Richard took her hand and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze that drew her from the edge of the nightmares. “Eloise, how can I ever repay you?”
She returned her focus to the door and instead of the scent of death and sickness, she focused on the reunion between father and son that now occurred on the other side of the panel. Surely theirs was not a contentious meeting. It couldn’t be at this final moment. “I haven’t done anything.” Richard and Palmer hadn’t seen Lucien in years. They’d been spared proof of the hardened man he’d become.
Richard captured her hands in his, giving a faint squeeze. “Surely you know none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you.” A spasm of pain contorted his face. “My father would have died and both he and Lucien would have lost that much needed peace they both deserve.” A peace they all deserved. “How did you convince him to come?”
She sighed. “In a way I’m not at all proud of.”
He opened his mouth to say something on it, but the door opened. They swung their gazes to the door. Lucien stood framed in the entrance, his narrow-eyed stare on Eloise’s hands clasped in Richard’s. She released them suddenly.
“He’s asked for Eloise,” Lucien said, his tone gave little indication to his thoughts.
Her mouth went dry with fear and she inched away. “I…” Can’t. She could not step foot into another room of death. Eloise pressed her eyes closed and then opened them. She might not want to enter that room but she could do this. For the man who’d been like another father to her. For her father who’d had no better friend in all his life. And for Lucien and, of course, his brothers. She could do this for them.
With head held high, she started for the door. Lucien remained rooted to his spot, blocking her entrance. He took in her face and then looked over her person as though verifying that she was, in fact, all right. Which was quite preposterous. He didn’t know of the terror she still carried in her heart or the irrational guilt for her inability to help his wife and son.
Wordlessly, he stepped aside.
Eloise curled her hands so tight, her nails left indents upon the soft skin of her palms, biting into the flesh hard enough to draw blood. The need for his support in this perhaps last and final visit with the viscount was a physical hungering. She took a step forward and he shot his hand out, taking her fingers in his. She glanced down at their interlocked fingers and then raised her gaze to his. Something charged and volatile passed between them. And then, he released her.
She entered the room, the lingering scent of death hung on the air. She pressed her eyes closed as the deaths of her father, Sara, and Matthew crept around her mind.
“Eloise?”
Eloise hovered at the doorway and tried to set aside memories of past loss. “Yes, Lord Hereford.” She closed the door partway and cautiously made her way over to the bed.
The viscount, once bold and proud, struggled to push himself up onto his elbows. Reservations aside, she raced over. “Please, don’t,” she said. “Rest.”
He coughed noisily and gestured to the vacant seat. She sat. Perched on the edge of her chair she took his frail hand in hers. The ghost of a smile played about his lips. “Do you know,” he began so faintly she struggled to hear. “I always wanted a daughter.”
“You and Papa were always a wonderful match.” She gave his hands a gentle squeeze. “He always wanted a son.”
“Ah, but there you are wrong.” He shook his head. “He always needed a son…but he always wanted a daughter.” A gleam twinkled in his pained eyes. “As did I.” His gaze skittered off to the door. “Don’t tell my sons,” he said with traces of the humor he’d shown through the years that made her forget a moment that she sat here now paying her last respects to this loyal friend of her late father’s.
Eloise leaned over and whispered close to his ear, “Your secret is safe with me.”
They shared another smile.
“Oh, Eloise, I am so very grateful to you.” The hollow lines of his throat moved with his audible swallow. “You brought my son back to me.”
“I didn’t do that,” she said softly. “He was ready to come home.” He’d just required a gentle reminder.
“Do you know, the greatest regret of my life was buying that commission for him?”
Eloise said nothing, all the while wishing she could draw forth the comforting words he deserved at the end of his life. She set the viscount’s hand down upon the crisp, white linen. Yet, she shared that very same regret. She wished Lucien had never left his wife and son. Then mayhap he’d not have been consumed by so many bitter resentments.
“Do you know my second great regret?”
“What is that?” she murmured.
“That not one of my boys was wise enough to wed you.” He dissolved into another fit of coughing.
Eloise hopped to her feet and picked up the nearby pitcher from the side table. She filled his glass then set the porcelain jug down. “Here,” she said. She reclaimed her seat and held the glass up to his lips.
He took slow, laborious sips. “Think to distract me do you?” He waggled an eyebrow.
Her lips twitched. “Did it work?”
“Not at all.” He held up a bent finger and waved it about “We were talking about my foolish sons.”
“They’re not foolish,” she said loyally. As much as she’d longed for Lucien, time had forced her to confront the truth—he loved another. And she’d loved him enough to let go of the dream of him as anything more…but that friend from long ago.
“I always imagined you would marry Lucien.” He spoke more to himself. “In my life, I never saw such a bond between a man and woman the way you two shared. Even as children…” He coughed once again. “Even as children,” he repeated. “You had a friendship unlike I’ve ever known.”
“Most boys would detest a young girl who made a nuisance of herself, the way I did.” And at first, Lucien the boy had chafed at her bothersome presence.
The viscount’s words cut into her musings. “He loves you.”
She didn’t doubt Lucien did, and always had, loved her as a friend. “I know,” she assured him. She’d merely ached for more.
