Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  Eloise slapped him. The force of her blow snapped his head back. The stinging sound of flesh meeting flesh echoed in the corridor.

  She widened her eyes. Oh, God, she had hit him. Granted she’d planted him any number of facers when he’d schooled her on lessons of defending herself. “L-Lucien,” she whispered and covered her mouth with her palm. But this was different. This was Lucien the man whom she’d missed. He might be a foul fiend now, but for everything that had come before, he did not deserve her violence.

  He touched his fingers hesitantly against the mark she’d left upon his skin and flexed his jaw several times.

  She shook her head. “I am so sorry,” she said on a rush, not because she feared him but because she’d struck him. Even if he had deserved it, she still would never inflict hurt—He’d certainly known enough of that. “I…”

  A slow grin turned his lips up. Not the vicious, angry sneers he’d bestowed upon her too many times in a mere handful of days, but a true smile that reached his eyes. The silver flecks danced in the gray-blue depths. He was mad. There was no accounting for his unexplainable humor. “I find some reassurance in knowing you put the lessons I gave you through the years to good use.”

  She smiled. “You remember that?”

  Lucien chuckled. “Remember allowing you to slap me and punch me to be sure you knew how to properly defend yourself?” He touched his cheek once more. “Yes, I remember that well.” His hand fell back to his side and his smile died, replaced by the unyielding, black look perpetually worn by him. “Have you had need of the lessons I imparted?”

  She shivered at the lethal edge to the question that promised harm to any man who may have been the recipient of her wrath. “No, Lucien,” she assured him. “I’ve lived quite an uneventful, staid life of a wedded young lady and now a widow.” Her breath caught as he touched an unexpected hand to her cheek, cupping the flesh.

  “And are there no scoundrels who’ve made a nuisance of themselves for a place in your bed?” He ran his thumb over her lower lip.

  Her lips parted under the slight gesture. It was a seductive, teasing caress. Yearning for more, his kiss, more of his touch robbed her of practical thoughts and logic. What had he said? She tried to drum up an answer to his question. “I am not the scandalous sort, Lucien,” she said at last, finding an answer. “I never have been.” She couldn’t keep the trace of hurt from those four words. With everything Lucien knew about her, how could he believe her capable of such indecency?

  Lucien continued to move his coarse, callused thumb higher. He gently rubbed the birthmark at the edge of her lip. “Ah, but that’s not what I asked.”

  “Wh-what did you ask?” Her head fell back, knocking noisily against the door, and she tried desperately to dredge forth that question that had so offended.

  “I asked if there were scoundrels vying for a place in your bed.”

  She wet her lips and his gaze dipped, following that slight movement. “I’m a widow, Lucien.” For the limited interest she’d received when she’d made her Come Out, the moment she’d come out of mourning, she’d been besieged by a sea of suddenly interested, eager gentleman who desired nothing more than a “place in her bed” as Lucien so succinctly put it.

  The grays of his eyes darkened, very nearly black. “Mr. Jones,” he corrected.

  She frowned. “Your name isn’t Jones and I won’t call you that. You are Lord Lucien Jonas and that is who you’ll always be.” He continued to study her through his thick, hooded gaze. At one time she’d known his thoughts better than she’d known even her own. Now, she probed, searching for hint of what he was thinking.

  He wanted to kill every bloody bastard who’d dared put an indecent offer to her.

  Wanted it with the same, savage ferocity that had driven him to bloodlust in the thick of battle, an overwhelming, almost crippling sentiment that had nothing to do with the girl Eloise had been and everything to do with the woman she’d become.

  And worse…the man he now was.

  Lucien took in her full, red lips wondering at the men who’d also kissed her lips. Whole men. Gentlemen. Noblemen with intact limbs and unscarred bodies. Men who’d never entertained such vile, cowardly thoughts as ending their own lives and who’d languished in a hospital for years, willing themselves to die.

  For the first time, he wanted to be whole again. For her.

  “I used to know what you were thinking,” Eloise confided softly. “No more.”

  “What I’m thinking would have you wilting in this parlor,” he said with a matter-of-factness that brought her lips down in a small frown.

  She squared her shoulders. “I’m far more resilient than you’d take me for.”

  A snide contradiction hovered on his lips, but something gave him pause, and he called the words back. A mature glint to her eyes, eyes that once had bore an innocence he’d shared in as a child. Yes, it seemed life had happened to Ellie, too. It wasn’t his business, and yet for some inexplicable reason, he needed to know. “And have you taken a lover?” he asked with a bluntness that brought a crimson blush to her cheeks. That blush also served as an answer more powerful than a thousand words. A woman capable of that telling, innocent gesture had not accepted any of those indecent offers. Some of the tension eased from his frame.

  “No,” she said, confirming his silent supposition. She stroked his jaw, the sweetly, soothing gesture brought his lids closed, feeding a hunger he’d not realized he’d had for a warm, gentle touch. This touch. Eloise’s touch. “I am lonely.” Her wrenching admission brought his eyes open. “Yet even in my loneliness, I crave more than that empty meeting of two people.”

