It was wrong for this seething envy to eat away at him like a poison. With Richard and Palmer’s intact bodies, refined manners, and easy smiles, the glaring differences between him and his brothers shone, never more obvious than in this moment. Richard would make her a far better husband. Lucien had nothing to offer her. He retreated a step. He’d been foolish to come. He didn’t want this life. Didn’t want…
Richard said something that drove back Eloise’s smile. She gave a slight nod and then stepped aside and with that movement, she provided his brothers an unfettered view of Lucien.
The tension between them fairly crackled with a lifelike quality. Palmer and Richard stared with eyes, a shade of gray that may as well have been his own, at Lucien’s empty sleeve, to the place his arm should be. He clenched and unclenched his jaw, detesting the idea that he should be an object of pity to them.
Lucien jutted out his jaw and then wordlessly, held out his hand.
Richard studied it a while, as though he’d never before seen five fingers and then took it. He yanked Lucien into his arms. “Lucien,” he said, folding him in a grip hard enough to raise bruises.
He stiffened but then blinked as emotion rolled through him. A feeling of coming home.
“I’ve missed you,” Richard said, his voice harsh with emotion and then cleared his throat. The dull flush on his cheeks hinted at embarrassment over his lack of restraint. He stepped away and Palmer, the heir to the viscountcy, stepped forward.
Broader than he remembered with more harsh, angular planes to his face, he evinced the same aura of power and strength as their father. “Lucien,” his baritone so very similar to Father’s that it may as well have been the viscount greeting his son.
Lucien tried to force the words out, but he’d been solitary for so long he couldn’t form them. “I…”
Richard slapped him on the back. “I know,” he said, sparing him from exposing his soul to them on the front steps of their childhood home with curious servants as their witnesses.
Lucien turned to Eloise just as Richard held out his arm. She placed her fingertips upon his expensive, sapphire coat sleeve, and the cost of that garment greater than all the clothes he’d donned as a patient at London Hospital or servant combined. He curled his hand so tight he dug crescent marks upon his palm.
Eloise cast a lingering glance back at him and then returned her attention to Richard. Lucien stared after them until they’d disappeared inside. He registered Palmer’s knowing stare. “So, you’ve at last noticed, Ellie,” he said with a small grin. And just like that, the years melted away and it was as though he’d never left.
“Leave off,” Lucien growled and then took the steps two at a time after them. His brother’s amused chuckle trailed after him. He drew to a slow, uncertain stop at the slip of a young woman. Poised at the entrance, she stood almost as a sentry between Lucien and the hallowed walls of his youth.
His sister-in-law. Under the intensity of his scrutiny, she smoothed her hands over the front of her skirts. “Hullo,” she murmured, stepping outside.
Palmer came over and settled a palm at her waist. “I’d introduce you to my wife, Julianne,” he said. “Julianne, this is my brother.” His words broke.
Lucien bowed his head. “How do you do?” he asked, once again shamed that he’d so easily shut his brothers from his life. He didn’t know how the young couple had met. Whether theirs had been a love match. How much he’d missed.
Julianne gave him a tentative smile. “It is a pleasure.” She looked to her husband and a pretty blush suffused her cheeks. “I have heard so many stories of you and I am so very glad you’ve come.”
Palmer saved him from searching for a suitable reply. He placed a hand upon his shoulder. “Father is ill.” All earlier levity, replaced by the somber, cautioning tone.
Tears flooded Julianne’s pale blue eyes.
Lucien nodded. “I—”
“No.” Palmer shook his head. “I…” He swiped a hand over his mouth. “You’ll not recognize him,” he said. “He’s been asking for you.”
Lucien squared his jaw, but none of the previous seething hatred he felt for the viscount came. Filled with a sudden disquiet at his brother’s ominous admission, he stepped through the front doors. The housekeeper was still the same plump, red-cheeked woman he remembered from his youth. Only streaks of white painted her chestnut brown hair. Mrs. Flora said something to Eloise.
