Neely looked slightly mollified. Hart knew better than to appeal to him by promising gains of power or wealth—Neely was a well-off, upper-middle-class English gentleman with strong ideas about one’s place in society. He disapproved of David’s wild lifestyle and Hart’s vast estate, but he didn’t condemn the two men entirely. Not their fault. Hart was a duke, David the grandson of a peer. They belonged to the aristocratic classes and couldn’t help their excesses.
Neely also believed that the duty of the higher classes was to better the lot of the lower classes. He wanted them to remain peasants, of course, but happy and well-cared-for peasants, to show the world at large that the English, at least, still practiced noblesse oblige. Neely would never dream of drinking a pint “down at the pub” with a coal miner or hiring a Cockney pickpocket to be a valet to his brother. But he’d certainly fight for better wages, lower bread prices, and less dangerous working conditions.
“Yes, well,” Neely said. “You have put forth some excellent ideas for reforms, Your Grace.” He wet his lips, gaze darting first to David, then Hart.
David caught the look and shot Hart a glance. “Perhaps we can sweeten the pot, eh?” David asked. “I sense that you wish to ask us something. You’re in confidence here. Words will go no further than the three of us and these walls.” He patted the cushioned velvet beside his head.
Hart expected Neely to ask for another tax on the aristocracy or their help on a pet project, or some such, but he surprised them by saying, “I wish to marry.”
Hart raised his brows. “Do you? My felicitations.”
“No, no. I mean, I wish to marry, but I am afraid that I am acquainted with no eligible, unmarried ladies. Perhaps, Your Grace, with your wide circle, you could introduce me to someone suitable?”
While Hart hid his annoyance, David took a pull of his cigar, removed it, and looked through the smoke at Hart. “Perhaps Lady Eleanor could help? She knows everyone in the country.”
Neely perked up at the mention of a title. “If this lady would be so kind?”
David stuck his cigar back into his mouth, and Hart gave him an irritated glance. While Eleanor acknowledged that many women of her class married to make social or financial connections, she might not be best pleased at being asked to introduce the prissy and snobbish Neely to one of her friends.
“I have to caution you,” Hart said to Neely, “that even were Lady Eleanor to agree to help, whether the young lady in question accepted your offer of marriage would be entirely up to her. A marriage is too nebulous a thing to guarantee.”
Neely thought about this, and nodded. “Yes, I see. Well, gentlemen, I will consider things.”
Hart felt the fish slipping away. But he had no interest in scouring England to find this man a bride. He’d have to resort to threats, not exactly what he wanted to do this night either.
Before he could speak, David blew out smoke and said, “Tell us what you really want, Neely.”
Hart glanced at David in surprise, then he wondered how he’d missed the signs. Neely was nervous, far more than a man wishing to be introduced to the right woman.
Hart’s head was not in this game tonight. Of course not. His thoughts were on the stairwell with Eleanor, her instant but innocent response, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her skin…
“You were about to ask for something else, before you settled on the safe topic of marriage,” David said, dragging back Hart’s attention. “Confess. You’re among friends. Worldly friends, at that.”
In other words, you can be honest with us, because we’re as bad as any gentlemen could be. You cannot possibly shock us.
Neely cleared his throat. He started to smile, and Hart relaxed. David had found a point of comradeship with him. Now to bring the fish into the boat.
Neely looked at Hart. “I want to do what you do.”
Hart frowned, not understanding. “What I do?”
“With women.” Neely’s eyes took on a hopeful light. “You know.”
Oh, dear God. “That was in the past, Mr. Neely,” Hart said coolly. “I’ve reformed.”
“Yes. Very admirable of you.” Neely drew a breath. “But you’d know where I can find such things. I like the ladies. I like them very much, but I’m a bit shy. And I have no idea which ones to approach for… certain things. I met a fellow in France who told me he put a halter on one and rode her like a horse. I’d like… I’d like very much to try something like that.”