  He knew that same loneliness. Had known it since he returned from the Continent to confront a life in which the only person who’d sustained him through countless battles, was dead and gone, and with her, the son he’d never known. Only in this moment, with Eloise here, for the first time, he didn’t feel alone. Lucien knew better than to ask dangerous questions that would only yield more dangerous answers. “What do you crave?” And yet, the question came anyway.

  A wistful smile hovered on her lips. “You still don’t know, do you?” she said, a quiet awe underscoring that question.

  He stiffened.

  She shook her head. “You never really saw me, did you?”

  A blinding panic built inside his chest as he sought for words to stop the flow of the admission on her lips.

  “You never realized that I loved you.”

  Oh, God.

  He staggered away from her. His heart thumped loudly, deafeningly in his ears, drowning out logic and reason and leaving him with a numbing dread to the implications of Eloise’s declaration.

  She stepped away from the door, and advanced toward him. And God help him, he’d have chosen to face down Boney himself again and all his armies on the fields of battle than this young woman who’d have him reenter a world he no longer belonged in. “I don’t expect those words from you, Lucien,” she said pragmatically. “I know your heart was and forever will belong to Sara, but I wished I’d told you, even as I would have humbled myself at the feet of a man who loved another, because then mayhap when you returned from battle and found your wife and child gone, you’d have known there was another who desperately loved you and ached to help you resume living.”

  “Stop.” The plea tore from him, desperate and hoarse. He didn’t want to imagine a world with Eloise silently loving him and him having so callously forgotten her. He was shamed by the wrongs he’d committed in dismissing her from his life.

  Eloise proved more relentless than Wellington’s soldiers at Waterloo, continued walking and stopped when the tips of their feet brushed. “And I know what happens from here, you’ll forever resent me for it, but know I did everything I did for that love of you.” She inclined her head. “Now, I really must see the marchioness.”

  He managed a jerky nod, even as her words confounded him. He focused on the overwhelming relief of the pardon and he spun
on his heel. He didn’t wait to see if she followed, knowing from the soft tread of her satin-slippered feet that she followed him from the parlor and trailed behind at a sedate, respectable pace. Lucien was never more grateful to step foot into another parlor. He cleared his throat. “The Countess of Sherborne,” he said coolly.

  The marchioness seated at the windowseat with a book on her lap, glanced up. She smiled and moved her gaze between him and Eloise. Never more had he resented his new post in the marquess’ household, being made an object of scrutiny to Eloise. If he were still the viscount’s son, he would have wheeled around and left. Instead of this pained, prolonged moment of waiting to be dismissed.

  “That will be all, Jones,” the marchioness said, politely inclining her head.

  Lucien gritted his teeth. He should be glad to be well-rid of Eloise and the memories she represented. Yet, what was this niggling deep inside to remain precisely where he was and damn the marchioness’ orders to the Devil?

  What in the hell?

  Eloise stepped into the room, her impossibly large eyes trained on him and as he took his leave, he rather thought fighting down those bloody Frenchmen on the field of battle would be preferable to facing these two determined women.

  Chapter 10

  Eloise stared at the door Lucien had just fled through. He may as well have been a stranger to her now, with a gaping hole in the years of their friendship, but she well knew the look of horror she’d roused in his eyes with her admission. Hurt and fury warred for supremacy with outrage ultimately triumphing. How dare he treat her as though she were nothing more than a stranger? Why, if he returned, by God she’d clout him upon his head.

  “Would you care to sit?” Emmaline questioned softly.

  She jumped and flushed, turning her attention to the oft-smiling marchioness. “Uh, yes, thank you.” The woman eyed her with a knowing gleam in her kindly eyes. Eloise claimed a seat on the powder blue sofa, reminded once more of the horrible person she herself was because of the niggling resentment that settled in her heart. The marchioness’ presence had pulled Lucien back from the pit of despair…when Eloise hadn’t been even a memory he’d carried.

  She ran her fingers over the rose etched in the blue upholstery, the pale hue putting her in mind of that sky she and Lucien had once gazed at. Eloise picked her gaze up and found Emmaline patiently waiting. She forced her fingers to cease their distracted movement “I do not know if you remember what I’d mentioned several days ago.” She looked to the doorway, ascertaining he was truly gone and then shifted her attention to Emmaline. “About Lucien…Lieutenant Jonas…Jones,” she corrected a third time.

  Emmaline glided over. Her sapphire blue skirts rustled as she claimed the spot beside Eloise. “I remember any number of things you shared with me.” She waited and gave an encouraging nod.

  “About…” Aware of a sudden of the volume of her voice, Eloise spoke in a hushed whisper. “Lieu…oh bother, would you be horribly scandalized and outraged if I were simply to refer to him by his Christian name?” she asked, never one to prevaricate.

  A little laugh escaped the other woman. “Not at all. I imagine having been acquainted as children you are entitled that freedom.”

  “Yes, I suppose you are indeed correct.” Eloise liked the marchioness more and more. And with every word to leave her lips, Emmaline chipped away at the unfair jealousy she’d carried since learning of Lucien’s relationship with the lovely woman. “I had mentioned that a familial matter brought me here.” Which was largely true, but not totally true. Her love had driven her search and determined effort to find him. She drew in a slow breath and tried to dredge up the words.