A spasm of grief contorted Eloise’s face and she took the housekeeper’s hands in hers and gave a squeeze. Tears filled the loyal servant’s eyes and she nodded. Eloise released her and the woman discreetly dabbed at her eyes. She turned to him and then her eyes widened like a night owl startled from its perch. “Master Lucien,” she cried and then the tears fell freely down her cheeks.
Lucien went taut. Years of fighting had stolen the luxury of unrestrained emotion from him. To exhibit even a hint of weakness meant death. He’d lived by that code and more, he’d lived away from loved ones so long he forgot to move about them. “Mrs. Flora,” he said gruffly.
“It is so very good to see you.” She looked to Richard. “The viscount will be…” her voice broke. “Happy.”
Richard rested a hand upon his shoulder. “The doctor just left his side a short while ago, Lucien.” Emotion burned strong in the other man’s eyes. “I do not know how much longer he shall live.”
One week ago, before Eloise had slipped back into his life and stolen into his heart restoring his spirit, Lucien would have had a vastly different reaction to that pronouncement. He’d have sneered and said the viscount could burn in hell and not given his sire another thought. Now, taking in the swell of emotion in his brothers’ and Eloise’s solemn expressions, the magnitude of this loss rocked him.
“We should see him now.” If you intend to. The implication as loud as if it had been spoken.
Lucien nodded jerkily and fell into step beside his brother. He made it to the middle of the sweeping, marble staircase and registered Eloise at the base, standing beside Palmer and Julianne. He turned to her expectantly. “Will you come with me?” He needed her to be there. He’d feigned indifference for five years. She’d forced him to confront the truth of his lie.
“Of course,” she said simply. Eloise climbed the stairs. Her gown wrinkled from a long day’s travel, the hem of her skirt muddied from their traipsing through the poppies. She trailed along behind him as they wound their way down the corridor. How many other ladies would have put aside their own material comforts to join a surly bastard such as Lucien to visit a dying man?
He staggered a step and his brother’s gaze registered a question. Lucien quickly righted himself and continued his forward stride. Ah, he’d been so very indifferent. He’d spent years hating his father, begrudging him for the commission that had sent him off to war. Now he realized that it had been easier to place blame, hating his father, than to confront the lack of control Lucien had over any aspect of his life—his sanity, his wife and child’s well-being, hell he couldn’t have even protected his own bloody arm.
They stopped before the viscount’s chambers. Lucien’s palm grew damp and he dusted it along the side of his wrinkled pants.
Eloise captured it in her small, capable hands. He fixed his gaze on their interlocked digits for a moment. She gave him a gentle smile and squeezed his fingers, her touch comforting and yet capable for one so small. Then she released him.
His brother pressed the door handle and motioned him inside.
Lucien stepped into the darkened chambers. He froze as the door closed quietly behind him with a soft, decisive click. In spite of the warm day, a fire blazed in the hearth, the curtains remained closely tightened blotting out all hint of light. His eyes struggled to adjust to the dimly lit room and then he located the small figure at the center of the massive four-poster bed. A pressure tightened about his lungs, making it difficult to draw breath. He strode over to the bed.
His throat closed painfully and he swallowed har
d. The emaciated figure, with his gaunt face, bore no hint of resemblance to the commanding, powerful viscount. His father slumbered, drawing in an occasional, ragged breath. He cleared his throat. What a waste. What a goddamn waste his hatred had been. And for what? What had any of it gotten him? It hadn’t brought Sara or his son back. It hadn’t even brought him a small measure of satisfaction.
Lucien took a slow breath and searched about for a seat. He pulled the King Louis XIV chair closer to the bed. The mahogany legs scraped along the hard wood of the floor.
His father struggled to open his eyes. “R-Richard,” his voice emerged a hollow croak.
He closed his eyes a moment. “N-no, Father,” he said, his voice breaking. “It is Lucien.”