Hart struggled to hide his disgust. What Neely asked for was nothing like the exotic pleasures Hart had learned and enjoyed. Neely asked for what he thought Hart enjoyed—using women, perhaps hurting them, for his pleasure. What Neely meant was a perversity, and not at all the art Hart practiced.
What Hart did was about trust, not pain—Hart promising the most exquisite joy to the woman who surrendered to him absolutely. He’d schooled himself to understand exactly what each woman wanted and exactly how to give it to her, and how to ease her back safely in the end. A lady never needed to fear when she was in Hart’s care.
However, the art could be dangerous, and an inexperienced pervert like Neely could truly hurt someone. The thought that Neely assumed Hart enjoyed handing out pain annoyed him. The man was an idiot.
But Hart needed the man’s votes. He swallowed his anger and said, “Mrs. Whitaker.”
“Ah.” David smiled and gestured with the cigar. “Excellent choice.”
“Who is Mrs. Whitaker?” Neely asked.
“A woman who will take good care of you,” Hart said. Mrs. Whitaker was a courtesan who knew how to contain overexcited men like Neely. “David will see you to her house.”
Neely looked eager and fearful at the same time. “Do you mean on the moment?”
“No time like the present,” Hart said. “I will leave you in Mr. Fleming’s hands. Good evening, Mr. Neely. I must return to my guests.”
“Quite.” Neely made a bow in his seat but did not extend a hand. He’d never think it proper to offer to shake hands with a duke. “I thank you, Your Grace.”
David and Hart shared another glance, and Hart opened the door. He climbed with relief out of the smoky carriage as David stretched his legs across the seat Hart had vacated and crossed his ankles, the very picture of decadence. A footman shut the door and the carriage rolled away.
Hart’s breath steamed in the chill of the night, but his house glowed with light and warmth. Music, voices, and laughter poured out the front door.
Hart strode into the house much more willingly than he’d walked out of it. He wanted to see Eleanor. Needed to see her. Needed her warm blue eyes and her wide smile, her effusive chatter like sudden rain on a dry, hot day. He wanted her beauty to cancel out the ugliness of Neely, wanted to return to the innocent pleasure of kissing her freckles, which had tasted honey sweet.
There she was, in the bottle green that for some reason brought out the blue of her eyes, the emerald earrings that had belonged to his mother dangling from her ears. A strange relief wafted over Hart when he looked at her, as though the ball, the meeting with Neely—all of it—was nothing, and only Eleanor was real.
She was chatting animatedly—nothing shy about Eleanor—to ladies and to gentlemen, gesturing with a furled fan she seemed to have acquired. Or perhaps it had dangled from her wrist the entire night; Hart couldn’t remember. The closed fan became a perfect horizontal as she moved her hand to make a point, then the fan came up to touch her lips.
Hart went rock hard. He stopped in the doorway to the ballroom, one hand on the door frame to keep himself from falling over.
He wanted Eleanor for all those dark pleasures he’d scorned Neely for not understanding. He wanted her surrendering to his hands, trusting him with everything she had, while he took the fan and touched her with it. He wanted to see her astonishment when she discovered how profound the pleasure of simple touching could be, the depth and breadth of it.
He wanted it now.
Hart pushed himself away from the
door frame, giving cursory nods to those who tried to gain his attention, and made his way to Eleanor.
Chapter 7
Eleanor saw him coming out of the corner of her eye. Hart looked like an enraged bull, or at least an enraged Highlander in a kilt. His short hair was rumpled, the light in his eyes was harsh, and those who attempted to speak to him melted out of his way.
Things with this Mr. Neely must not have gone well.
Hart kept barreling toward her, as though he meant to sweep her over his shoulder, as he had at the High Holborn house, and carry her off. The strength of him when he’d done that had thrilled her at the same time it had infuriated her.
Hart stopped in front of her, doing nothing so scandalous, but the tension in his body spilled to hers. He fixed Eleanor with his eagle stare and stuck out one large, gloved hand. “Dance with me, El.”
The command jerked out of him, and Eleanor knew he did not really want to dance. But they were at a ball full of people, in a place where Hart could not voice what he truly wanted.
