“The Viscount Wessex has arrived for Mrs. Collins.” Eleanor scrambled forward on the edge of her seat, earning a sideways glance from the duchess. “I’ve taken the liberty of showing him to the drawing room, but I can very well explain Mrs. Collins is not receiving visitors.”
“No!” The exclamation burst from her. The embarrassingly loud and revealing denial bounced off the soaring ceilings. “That is,” she drew in a calming breath and resisted the urge to press her palms to her burning cheeks. Marcus’ visit was merely a product of the request she’d put to him; a pretend courtship to save her from unwanted advances and still, her heart thumped a too-fast beat as it always had when Marcus had been near. Aunt Dorothea pierced her in that assessing duchess-like manner that had terrified Eleanor when she’d first arrived in London all those years ago. “I will see His Lordship.” Eight years later it was no less terrifying.
The duchess said nothing for a moment and then she gave a slight nod. “You heard my niece, Thomas. That will be all.”
The servant sketched a bow and backed out of the room.
The usual frown adopted by her aunt turned up in an uncharacteristic, if rusty, smile. She picked up her cane and jammed the gold tip into Eleanor’s slippers.
Eleanor winced. “Ouch.”
“Run along, gel. The boy is waiting.” A wicked glimmer lit her eyes. “Not that I’m opposed to making a gentleman wait. But he’s a good boy, that one.”
He was. By station established at birth and then circumstances determined by a vile, black cad, Eleanor, however, had been placed firmly in an altogether different category than the one occupied by Marcus. She knew that. Eleanor pushed herself to her feet and silently handed the book over to her aunt. Forsaking gloves long ago as a sign of independence, she’d said, the older woman took the volume in her bent and wrinkled fingers. Eleanor started for the doorway. Aunt Dorothea had drawn the erroneous, but expected, conclusion about Marcus’ presence. Acknowledging for the first time since she’d enlisted Marcus’ support the deception she perpetuated against the woman who’d plucked her and Marcia from an uncertain fate, guilt sluiced through her.
“Eleanor?”
She paused at the front of the room and turned back around.
“Remember,” Aunt Dorothea held a finger up, “the beginning is always today.”
With those words echoing around her mind, Eleanor made her way through the long, narrow corridors of the lavish townhouse, onward to the drawing room. If she were still the hopeful sort who believed in the power of the fairytales that she now read to her daughter, perhaps she could allow herself the dream of Marcus. The woman she was now well knew that a powerful viscount with extensive landholdings, a man who was revered and admired, could never bind himself to a woman who’d been stripped of her virtue and left with a bastard child.
Nothing could exist for them, except for friendship; the only possible connection that could be was that of mistress. I want more than that empty entanglement. She wanted a life with Marcus, without the threat of her past lurking. But it would always be there. The jeering monster in her aunt’s ballroom had been proof of that. Voices within the ivory parlor brought her up short and she lingered at the edge of the door.
“Are those for my mama?”
Eleanor peeked around the doorframe and her heart caught painfully.
Marcus knelt beside her daughter. “No,” he said, his words carrying to the entrance of the room. With his back presented, the item in question Marcia and Marcus spoke of remained hidden from view. “Though I suppose I shall give one of them to your mama.” He shifted and dropped his arm to his side.
Eleanor’s gaze fell to the bouquet of wildflowers clutched in his hand and a vise squeezed about her lungs making it impossible to draw forth breath. Her daughter had been deserving of a father who spoke with the reverent gentleness in Marcus’ tone; a father who would carry her around on his shoulders and spoil her with laughter and love. She captured her lower lip between her teeth, hard. Marcus would have been that manner of father.
Nay, he will be. Just not to my child…
“They are not for my mama?” Disappointment coated Marcia’s words bringing Eleanor back from her agonized musings.
“They are not.”
He held out the collection of white and crimson blooms. “They are for you, Miss Collins.”
Oh, God. Eleanor gripped the edge of the door and drank in the sight of his broad, powerful form, seduced not by Marcus’ masculine perfection, but by the sight of such a man so beautifully aware and kind to a mere child—her child. Tears popped behind her eyelids and she blinked them back furiously.
