Eloise winced. She couldn’t imagine a more egregious affront than to visit these men and torture them with the off-key, high whine of her singing voice. “I do not have any books with me,” she said, regret filling her. Now, she wished she’d been less selfish. Wished she’d stopped to consider there were men much like Lucien, alone, dependent upon the charity of strangers for every kindness. Agony knifed through her at the idea of him alone at this hospital when there had been others who loved him, waiting for him. There was me. I was there.
Nurse Maitland stopped beside the bed of a tall, broad bear of a man with shocking white-blond hair. She gave her an encouraging smile. “Just your presence alone is welcome,” she assured. She didn’t allow Eloise to issue protestations, but turned instead to the gentleman with his gaze fixed on the window. “Lieutenant-Captain Washburn,” the nurse greeted.
He inclined his head in greeting. “Nurse Maitland.” The broad stranger shifted his attention to Eloise.
“Allow me to introduce Lady Sherborne. She is so good as to visit.” Guilt twisted Eloise’s belly. There was a self-serving purpose to her being here that didn’t merit the nurse’s kindness. With a parting smile for Eloise that only magnified Eloise’s sense of guilt, Nurse Maitland took her leave.
Panic budded inside Eloise’s chest at the idea of being alone, in this room, though, she wasn’t truly alone. She took a steadying breath and concentrated on that saving fact.
“Are you all right, my lady?” Lieutenant-Captain Washburn asked, concern in his question.
What a weak ninny everyone must take her to be. She mustered a smile. “I am,” she assured as he motioned to the small, wooden chair behind her. Eloise perched on the edge of the hard, uncomfortable seat. Thought better of it and dragged it closer to the side of his bed.
They took each other in for a long while, eyeing each other in silence. “Are you certain you are—?”
She slashed the air with a hand. “Quite.” She paused and a thick blanket of tense silence fell. Then, she’d never been the loquacious sort, unable to fill all voids of silence as Miss Sara Abbott could. Eloise fisted her skirts at the unwitting reminder of the lovely golden-blonde woman, the vicar’s flawlessly perfect daughter who’d moved into the village following the previous vicar’s death. Sara would know what to say. Eloise, however, never did. And for that, she broke into the awkward pause with truth. “I’m nervous at hospitals.” By the slight widening of his eyes, she gathered she’d shocked him with her bold admission. She turned her attention out the window. “They remind me of illness,” she said, more to herself.
“I’m sorry, my lady.”
She caught the inside of her lower lip between her teeth and returned her attention to him. “I imagine you’d be a good deal better with no company than my miserable self,” she said with a wry smile.
“No,” he hastened to assure. “Not a good deal better. Perhaps just a bit better.” He winked.
A startled bark of laughter escaped her, earning the curious stares of those around her. And with a glib comment and a wink, all the remaining tension left her body. “Thank you,” she said softly.
“Smiling is important, my lady,” he said sagely. “Even when the memories creep in.”
She started. How did he—?
“You wear it in your face, my lady.” The astute stranger jerked his chin in her direction and reflexively Eloise touched her cheeks. “I imagine we all do.”
She wore it in her entire being. Eloise dropped her hands to her lap. Regrets of the past, the agony of her failures. “How long have you been here?” she asked quietly.
His lips twisted wryly. “More years than I care to remember.” Her heart twisted with regret for his loneliness. An image flashed to mind of Lucien, here, with these men for friends and company. Had he spoken of his past? Had he spoken of her?
As soon as the silly musing slipped in, it disappeared. Lucien would have never made mention of a girlhood friend, even as she’d loved him, his heart had belonged to Sara. Again, the guilt of her failings pebbled in her belly. “I’m sorry,” she said at last.
He stiffened, a proud man who’d never welcome or accept pity.
“Not for your situation, Lieutenant-Captain.” She’d already received heaps more of the wasted emotion than she could ever want. “I would never pity you or anyone else for their life.” She’d never dare subject someone to that unwelcome, useless sentiment. “But I’m sorry you are in a place you’d rather not be, because I know the regret of…that.”