Eleanor glanced at his offered hand. “Hart Mackenzie never dances at balls. Known for it, you are.”
“I’m prepared to give everyone a shock.”
Eleanor wasn’t certain what she saw in his eyes—rage, need, and again that bleak emptiness. Something was hurting him. She had the feeling that if she refused this simple request, the blow would erase every bit of new understanding they’d achieved.
“Very well,” she said, placing her hand in his. “Let us shock the world.”
Hart’s smile blazed out, the dangerous man back. “Your words.” He nearly crushed Eleanor’s hand as he pulled her onto the ballroom floor. “Let us waltz, Lady El.”
“It’s a Scottish reel,” she said. The fiddles and drums were around playing a raucous beat.
“Not for long.”
Mac and Isabella were leading the reel, ladies and gentlemen romping around and around the circles with them. Hart walked with Eleanor straight to the orchestra leader and snapped his fingers at the man. The fiddles stuttered to a halt as Hart spoke to the conductor in a low voice, then the man nodded and raised his baton again. The opening strains of a Strauss waltz filled the room, and the dancers looked about in confusion.
Hart guided Eleanor to the middle of the room with his hand on the small of her back. The orchestra gained strength, and the bewildered ladies and gentlemen started forming couples.
Hart stepped into the waltz with the downbeat of the main theme, pulling Eleanor effortlessly with him. They swirled past Mac and Isabella, who remained where they’d been for the reel.
“What the blazes are you up to, Hart?” Mac asked him.
“Dance with your wife,” Hart returned.
“Delighted to.” Mac, grinning, clasped Isabella in his arms and whirled her away.
“You’re getting yourself talked about,” Eleanor said as Hart swung her to the center of the ballroom.
“I need to be talked about. Stop looking at me as though you’re afraid I’ll tread all over your feet. Do you think I never dance because I’ve forgotten how?”
“I believe you do whatever you please for your own reasons, Hart Mackenzie.”
No, Hart hadn’t forgotten how to dance. The floor was crowded, yet Hart whirled her through the other dancers without danger, propelling her with strength. His hand was strong on her waist, the other firmly holding her gloved hand. His muscular shoulder moved under Eleanor’s touch, and the contact electrified her.
Hart took her across the ballroom floor, spinning her and spinning her. The vast and opulent room whirled past, and she saw the blur of his guests staring in astonishment.
Hart Mackenzie never danced, and now he danced with Lady Eleanor Ramsay, the very-much-on-the-shelf spinster who’d turned him down years before. And how he danced. Not with polite boredom, but with energy and fervor.
Hart’s look said he didn’t give a damn what anyone thought. He’d dance with Eleanor tonight, and the world could go hang. Eleanor’s feet felt light, her heart lighter still. She wanted to lean back in his arms and laugh and laugh.
“We waltzed the first night we met,” she said over the music. “Remember? We were the talk of the town—decadent Lord Hart singling out young Eleanor Ramsay. So delicious.”
The raw look in Hart’s eyes didn’t lessen. “That wasn’t the first time we met. You were nine and I was sixteen. You were at Kilmorgan, trying to play a tune on our grand piano.”
“And you sat down next to me to teach me how to play it.” Eleanor smiled at the memory, the tall Hart, already handsome in his frock coat and kilt, with an air of arrogant confidence. “In the most condescending way possible, of course. A young man from Harrow deigning to notice a child.”
“You were a devilish brat, El. You and Mac dropped mice into my pockets.”
Eleanor laughed as the ballroom spun around her. “Yes, that was quite enjoyable. I don’t believe I’ve ever run quite so fast before or since.”
Her eyes were beautiful when she laughed, sparkling and blue like the sun on a Scottish loch.
Hart had wanted to discipline Mac himself for the mice, but their father had discovered the prank and tried to beat Mac senseless. Hart had stopped him and had later taken a beating on his brother’s behalf.
Eleanor’s smile wiped out the cloud of memory. Bless her, she could always do that.
“I meant that we waltzed the first night we met properly,” she was saying.