“For me?” For all the awe in Marcia’s tone, Marcus may as well have plucked a star from the sky and handed it over to her care.
“For you.”
The muscles of Eleanor’s throat worked under the weight of emotion and she pressed her cheek against the doorjamb. Why would he be so nice to her daughter? He didn’t know, nor would he ever know, Eleanor’s flight had been to protect him and save him from some irrational sense to do right by her anyway. All he knew was the betrayal of a hasty note and word of a marriage to another. Yet for all the pain she’d caused him, he would help Eleanor avoid the attentions of lascivious noblemen and also be so heartrendingly sweet to her daughter.
“Why?” Her daughter’s perplexed question echoed Eleanor’s very thoughts.
“Do you know why?”
Marcia shook her head.
“Your King Orfeo’s love—”
“Lady Eurydice,” Marcia supplied.
“Yes,” he said with a nod. “All she wanted was to steal those happy moments in her field of flowers.”
“Instead, she was taken away by the horrible fairy and brought to the Otherworld.”
Eleanor frowned at the cynicism of her small daughter’s recounting. In the telling, through the years, she’d told the story of a lady lost, stolen from her love, and then ultimately found. She’d intended to convey a story of hope and reunion for her daughter, when Eleanor herself had accepted a very different end to her own story.
“That is true,” Marcus said solemnly. He took the bouquet from Marcia’s fingers and slipped free a lone daisy, holding it close to her nose. Her daughter inhaled noisily. “She was lost to that dark world, but not at first. At first she danced and laughed amidst those flowers and then found her happiness after. That is what matters.”
Oh God. A shuddery sob worked its way up her throat and Eleanor buried it in her fingertips. Marcus stiffened. Heart hammering, Eleanor leapt backwards. She pressed a hand against her chest. Perhaps he hadn’t heard.
“What was that?” Marcia asked.
Drawing in several, slow calming breaths, Eleanor pasted a smile on and stepped into the room. The two occupants of the room stood side by side. Marcus moved his inscrutable stare over her person and then settled those fathomless blue eyes on her face.
“Mama, Marcus brought me flowers.” Unceremoniously, Marcia tugged the bouquet from his long, powerful fingers and raced across the room to present the display to Eleanor.
“Did he?”
“Oh, yes.” With her chubby little fingers, Marcia held the single daisy up toward Eleanor. “You should have a flower, too.” She tossed a look back at Marcus. “Perhaps when you visit again, you’ll bring Mama flowers, too?”
“Marcia,” she chided, her cheeks warm at her daughter’s boldness.
He inclined his head. “You are, indeed, correct, Miss Collins. I have been remiss.”
“What is remiss?” Marcia asked, her little brow creased with confusion.
Eleanor bent down and brushed her lips over the crown of Marcia’s curls. “It means you need to return abovestairs to your lessons so you might learn all those words you do not know.”
With a very grown-up sigh, Marcia said, “If I must.”
“You must.”
She gave a jaunty wave and without making her proper goodbyes, sprinted from the room. Leaving Ele
anor and Marcus and absolute silence in her wake. Fiddling with the lone flower, Eleanor wandered over and came to a stop beside the ivory sofa. “Hullo.”
“Eleanor,” he murmured.
Wetting her lips, she glanced about. How very comfortable she’d once been around him. Now she was a mere shell of the innocent woman she’d been. “Would you care for refreshments?” But one more thing taken from her by a stranger under the star-filled sky.
“No.” Other than that husky, one word utterance, Marcus said nothing.
To give her fingers something to do, Eleanor fidgeted with her skirts, crushing the fabric in her grip. “I-I wanted to thank you, Marcus.”
“Thank me?” He took a step forward and she retreated.
“For agreeing to help with a pre—”
In three long strides he closed the space between them and touched a finger to her lips, silencing the remainder of those words. “Shh.” He leaned down, shrinking the space between them.