The dying man stilled and then blinked his bloodshot eyes. “L-Lucien?” He shoved himself up onto his elbows.
Lucien rested a staying hand upon his shoulder. “Don’t, Father.”
Tears flooded his eyes. “Ah, God, Lucien…” A tear streaked down his cheek. “I-I have missed you my boy.”
The sight of that single drop from a man who’d represented power and strength, who’d possessed an indomitable spirit that could not be shaken, that one lone tear a final testament to how human this man before him was. “I- I’ve missed you, as well.”
A startled chuckle escaped his father’s lips and he promptly dissolved into a paroxysm of coughing.
Lucien lunged out of his seat and looked about. A pitcher of water rested on a nightstand beside his bed. He picked it up and poured a glass full.
“Bah, water won’t cure me, boy,” his father said with a trace of dry humor he’d shown throughout the course of his life.
Nonetheless, he sat at the edge of his father’s bed and braced him against his body helping him into a sitting position. Water sloshed over the rim of the glass, dampening the crisp, white bedsheets. He damned the loss of his arm that made his movements unsteady. Only, he knew as one who’d been forced to confront the many lies he’d told these five, nearly six years now, the tremble in his body had nothing to do with the absent limb. “Here,” he murmured, holding the glass to his father’s lips.
The viscount sipped, the muscles of his throat moving slowly, displaying an agonizing effort to manage something as simple as a swallow. A sheen of tears blurred Lucien’s vision and he blinked them back. He set the glass down and eased his father back down upon the pillow. “I am so sorry.”
It took a moment to register that soft plea for forgiveness belonged to his proud sire and not his own.
“I—”
“Don’t,” Lucien said ravaged by the sight of his parent’s suffering.
His father stretched out once strong, now frail, fingers. Green veins stood out stark in his pale white skin. He touched that skeleton-like hand to Lucien’s empty sleeve. “My boy,” he said on a broken sob and then his gaunt frame shook under the force of his weeping.
Lucien folded him in his embrace. This man who’d put him astride his first mount and sacked the first and last tutor to ever lay a hand upon him. “Don’t, please don’t,” he said, his words a hoarse entreaty. How many years had he lay blame at his father’s feet? Upon his return, he’d taken an unholy delight in holding him responsible for everything Lucien had lost. “It was not your fault.” Only now, Lucien could not, with his sire at the end of his life, leave him with the weight of that guilt.
“I-it was. A-all of it.” He dissolved into a fit of coughing and Lucien held him close, fearing the older man would break under the weight of his arm. “I at least owed you a letter informing you of Sara’s and M-Matthew’s deaths. I’d thought…” A spasm of agony ravaged his father’s face. “I thought to protect you from that truth.”
Lucien waited for the bitterness at that great irony: the man who’d sent his son off to fight a bloody war had sought to protect him from the contents of a missive about his family. Only, the flood of resentment did not come. “It is done,” he said softly, the words spoken more to himself.
“W-what a waste.” His father’s words, the faintest whisper, reached Lucien’s ears.
“Indeed it was.” He stared over the top of his father’s head at the soft blue, plaster walls. How very close he’d been to never again seeing one of the parents who’d given him life. And he wouldn’t have. If it hadn’t been for Eloise. “I almost didn’t come,” he said quietly.
His father sucked in several long, shallow breaths and Lucien thought he slept. “Richard believed Eloise would find you. He said the Devil himself couldn’t bring you here.” A softness lit his eyes and dimmed the agony of dying reflected within their depths. “But that Eloise could.”
Lucien glanced across the room at the closed door, feeling her presence even through the thick, wood panel, reassured in just knowing she was there.
“That girl has loved you as long as she’s known you,” his father said with all the sage wisdom of a man who saw and knew all. “Come, nothing to say?” For a moment, he spoke with the same bold strength that Lucien long remembered and he allowed himself the all too brief moment of believing that they two were the same men they’d been before a madman had ravaged the Continent and ultimately destroyed their family.