Sunlight slashed through the window and cast his bed in a soft glow. She followed the beam out the crystal pane, hating that regrets had crept in with their tentacle-like grip.
“Forgive me,” he apologized, jerking her attention back. “It was unfair of me to make assumptions about your experiences.” A small chuckle rumbled up from his chest. “Life’s experiences should have certainly taught me better,” he said with a small grin.
“It’s not always easy to remember.” From the corner of her eye she spied the slender woman at the opposite end of the room, stand and start for the door. Conflict warred within as she was besieged by a desire to stay and speak with the gentleman and the urge to fly across the room and stop the woman she’d come here with the express intention of seeking out.
The soldier motioned to Lady Drake.
“Are you—?”
“Quite certain,” he assured her.
“Forgive me.” With a hasty whisper of apologies and a promise to return, she raced across the room, earning more and more curious stares.
Satin slippers proved a disastrous selection for her day’s attire. She cried out as she slid like a skater upon ice and collided into the marchioness’ back. Lady Drake pitched forward and would have toppled onto her face if Eloise didn’t steady her about the shoulders.
Emmaline spun around, a warm, grateful smile on her face. “Oh, my, why thank you very much. I do believe I would have made quite a cake of myself right here.”
Eloise waved off the unnecessary expression of gratitude. “No, my lady…Emmaline,” she amended when the kindly woman opened her mouth. “It was—”
“Please say you’ll join me for tea, my lady.”
…Entirely Eloise’s fault. “Please, just Eloise,” she blurted.
The marchioness’ smile widened. “Splendid! Shall we say tomorrow?” With a quick curtsy she spun on her heel and marched from the room, leaving Eloise staring wide-eyed after her.
Well…that was indeed a good deal easier than she’d imagined it would be.
Chapter 2
Lucien Jones moved with military precision through the palatial townhouse of his employer, the Marquess of Drake. The stiff cravat threatened to choke him and he tugged at the blasted fabric. An ache so potent it was a physical force filled him with longing for the comfort he’d known in the marquess’ stables.
“Bloody cravats,” he mumbled and a wide-eyed scullery maid scurried in the opposite direction. At one time he would have felt a modicum of shame for scaring the staff. That proper gentleman was gone. Long dead. He tightened his jaw and paused outside his employer’s office. He raised a hand.
“Enter,” Lord Drake’s voice broke through the wood panel before he’d even knocked.
He pressed the handle. “You wanted to see me, Captain?”
The Marquess of Drake, a Captain in His Majesty’s Army when bloody Boney was wreaking havoc throughout the continent had commanded Lucien in battle. Revered as a war hero, the powerful nobleman glanced up from his ledgers. “Jones,” he greeted, his tone gave little indication to his thoughts. He tossed his pen down and motioned him forward.
Lucien wandered deeper into the room.
“Sit,” the marquess commanded.
He furrowed his brow. “Sit?” Long ago, he’d become suspicious of summons. Those issued by his family, former friends, and now, his employer.
“That is unless you prefer to stand through our meeting?” the other man asked dryly.
His employer began without preamble. “You are unhappy in your new post.”
Lucien stiffened. Lord Drake’s words weren’t a question but rather a flawless observation from a man whose uncanny insight had saved any number of men on any number of occasions. Lucien had done any number of reprehensible things to survive and would likely burn in hell for those sins and others that still kept him awake at night, but he’d never been a liar. “No,” he said gruffly. He missed his station in the stables. Mayhap more than he missed his bloody left arm.
“You don’t belong in the stables,” the marquess said with a directness Lucien appreciated.
“I don’t belong here,” he tossed back, honestly. Though in truth, he didn’t belong anywhere. He was a man who didn’t truly fit in any one world.
The other man placed his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “I suspect you belong here more than anywhere else.” He arched an eyebrow.