Fear clamored in her breast and she battled through the fast growing panic. This was Marcus. He’d never hurt her and she’d wager her very life that he’d never harm her or another. Not a man who could speak so gently as he did to a child; the child of a woman he hated, no less. Marcus whispered against her ear. “Be careful, Eleanor. A wrong word uttered and a lurking servant, and your efforts will be for naught.”
Yes, he was, indeed, correct. She should bury all hint of discourse on the favor she’d put to him and yet could not quell the questions she’d had since in the gardens of Kensington. He’d so very willingly offered his assistance. “Why?” she blurted.
He brushed his knuckles along her jaw in the way he’d once done, forcing her gaze up to his. “Why what, Eleanor?” Fear battled with a soft wave of desire and she desperately clung to her body’s awareness of his tall, well-muscled frame, hungering for the uncomplicated joy she’d known in his arms. “Why have I agreed to help you?” The corded muscles of his arms tightened the sleeves of his jacket, a reminder of his power—and the danger he could pose. Arms that could overpower, subdue, silence.
A shuddery sigh escaped her and she managed a jerky nod. “You hate me.”
“Yes. I’ve hated you for a long time.”
His casually spoken words were a lash upon her heart.
“I hated you for leaving.” She’d left because she had no choice but escape. “I hated you for writing me a damned note, after all we’d shared.” After the attack, she’d been bruised and sore and battered. How could she have ever faced Marcus after she’d been so used by another? How, when she’d not even been able to stomach her own visage in a mirror? “And I hate you for having chosen another.”
She slid her gaze away from his. With her flight, she’d chosen only him. Chosen to save him from humiliation and shame. “It was for the best,” she whispered. For in the end, she’d allowed him the freedom to find a woman deserving of him.
He stilled that soft, gentle caress of her jawline. “Is that what you believe?”
“That is what I know.” Pieces of her story that would never be his to learn.
She braced for the stinging bite of mocking words she’d come to expect from him; words she’d also come to recognize as an attempt at self-preservation. Instead, his lips turned up in a sad smile. The roguish grin would have been easier, preferable to this achingly empty expression of mirth. “Do you want to know the truth?”
She told herself not to ask, and yet she could no sooner quell the words than she could slice off her own right hand. “What is the truth?”
“I do not hate you.” Her heart lifted and took flight. That admission was more poignant than any declaration of love he could give. “For everything that has come to pass, I care about you.” Not love. Her wildly beating heart sank. Still, caring for her was a good deal better than the dark feelings of hate. “I want to see you happy.” Marcus cupped her cheek and he lowered his lips close to hers, so close they nearly brushed. Close enough to remind her of how beautiful it had once been between them. “And God help me, I still want you.”
God help her, she wanted him, as well.
He claimed her mouth with his. For an infinitesimal moment, a spark of desire lit from the brush of his lips on hers and she turned herself over to the wonder of his embrace. Marcus groaned, and parting her lips, he slipped his tongue inside.
He tasted of brandy.
Eleanor gagged. She shoved away from him with a startled cry and punched him hard. Her fist connected solidly with his nose. The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh flooded her buzzing ears.
Chapter 15
Marcus had received all manner of interesting responses to his kisses through the years. Breathy pleas for more, desperate moans of approval. Not once, however, had he been punched for his efforts.
He touched his nose and winced. By God, too many counts in a ring against Gentleman Jackson himself and he’d never had a bloodied nose, but then with one dangerously wicked right jab, the lady had managed it. The warm trickle of blood penetrated his glove and Marcus yanked his kerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose, staring at Eleanor over the rapidly staining fabric. The lady continued retreating, her pallor white. “Bloody hell.” He flinched as pain radiated along his nose.
For all he did know about Eleanor Carlyle, now Collins, he’d never known she could plant a facer like Gentleman Jackson himself.
She backed into a rose-inlaid side table. The fragile piece of furniture shifted under the sudden movement and a porcelain shepherdess tumbled to the floor. It exploded in a spray of white and pink splintered glass.