He shook his head. “He loves you,” he said, a meaningful look in his blue eyes.
Eloise warmed at the significance of his supposition. “Oh, no,” she said hurriedly. She looked to the door and then back to the viscount. “Never as he loved Sara. Perhaps as a dear sister.” Except the memory of his kiss still burned like an indelible imprint upon her lips. His was the kiss a man gave to a lover.
He rested his hand upon hers and she started. “He does,” he said, his voice weakening.
Suddenly discomfited by the personal direction of Lord Hereford’s words, she stood. “You must rest, my lord.”
He managed a nod. “Mark my words, Eloise. He’ll find the courage to profess his love and I’ll be smiling all the way to the hereafter.”
The viscount stilled and for one horrific, endless span of a heartbeat she believed he’d died. But then the faint, almost imperceptible inhalation as he drew breath indicated he still lived. Eloise padded quietly across the room. She slipped outside into the hall.
Richard and Lucien stood, in like positions—feet braced apart, somber sets to the harsh, angular planes of their faces. But for Lucien’s missing limb, with their dark hair and storm gray eyes, they may as well have been mirror images of one another.
They looked expectantly at her. “He is sleeping.”
Some of the tension left Richard’s shoulders. Lucien, however, remained so still he gave no indication as to his thoughts.
“You should rest, Eloise,” Richard comforted breaking the silence.
Her skin prickled with awareness of Lucien’s gaze upon her person. Yet, he said nothing, continuing to stare at her with that probing, intense look she’d come to expect. Eloise nodded, wanting Lucien to say something, needing him to.
Yet, as Richard led her down the hall to her guest chambers, Lucien maint
ained his cool silence.
Chapter 21
The next morning, Palmer ordered the bell tolled six times to signify the viscount was near passing. By the afternoon, he sucked in a final, labored, gasping breath and then slipped into the next world. Shortly thereafter, the funeral furnisher employed by Palmer in anticipation of the viscount’s passing, arrived to set the formal burial plans into motion.
With the day gone, ushered in by the black of night, Lucien sat numbly in the quiet of the Blue Parlor now somberly draped with black baize. The candles placed about the room cast eerie shadows. For the lives he’d taken down in the field of battle and the loss he’d known of his wife and child, he’d imagined himself immune to any further pain. Staring at his father’s unmoving, lifeless form—he realized one never truly became accustomed to the eternal permanence of death.
Since he’d set himself up as vigil, shutting himself in with his father until tomorrow when the viscount would be formally buried in the family burial grounds, his own life had played out before him in the silence of the room.
He could place his life neatly into two categories. The unfettered happiness he’d known as a young man, unmarred physically, mentally, and emotionally by war…and everything to come after the commission that had been purchased. Lucien shoved himself to his feet and wandered closer to his father’s now peaceful form. He would forever bear the scars of the life he’d lived. The war had changed him, as had the loss of his wife and son.
But who was he now? The Marchioness of Drake had drawn him back from the precipice of despair in which death had been preferable to life. She and her husband had given him work and through that, purpose. A reason to wake up, put one leg in front of the other, and exist.
He’d not realized that he wanted more than to merely exist—until Eloise. Lucien took the final steps between him and his father. He brushed his knuckles along the expertly tailored, black coat prepared by the man’s loyal valet. Just eight days ago, he would have both celebrated in his death and envied him that final rest. Now, since Eloise, he was forced to confront all the empty pieces of his own life. The viscount had left two sons, prosperous landholdings, and through Palmer and his wife, future offspring.
How very empty, how very alone Lucien’s life was.
It doesn’t have to be, an enticing voice whispered.
There was a woman, a woman he didn’t deserve, who’d been loyal and loving. He swiped his hand over his face. She’d been a girl just out in London and for her station and young years, cared for his wife and child, sat beside them, until they’d drawn their last breaths.
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…
Those cruel, erroneous words he’d hurled at her mocked him. For that, she’d still maintained her silence. How many other things had he been wrong about where Eloise was concerned? She’d opened his eyes and, in her, he saw a world of things he’d not imagined for himself—happiness, love, a child—all became tangible dreams within his grasp.
Nay, not just any child. A precious, stubborn girl with tight, blonde curls. “You would have liked that, wouldn’t you?” he asked quietly.
Of course, there was no answer. No reaction. Nothing but the absolutism of death’s dark quiet. He drew his hand back.
The floorboards creaked and he stiffened.
“Lucien,” Eloise said softly, her greeting, one word, his name drifted over.
The rustle of satin skirts filled the room. He cast a glance down at the slender slip of a woman who sidled up to him with a crimson bouquet of poppies wilted in her hands. She’d donned black mourning attire. Again. His heart wrenched in at last setting aside all the grief he’d known these years to confront the tragedy in a woman of her young age wearing these same dark skirts to bury her husband and then father.
“Eloise,” he murmured. “What—?”
“I came to pay my respects.” As always, she interpreted his unfinished thoughts with an uncanniness that spanned the course of their relationship. “To say goodbye,” she added as an afterthought. She set the poppies they’d picked yesterday, yesteryear, a lifetime ago, upon the viscount’s chest.