His father waggled a brow.
Lucien cleared his throat. “I know.”
His father coughed into his hand. Lucien leapt to his feet to get the half-filled glass but his father waved him off. “I always imagined you’d wed Ellie,” his father said softly, more to himself. A pained smile wreathed his gaunt cheeks. “Then, perhaps that was just my own wishful musings for the both of you.”
Lucien stared down at his lone hand, the callused pads of his fingers, the scars marring his flesh from the spray of shrapnel at the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro.
“She’s always been loyal to you,” his father continued.
He may as well have had a dog then…
Yes, she had been steadfast in her devotion since the moment he’d instructed her on how to plant someone a facer, but his love for her went beyond those mere sentiments of loyalty. He loved her for her resilience, her courage, her—
“I don’t know another lady who would have stayed to care for an ailing woman and child the way she did for Sara and Matthew.” The raspy words cut into his thoughts.
He blinked and picked his head up. “What?”
The viscount closed his eyes. His chest contracted with each struggled breath he drew. “You didn’t know that?” he asked. His lids fluttered open. A ghost of a smile hovered on his gaunt cheeks. “Of course, you didn’t. Ellie would never be one to extol her own deeds.” A spasm of pain wracked his face. “The doctor, useless man,” he mumbled, “claimed nothing could be done to save them.”
The pain of that loss would always, always be with him and yet, at his father’s words, the familiar jagged agony that could cut a man to the core—did not come. At some point, Eloise had breathed life into a body he’d thought long dead. Then, the slow-turning wheels of his mind processed his father’s words. “She was here?” Eloise would have been recently married.
“Eloise and her husband were visiting,” his father said, confirming his supposition. He flexed his wrist in a feeble attempt to wave his hand about. “She did that, you know. Most ladies would forget about their father’s friends. Godfather or not.” The viscount closed his eyes again.
He should halt the flow of his father’s words, preserve his energy but, bastard that he was, Lucien needed to hear the remainder of this story he didn’t know and likely never would have…if he hadn’t come home.
“Eloise went to your home.” Odd to think of that modest dwelling upon the viscount’s property as home. He and Sara had lived there but a handful of months before he marched off to face Boney’s men. “She remained there when the doctor said it was futile. Cared for them until the end.”
His father’s words sucked the air from his lungs. “She never said anything,” he whispered. Why? He shot a glance over to the door separating them. Why would she kee
p that from him? He fumbled about for an explanation but came up empty.
“Fell quite ill herself,” his father murmured. “The doctor thought she would not make it.” He smiled and the muscles ticking in the corner of his lips indicated the effort that happy gesture cost him. “Eloise has more strength than most grown men I know.” He grimaced at the exertion of speaking those handful of meaningful words.
Lucien sank back in his seat in silent shock. In spite of her elevated status as countess, Eloise had gone to his wife’s side. She had nursed Sara and his son and nearly paid with the price of her life for that great sacrifice. Agony twisted in his belly. He cupped his hand over his mouth. In all his miserable years, there had been but one thing he was right about—he didn’t deserve her.
“Lucien?” His father sucked air noisily through his lips.
He rested his hand on his father’s. “Rest,” he entreated, willing him to a peaceful silence.
Then with a shocking display of strength, he chuckled. “I’ve the whole of eternity to rest.” His father gave him a stern look that melted away the years of difference between them and Lucien was son, and the viscount was father. “Send in Eloise.”
Chapter 20
Eloise stared at the closed panel door with a blend of grief and panicked trepidation. All the old memories rushed to the surface and she closed her eyes to ebb their rapid flow. Her efforts proved ineffectual. The stench of bodies fevered in their sweat permeated her senses, the biting scent pungent even after all these years. Her mouth went dry. She could not enter the viscount’s chambers. Even as he’d been like another father to her through the years, she could not step through that door and bear the sight of more death, more suffering…
Seduced by a Lady's Heart Page 14