“A simple no would have sufficed,” he said drolly and experimentally tested the soundness of the bridge of his nose. He winced. Yes, very possibly broken. By a slip of a lady. “I will say I’ve never quite received that—” His words trailed off. Eleanor’s chest heaved with the force of her rapidly drawn breaths. The pale white of her cheeks melded with the stark white of the plaster walls. By God, she was terrified. Granted, he was livid about the whole deuced painful nose business, but did she believe he’d harm her? Annoyance stirred in his belly. “Surely you don’t believe I’d hurt you.”
Her eyes stood out, vivid blue moons in her face; trapped within their depths was a gripping terror. She had the look of a woman battling tortured demons. A chill ran along his spine. Then, the fleeting moment passed. She blinked several times and then on a soft cry raced over. “My goodness, Marcus. I’ve hit you.”
“Yes,” he said with the first stirrings of amusement since that very violent rebuffing of his advances. Punched. Walloped him with a force Gentleman Jackson himself would have been hard-pressed to not admire. Marcus gave his head a wry shake.
“I am so sorry.” She moved her hands up, as though to affirm a break but then she swiftly lowered her palms to her sides. His gaze fixed on the tremble to her long, graceful fingers. He frowned as the faintest warnings stirred at the back of his mind. Why would Eleanor react so? Her response, paired with her humbling request for his aid melded together and he curled his hand into a balled fist. “It is all right,” he assured her. “It is not broken.”
“I—you surprised me.”
Mere surprise? Is that all there was to account for her panicked reaction? A niggling of unease settled in his belly and he blotted his nose once more. Marcus touched his free hand to her jaw. “I came to escort you for a ride in my curricle.”
She captured her lower lip between her teeth. “We can’t. Not with your nose—”
“It has nearly stopped bleeding,” he interrupted, pressing the crimson-stained fabric to his injury.
Eleanor hesitated; indecision raging in her eyes. Then she gave a slight nod. He extended one elbow and she placed her fingertips along his sleeve, allowing him to lead her from the room. As they walked, he examined the top of her bent head. Her skin, still a grayish-white from when she’d walloped him, and the trembling fingers on his forearm hinted at her terror. What was the cause of that sentiment? Upset over hu
rting him? Or something more…?
The knot in his belly grew and he forcibly thrust it back.
They reached the foyer and servants rushed forward with their cloaks.
Eleanor removed her fingers from his person and with those quaking digits, she fiddled with the clasp, and then she accepted her bonnet; a straw piece with faded roses sewn along the brim.
A memory trickled in. Eleanor as she’d been, wearing the same bonnet, only the colors had been crisp and those blooms so very full they had appeared real. This was the life she’d lived. This was the state her husband had left her in; a woman required to fulfill those charges doled out by a late uncle, all so she could know security for her and their child.
“What is…?” Eleanor’s words trailed off as she noted the direction of his scrutiny. She yanked the frayed ribbons into a neat bow. “Shall we?”
The butler rushed forward and pulled the door open. Sunlight streamed through the entrance and splashed off the white, Italian marble floor. Stuffing the stained handkerchief into his front pocket, Marcus motioned Eleanor outside and followed behind her.
No words were exchanged until he set the curricle into motion. “Have there been gentlemen who have forced their advances on you?” he asked without preamble. Because if there had been, he’d tear the bastards apart with his bare hands and feed them their own limbs for their evening meal.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the almost imperceptible tightening at the corners of her lips. She hesitated. “I am a widow.”
I am a widow. That was, at best, an unspoken affirmation of his question and, at worst, a deliberately vague response.
“A widow who does not wish to take a gentleman to her bed.” Unlike the countless widows he’d taken to his bed who’d relished the freedoms afforded them and more, the pleasure to be found in his arms. Pleasure he would show Eleanor, if she allowed it of him. Marcus shifted the reins to one hand and covered her fingers with his. The full, red flesh of her lips quivered under his ministrations, but she did not pull away and for that, he was encouraged. “You’d deny yourself the pleasures to be had in a man’s arms?” A fact for which he was grateful. The idea of her wrapped in another gentleman’s arms shattered him.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 19