“You wore your hair in ringlets.” Hart pulled her closer, the space between their bodies diminishing. “I saw you sitting with the matrons, looking prim and respectable, and I wanted you so much.”
Hart felt the supple bend of her waist under his hand, her body warm as a flush colored her face. Nothing had changed. Hart still wanted her.
Eleanor smiled as she’d smiled that long-ago night, unafraid and daring him. “And then you didn’t do anything very wicked at all. I confessed myself disappointed.”
“That is because I do my wickedness in private. As I did on the terrace, and in the boathouse, and in the summerhouse.”
Eleanor’s cheeks went delightfully pink. “Thank heavens we are so public here.”
Hart stopped. Couples nearly collided with them but carried on dancing, saying nothing. Hart Mackenzie was the eccentric Duke of Kilmorgan, they were his guests, and anything he did in his own house was to be tolerated.
Hart led Eleanor quickly from the floor. “I take that as a challenge,” he said when they reached a quieter corner. “Meet me on the terrace in ten minutes.”
Eleanor, being Eleanor, opened her mouth to ask why, but Hart gave her a formal bow and walked away from her.
Ten excruciating minutes later, Hart strode through a servants’ back hallway in his vast house, startling a footman and a maid who were also stealing a private moment, and walked out through a side door to the terrace.
It was empty. Hart stopped, his breath steaming. Cold and disappointment hit him like a slap.
“Hart?”
A whisper came from the shadows, and then Eleanor stepped out from behind a pillar. “If you wanted a secret meeting, could you not have chosen a drawing room? It’s bloody freezing out here.”
The relief that swept over him threatened to drown him. Hart tugged Eleanor against him, gave her one swift, fierce kiss, and then pulled her rapidly down the terrace steps, out of the garden, around the side of the house, and through a gate that led to a stairway. Down these stairs they went and back inside the house, into a long, white-painted hall. This hall was empty of servants, the staff engaged in Hart’s private supper ball for three hundred upstairs.
Hart towed Eleanor through another door into the warm steam of the laundry room. There was no light in there, but plenty of lamplight streamed through windows that looked back out to the gaslit passage.
A huge sink stood at one end of the room, with taps to pour out hot water from the boiler on the other side of the wall. Ironing boards were folded in th
e corner, and irons waited patiently on shelves to be heated on the small stove. A long table was covered with clean, folded laundry, snowy white linen ready to be carried to the bedrooms above.
Hart shut the door, enclosing them in humid warmth. He slid his hands to Eleanor’s bare shoulders, not liking how cold she was.
The conversation with Neely had left a bad taste in his mouth. Hart had been aware that people believed he was like Neely, a seeker of questionable pleasures at others’ expense. Hart had never cared what people thought of him before. Why Neely’s rather disgusting eagerness should bother him tonight, he didn’t know.
No, he did know. He didn’t want Eleanor thinking that he was a man like Neely.
“What did you wish to speak to me about so privately?” Eleanor asked. “May I assume you did not win over Mr. Neely, hence your mood?”
“No, Neely capitulated,” Hart said. “David is seeing to him.”
“Congratulations. Do victories always make you this cross?”
“No.” Hart caressed her shoulders. “I don’t want to talk about Neely or victories.”
“Then what did you wish to speak about?” She gave him one of her coyly innocent looks. “The flower arrangements? Not enough vol-au-vent at supper?”
For answer, Hart hooked his fingers into the top of her long glove, the buttons popping as he drew the glove down, down, down. He kissed the bared inside of her wrist, then kissed it again. Warm, sweet Eleanor.
He wanted to bathe in her and cleanse himself of all the things he’d done and all the things he would do in the name of making himself prime minister. He’d begun the supper ball as the duke trying to win over those who would help bring him power. He’d segued into the man who’d make a bargain with the devil himself if it would win him his vote.
He did not want to be that person anymore. At this moment, he wanted to be with Eleanor and shut out the world.
Eleanor’s eyes softened as he drew her up to him and kissed her parted lips.
Something jolted between them. Sparks. Always sparks.
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