He stiffened, preferring an existence in which his secrets were his secrets and only he had to suffer the torment of them.
Lord Drake held a hand up. “I wouldn’t ask or expect a man to divulge his past. That belongs to you, Jones.”
The tension eased from his shoulders.
“There is no one I trust more with the running of my household than you,” the marquess continued.
Rigidity crept into his frame and the urge to ask for the restoration of his previous post was a physical one. He spoke bluntly. “The staff is afraid of me.” And with good reason. He was a dark, miserable monster who’d forgotten how to be a wholly proper gentleman.
The other man’s lips turned up in one corner. It didn’t escape Lucien’s notice that he didn’t disagree. “I’ll not keep you in a post you don’t want.”
That magnanimous gesture gave him pause. “Captain?”
“I am in need of a new steward.” He motioned to the opened ledgers before him. “My previous steward has done something of a deplorable job.”
Lucien sank back in his seat as with the marquess’ words went the last of his hope.
“You don’t belong in the stables, Jones,” the marquess spoke in the quiet, resolute tones of one who’d formed an opinion and would not renege. His lips twisted in a wry smile. A damned captain until he died, the man would be.
Lucien slid his gaze over to the window and stared out at the annoyingly bright, sun-filled sky. He detested the sun, far preferring the gray, overcast London skies and the frequent bouts of rain that better suited his moods. He scrubbed his remaining hand over his eyes. The last place he cared to be consigned was to the countryside that would serve as a forever reminder of the life, nay the lives, he’d left behind—a wife, a child he’d never met. And yet, this man, the marquess and his wife had pulled him back from the edge of despair, restored him to at least a living, breathing shell of a person he’d once been. And for that, he owed them his allegiance.
“I’ll have you decide, Jones, which you prefer,” the marquess continued. There was no decision here. “You need but let me know.” He inclined his head, in a polite dismissal.
Would the man force him to give up the security he’d known and accept that position of steward? Lucien wanted to believe not, but having fought under the man in battle, knew the marquess’ mind had already been set and would not be swayed. For all the control Lucien believed he’d possessed these years, he was proven wrong yet again.
He stood and sketched a stiff bow. “Captain,” he said between clenched teeth and then took his leave, taking care to close the door quietly behind him. With space between him and his employer, he fed the annoyance that roiled in his gut. He stomped through the damned house. With the thin carpets lining the corridors and the Chippendale furniture, it may as well have been any other London townhouse. Or worse, one in particular. One he still could not shut from his mind, for all his trying. A place where another man had commanded and Lucien had listened. The past blurred with the present as with the marquess’ requests, the hint of English countryside flitted through his mind, nearly gutting him. How markedly different his life would have been if he’d possessed the strength to reject another man’s requirements of him, for him.
He stopped and pressed his forehead against the ivory, silk wallpaper lining the hall. He drew in shallow breath after shallow breath, concentrating on the quick intakes of air coming into his lungs and the air going out. The memories of war and his return slipped in, refusing to relinquish their hold. With all the bullets he’d taken at the bloody French’s hands and the sabers stuck into his skin, by all rights he should have died.
His wife, Sara had sustained him. The letters she’d written, but more, the memory of her, smiling and serenely beautiful, waiting for his return. But the letters had stopped. He’d crafted all manner of explanations for the sudden absence of those notes. Only his return had proven that which, he’d denied himself. She’d died. He steeled his jaw. She’d died and his bloody family had kept that truth from him.
Lucien thrust back useless, bitter regrets and instead fixed on the irony. He’d survived more pistol balls being shot through his body and bayonets slicing his skin, and his wife should have died—of a fever. Oh, the Devil had a wicked sense of humor. Lucien shoved away from the wall and forcibly thrust the memory of her into the past, where it belonged.
He continued down the hall, carefully schooling his expression, and adopting the firm, unyielding mask he’d donned through the years.
