not at the expense of the lady’s life,” Lucien seethed.
Mr. Nell’s skin turned waxen and he stumbled back at the ferocious glower trained on him.
Eloise inserted herself between the scowling Lucien and her driver. “That will be all, Mr. Nell,” she said with a gentle smile. He slapped his black cap upon his baldpate and, with a deep bow, reclaimed his seat atop the box. Eloise shifted her attention to Lucien. “You do not need to be a beast to him,” she said chidingly.
He continued to glare over her head at the servant. Mr. Nell, however, was wise enough to direct his focus out at the sprawling, green pastures. “You could be killed for his recklessness.”
Perhaps Lucien did not understand the magnitude of his father’s grave situation. “I asked he set a rigorous pace.” Removed as he was these many years, he failed to realize that the once proud, bold viscount was at the final moments of his life.
He made a sound of impatience. “Very well, then you’d be killed for your recklessness.”
She laughed. “You are insufferable.”
Lucien managed a reluctant smile. The right corner of his lips tugged up slowly, the left following suit in a rusty display of amusement.
Her laughter died. How many times had he found joy over the years? She ventured very few. A gentle, spring breeze stirred her skirts and displaced a single curl. It fell over her eye.
They moved in unison. Lucien shot his hand out just as she made to brush the strand back. Their hands connected and the thrilling shock of his touch coursed through her. She wanted it to mean nothing. Wanted to adopt the affected indifference of a bold, experienced widow who’d not be so shamed by the rejection she had suffered last evening.
But then, he raised the single tress. He rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, transfixed by the lock. She could never feign indifference where Lucien was concerned. With slow, reluctant movements, he released the strand and took a step back. “We should leave,” he said quietly.
Eloise glanced up at the sun wondering how long she’d slept. “Yes.” There were likely several more hours of travel.
Lucien tugged his timepiece out. “It is nearly two o’clock. We should arrive within two hours.” He gave another crooked grin. “Or fewer considering your driver’s recklessness.” It took a moment for his jesting words to register. Instead, she stared at the gold timepiece, a gift given him by his father when he’d been a boy of sixteen. Her heart hitched. A man who truly abhorred his father would not hold onto a material possession that would forever remind him of his parent.
He followed her gaze. The sun reflected off the gleaming gold. “You kept it,” she said. She expected the angry man he’d become would stuff the piece into his pocket and dismiss her observation.
Lucien studied the gold piece, cradling it in his palm. He nodded and walked off to the edge of the road.
Eloise shifted on her feet and stared after him, silent and contemplative. His head remained bent over the gift given him by the viscount. Periodically, he’d look up at the vibrant poppies blanketing the fields, a crimson explosion of color, so vast it dominated the landscape.
He looked at her. “I didn’t come,” he said.
She cocked her head and stared at him questioningly.
Lucien turned silently to the sea of poppies. He stuffed his hand into his pocket, the gesture so reminiscent of young Lucien, her heart ached with the remembrance. Only this man, broad, powerful, missing part of his arm, and more, the hope in his heart bore no other traces to the innocent youth he’d been.
Eloise wandered over, the patiently waiting driver forgotten. She stood at Lucien’s side and stared out at the scenescape.
“I had promised to meet you,” he said, his voice rough with unchecked emotion. “And I didn’t come.”
She caught her lower lip between her teeth and gave a jerky shake of her head. “No. You didn’t.”
That had been the day he’d met the new vicar’s daughter…and the day Eloise had ceased to matter.
He turned to her. He ran an emotion-laden stare over her face. “You mattered, Ellie.”
She tried to force a smile that wouldn’t come.
“You did,” he insisted, his tone harsh. He reached for her and then glanced over her head at the waiting carriage bearing the servant and trunks. “You always mattered,” he said in hushed undertones.
Eloise turned her face up to the sun and welcomed the soothing caress of the warm rays upon her cheeks. “Of course I did,” she said, because she’d always believed she mattered to him. “I merely ceased to matter in the way I once did.”
A denial sprung fast and hard to Lucien’s lips. The bond he’d shared with Eloise had oftentimes defied the closeness he’d known even with his brothers. Oft regarded as the young, underfoot brother, Eloise had thrust him into the role of escapade-leader. He would lead them on their merry scrapes and she would follow. Then, he had simply set aside the closeness between them, for his love of Sara. A powerful, instantaneous love of a young man who’d seen a glorious beauty he could not live without.
He stole a long, sideways look at Eloise, her face tilted to the sun, her cheeks pink from the warmth of the day. And the love he’d had for her had been of friend, confidante…and he’d forgotten her. God help him. “I’m so sorry, Eloise,” he said.
Her eyes flew open. She looked at him questioningly.
The worst part of life, he’d discovered, had not been in the mistakes he’d made, but rather in his inability to go back and undo each of them, and put his life and the lives of those he’d loved to rights. He gestured to the fields. “I was to meet you—”
“It was silly—”
“In the fields of poppies to pick the blooms and I—”
She lifted her shoulders in a nonchalant shrug, the casual gesture only belied by the hurt in her tone. “Why, would you? You were a man of nineteen. I was just barely a woman at seventeen.” Eloise folded her arms across her chest, as though hugging herself. “That was the day you met Sara.”
She remembered that pivotal moment in his life. Remembered because she had always been more of a friend to him than he’d ever been to her and he’d left her standing in a field of wildflowers. Even if the woman who’d ensnared his attention that day would go on to be his wife, forgetting Eloise as he had, was unpardonable.
He stepped forward and waded into the sea of red blooms.
Eloise called out after him. “Where…?”
He spun slowly around and held out his hand, motioning her forward. “These are here now.”