He blamed the exhaustion of their travels and lack of sleep for the swell of emotion that clogged his throat. “I cannot ever repay what you’ve done.” She’d allowed him a small measure, but an important measure, of peace.
Eloise touched her fingers to his cheek. “There is nothing to repay, Lucien. You are my friend,” she said simply.
His gut clenched. She’d claimed to love him, to want more of him. Perhaps she’d wisely realized there were any number of more suitable options; all of whom had never lain prone in a hospital bed, wallowing for years in the misery of their lives, and then taken on the work as a servant.
“He was a good man,” Eloise said. A sorrowful smile tugged her lips ever so slightly upwards. Her sadness with those words caused a viselike pressure to tighten about his lungs and make it difficult to draw a steady breath. “When we were children and played hide and go seek, he would allow me to hide in his office.” She gave him a look and her smile widened. “Most men would have sacked the nursemaid for allowing a child to be underfoot.” She lovingly stroked the viscount’s cold, lifeless hand folded in front of him. “But then I was always so curious.” She had been. About everything. “I would tire of you searching for me and sit in his enormous office chair and ask him a thousand and one questions. All of which he answered.” A golden tress fell across her eye. She brushed it back. “Odd how often I spent waiting for you to find me.” A shift occurred in their conversation. Her words transcended mere children’s games.
Tell her. His father’s booming voice bounced around the walls of his mind as clear as if he now spoke before them, so much so that he froze and glanced about.
“What is it?” she asked, following his gaze.
Regardless, this was not the place or time and the words withered on the faint echo of a memory of his father’s voice. “It is nothing.” The fire cracked and hissed in the hearth. “My father told me what you did, Eloise.”
Her narrow shoulders went taut. “What I—?”
He brushed his knuckles along her jaw. Even now she’d not share in the truth of her great sacrifice. “Come, Ellie, you know.” For years he’d thought only of himself and his hurts and regrets, and all along Eloise had been there, loving, caring for his wife, his son, his entire family. He was humbled by her selflessness and shamed by his total unworthiness of her. “I refer to what you did for Sara.” He braced for all the old hurts at the mention of his wife’s name. Hurt that did not come.
Eloise wetted her lips. “You know?” Soft surprise underscored her question.
He nodded once. “I know.”
Eloise angled her chin up, as though braced for his criticism. “You would have done the same for me.”
Ah, God, he was undeserving of her faith and devotion. Regret twisted inside him. He clenched and unclenched his jaw. For would he truly have done the same? From the moment the new vicar had entered the village with his winsome daughter, Lucien had not been the friend Eloise deserved—the friend he’d once been. Hell, he’d not even known her husband’s name, how they’d met, any details of the courtship preceding her marriage. Her husband, who’d seen her cared for in his passing had been a better, far more worthy man for Eloise than Lucien ever could have been. Perhaps fate had known that. Shame stuck in his throat and made it impossible to speak.
She cleared her throat. “It is late.” When had Ellie Gage ever worried about things such as time? She held his gaze and then with infinite slowness moved her eyes over his face as though committing him to memory. “As I said, I came to say my goodbyes.”
Lucien caught her hand in his and raised it to his lips. “Not goodbye, Eloise. Good night,” he corrected.
A sheen covered her eyes and she blinked rapidly. Then as quick as they’d come, the crystalline drops were gone.
Without another word, Eloise pulled her hand free and left.
He stared after her. She didn’t realize that, if she would allow him, there would never be another parting between them.
Chapter 22
Three weeks later
With the Marquess of Drake’s horse returned weeks prior, Lucien, in his brother’s carriage now, made the lonely return to London, along the rain splattered streets of the city. After nearly a day’s worth of rain, the thick, gray storm clouds had parted. He tugged the curtain back distractedly and peered out at the familiar passing scenes and he reflected on Eloise.
Odd, he’d gone years not noticing Eloise and now, he saw her everywhere. Including something as simple as a carriage ride. The memory as she’d been seated across from him, sopping wet from the cold rain, her cheeks wan from the motion of the carriage roused pained regret inside him.
The night Eloise had come to pay her respects and make her goodbyes to his father, the Viscount Hereford, Lucien had failed to realize that he was, in fact, the person she’d bid fare thee well to. And for all the years of having failed to notice Eloise Gage, this keen, awareness of the woman she’d become, had made the loss of her all the greater.
With her parting, he’d been forced to navigate the former relationships he’d once known as brother to men he considered his closest friends and ultimately became strangers by decisions he himself had made. Eloise had opened his eyes to so very much including the realization that for all that had come between him and his family, they were still his family. The years had melted away and despite the grief of their loss, there too had been the assurance in at last knowing one another as friends and brothers. Again, it was because of Eloise. All because of her.
The carriage rocked to a slow halt and he stared out the window at the familiar London townhouse—the place he’d resided, worked, and called home for two years. He’d left this very townhouse angry and furious. Furious at Eloise for her interference. Furious at life for having taken so much from him. Furious with being forced from the one place he’d managed to find a shred of peace after the war.
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