A knock sounded at the front door and he marched toward the responsibility that had given some empty sense of purpose these two years since the marquess had pulled him from London Hospital—and back into the living.
The slight pounding at the front door ceased. And then began again with a renewed enthusiasm. “Bloody hell,” he muttered. He’d spent so many years away from the life of nobility, he’d forgotten that patent sense of arrogance. The doors opened at will by people whose sole purpose in life was to serve their pampered needs. With each step, with each knock, the fury burned inside. He fed it, because it momentarily quashed the memory of Sara and his great loss.
Another damned knock. Gritting his teeth, he continued striding forward. Whoever the hell was here to see the marquess or marchioness had about as much patience as Boney’s forces had in their march through Russia. Suddenly, finding an almost delight in the impatience of the damned noble on the other side of that door, he slowed his steps.
Eloise paused, frowning at the angry, lion knocker on the center of the black door. She fished around her reticule and pulled out the note she’d all but committed to memory when it arrived last evening.
My Dear Lady Eloise,
I do so hope you’ll join me for tea…
“At one o’clock,” she murmured aloud, stuffing the note into her reticule. She dimly registered the interested stares directed her way by the lords and ladies passing by at the fashionable hour.
Humph. She turned and peered out into the street. Perhaps the marchioness had meant a different day at one o’clock? But no, no, that wouldn’t make sense. Her driver remained patiently at the edge of the street, a pained expression upon his face at his mistress’ bold display. Eloise bristled with indignation. She couldn’t very well leave. And furthermore, mayhap the real area of concern lay not, in fact, with her public showing of eagerness at the marchioness’ doorstep, but rather the absence of a likely, indolent butler.
She knocked again. Whoever would imagine that the powerful, respected, and oft revered Marquess and Marchioness of Drake should have such inattentive servants? Eloise screwed her mouth up tightly, realizing even as the thought slipped into her musings how wholly arrogant
it must seem.
Especially one who was merely a knight’s daughter. Another knock. Who is hardly sought after at the leading ton events. Another knock. Not that she cared either way about leading ton events. A strand of blonde hair escaped her serviceable chignon and fell over her eye. She tucked it behind her ear and, with a sigh, at last conceded that her serendipitous meeting with Lady Drake and the fateful offering of tea had merely been too much good fortune for one who was slated with nothing but bad luck. With a sigh, Eloise turned around.
The click of the door opening met her ears just as the tips of her right foot touched the step down.
“May I help you?”
That harsh, gravelly voice froze her in her steps. Perhaps her fortune was not all bad, after all. Heart thumping wildly in her chest, Eloise spun around. Emotion swelled in her breast at the first sight of him, after all these years. She searched for glimpses of the young man he’d been, but saw none in the harsh set to his mouth and hard stare. Well over a foot taller than her mere five feet two inches, she moved her gaze up the towering butler with a crop of thick, black hair. Ruggedly beautiful with sharp, angular cheeks and a chiseled nose slightly curved from a punch he’d been dealt by an angry Richard. Her gaze lingered upon the empty place his arm had once been, the jacket neatly pinned up. Pain pierced her heart and she tamped down all pity. He’d neither welcome nor did he deserve that useless sentiment.
“May I help you?” Lucien repeated, with a snappish tone that brought her shoulders back.
The nerve of him. Eloise met his gaze squarely and then froze, her mouth dry. Their lives may be inextricably intertwined yet his piercing gray stare, the same that had haunted both her dreams and nightmares, belonged to a stranger. And the agony of missing him, the joy of being reunited with him all blended, robbing her of thoughts, speech, and movement. Eloise touched trembling fingers to her lips.
Lucien ran a punishing gaze up and down her person. A chill stole through her. She reassured herself he’d merely failed to recognize the friend of his past. She registered the flicker of awareness in his intelligent eyes and she detested that this beautiful reunion should come on the front steps of a stranger’s townhouse for all the passing, bored peers to see. “Eloise?”
Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 2