Eloise of old would have danced merrily into the flowers, spun in circles until she was dizzy with the scent of spring. The cautious woman who’d also known great loss looked hesitantly at the carriage. She returned her attention to him, with a slight frown. “Lucien, we do not have time—”
“We’ve already lost too many moments, Eloise. Let us have this one.”
She hesitated and lifted her skirts. Her slipper hovered above the earth.
“Both of us have been surrounded by so much death.” Too much. Countless, faceless men. His wife. Child. Her husband. Her father. His father would soon be gone.
Eloise shook her head. “We cannot escape.” They could not escape death. Her meaning was clearer than had she spoken that omitted word.
“No.” He inclined his head. “But we might steal a moment of happiness where we can.”
And with that, Eloise completed that step. She loosened the strings of her bonnet and shoved the piece back and then walked over to him. She moved with more graceful, practiced steps, a woman’s steps that carried her over to him. She stopped. “Well?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.
He flicked the tip of her nose the way he’d done when she’d been a vexing girl. “Never tell me you’ve forgotten how to pick flowers.”
Eloise swatted his arm. “You’re as incorrigible as ever.” Her laughter rang clear as tinkling bells through the rolling fields.
Lucien angled his head down, awkwardly motioning to his half-empty sleeve. “I may require some assistance, my lady. I fear my flower picking abilities are not once what they’d been.”
She snorted. “Oh, hush. You require about as much help as you did then, which is none at all.” With that, the tension, pain, and regret of their pasts melted away and she flitted through the field, an emerald splash of green muslin amidst the fields of poppies. Eloise stooped and picked a single bloom. “Here.” She held it up.
Lucien stood in silence, accepting the selected buds she handed off to him. For so long, bitter resentment had burned like a poison inside him. He’d accepted the black mark upon his soul was to be a penance for the acts he’d committed against other men in the name of his country…and for abandoning his wife and child. Now, staring at her, time frozen in this field of flowers, he was stricken by the realization that he was…for the first time…in five years—happy. He braced for the flood of guilt. Where were the sentiments of remorse and that sense of unworthiness which had followed him all these years?
Instead, a lightness filled his chest at that freeing acknowledgement.
“Splendid!” Eloise brushed her gloved hands upon the front of her skirts and stood. “We shall give them to your father.” With a smile she took the makeshift bouquet from him. “Granted, they’ll likely be all wilted by then,” she prattled on with the same youthful exuberance she’d exhibited as a girl plucking flowers from a field. “Here.” She withdrew a single bloom and tucked it into the front pocket of his jacket. “This one shall be for you.” Her smile widened. “Shall we?” With that, she started back for the carriage, not pausing to see if he followed her questioning words.
Likely because she already knew that just then, he would follow her anywhere. Lucien stood transfixed by the seductive sway of her hips. Just then a gleam of sun lit upon the crown of her head and turned those blonde tresses to spun gold. Ah God, how he wanted her. Through her resolve, courage, and strength, Eloise, with an effortless ease, managed something Boney and all his men had failed to do. She’d marched over his heart and laid siege to the organ he’d thought dead.
Perhaps not all surrenders were altogether bad. With a grin on his lips, he started after her.
Chapter 19
One hour, fifty-six minutes and a handful of seconds later, they arrived at Lucien’s childhood home. He tucked his timepiece back in his pocket and dismounted from his horse.
A servant rushed forward to accept his horse. The young man, likely no older than twenty years or so, was unfamiliar to him. How many other unfamiliar faces would he find? With reluctance, he took in the impressive stone facade of the structure he’d called home. Regal and elegant with wide, stone steps and floor-length windows along the front of the façade, his skin prickled with a sense of being studied from someone behind one of those windows.
Absorbed as he was, a man stepping back into his past, he started when Eloise sidled up to him. “Forgive me,” he murmured. “I…”
“It’s all right,” she said. She slipped her hands into his hand and gave a faint squeeze.
His throat worked. For his insistence that she remain behind in L
ondon, he found himself suddenly very grateful for her presence here. These handful of days they’d spent together melded his past and present, and he who’d prided himself on needing no one these past years, found himself needing…her. “Ellie,” he said, his voice came out garbled under the weight of his discovery.
He loved her. Loved her for who she’d been and the friendship they’d shared but more, he loved her for the woman she was—a bold, defiant, determined lady who refused to let him to dwell in the resentment and anger and bitterness of his past.
She angled her head. “Lucien—”
The front door opened and, as one, they swung their gazes to the door. Two men filed out the entranceway. A slender golden haired lady with spectacles perched on the edge of her nose hovered in the entranceway staring curiously down at him. This must be Palmer’s wife. His brother had married several years back. Two? Mayhap three years ago?
His brothers now conversed with Eloise, nodding periodically at whatever questions she put to them. He felt the worst sort of interloper on a familial tableau he didn’t belong in. Lucien took a step back. But for Eloise, Richard and Palmer had been his best friends through the years. Time had turned them into older, more mature figures he barely recognized. In Palmer’s case, a wedded gentleman to a woman Lucien had never even met.
Richard claimed her hands and raised them to his lips one at a time. “Ellie,” he said with such familiarity that a stone pitted in Lucien’s stomach.
“Richard,” she said, smiling up at him with that smile Lucien had believed was reserved for him.
You were gone, a voice needled.
The tendrils of jealousy fanned out and spread through every corner of his being as he stood, an interloper on the intimate exchange between Eloise and his brothers. He’d not considered the possibility that his Ellie could be, that she might be, something more to either of his brothers. Seeing the way they spoke with smiles and grins and her soft blushes, he confronted the truth—their lives together had continued without him. Lucien had left. First for war and then in his choosing to cut himself apart from his family and, in that time, the friendship they three had known, continued.
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