  How could she try and force his hand in this manner? She looked down at a wrinkle in her skirts that traversed a path from her upper thigh to her knee. Nor was Lucien’s story hers to tell.

  “What is it?” Emmaline encouraged quietly.

  “His father is ill,” she said finally, settling for the simplest truth. “The viscount—”

  Emmaline’s eyes formed moons in her face. “The viscount?”

  “I believed you knew.” Guilt twisted even greater at unwittingly betraying his secret. “His father is a viscount.”

  The marchioness sat back in her chair, flummoxed. She shook her head. “I assure you, we did not.” By the troubled glimmer in the marchioness’ kind, brown eyes, Eloise suspected Lucien would have never been given his current post had that truth been known. Steward to the marquess, perhaps. But never, butler.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. Oh God, he would never forgive her. But worse, if he did not journey to Kent once more and have his parting with his father, he’d never forgive himself. This betrayal of sorts was an attempt on her part to put to rights his broken family. Coming here, to this household had never been about Eloise or the dream of more with Lucien. It had only been about him. “His father is dying.” Pain suffused her heart at the reminder that the viscount, the garrulous, smiling man she’d known since she was a child, was nearing the end of his days.

  Emmaline pressed her hands against her cheeks. “Oh.” That single syllable utterance conveyed all the depth of painful emotion known by a woman who’d also known loss. It was not, however, Eloise’s place to delve into the loss she herself had known.

  They spoke simultaneously.

  “He must go see him.”

  “He will not go see him.”

  Their words ran together, and perhaps it was the jumbled confusion of their blended voices or perhaps it was shock at Eloise’s words, but the marchioness widened her eyes and said, “Beg your pardon?”

  She treaded carefully, seeking to divulge only the details she must. Though no matter what paper and ribbon were selected to dress it up, a betrayal was a betrayal. “It is not my place to share Lucien’s history, but strife between them came when the viscount insisted on his youngest son,” she paused remembering belatedly this woman, for all she did know of Lucien, didn’t know all the parts of his life, the way Eloise did. “Lucien wanted to join the clergy. His father insisted he follow the drum.” She moved her attention away from the other woman and her gaze collided with an urn filled with flowers.

  “What happened?”

  Those cheerful, delicate blooms served as a mark of cheer upon Eloise’s dark thoughts. The white daisies within the arrangement beckoned, and she stood and wandered over. She leaned down and inhaled the sweet, fragrant scent that transported her to fields of spring flowers.

  I am quite cross with you, Lucien. You were to help me pick flowers and… And that was the last he’d ever picked a flower with her. Or walked with her. Or teased her. “He fell in love,” her voice, the faintest whisper. She straightened, glancing over her shoulder at Emmaline.

  The marchioness stared at her with wide, tragic eyes. “Oh, Eloise.” She gave her a sad smile. “You love him.”

  Tears filled her eyes and she blinked back the useless tears of weakness. Emmaline’s words merely served to bring her to the purpose in coordinating their first meeting and coming here this day. “He is quite obstinate.”

  “Indeed he is.”

  “He’ll not come merely because I ask it, or because he should.”

  Understanding dawned in the other woman’s brown eyes. “Ahh.”

  Eloise hurried over, her skirts snapping wildly at her ankles. “He will not listen to me.” She sank into the seat beside Emmaline. At one time he would have. No longer. “If you reasoned him out of London Hospital, my lady, then you can convince him to make this journey with me.”

  Emmaline said nothing for a very long while and Eloise suspected she didn’t intend to help, thought she might gently, but politely, beg to not interfere in personal matters that did not belong to her. But then, she nodded slowly. “I imagine if I cannot see he makes this important journey, my husband will.”

  Her eyes slid closed on a wave of gratitude. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, don’t thank me,” she said dryly. “I’ve not accomplished anything
yet. And knowing your Mr. Jones as I do, if he does not wish to make this journey, well then it will not be an easy task for either me or my husband to accomplish.”

  Eloise opened her eyes and looked to Emmaline. She shifted under the weight of the marchioness’ scrutiny.

  Then Emmaline asked, “How long have you loved him?”

  “All of my life,” she said softly, remembering back to the day she’d first met Lucien and his brothers. Her father and the viscount, owners of property in the same county, had been fast friends from their youth. A wistful smile tugged at her lips. “Well, not my whole life. We were, however, children when we first met.” The hard, angry frown an adult Lucien had turned on her moments ago bore traces of the child’s frown he’d worn at their first meeting. “His father gave him the task of playing with me.” Her lips pulled in remembrance of that long ago day; the fire in his gray-blue eyes, the tight set to his angry mouth. “Needless to say, he resented being made to play with a small girl.”

  Curiosity lit the other woman’s eyes. “What did you do?”

  She grinned. “I punched him.”

  Emmaline’s laughter echoed off the high-ceilings and plastered walls. “I imagine that did not earn you a friend in Mr. Jones.”

  “Oh, no, you’re wrong, my lady.” Eloise shook her head. “He accused me of punching like a lady and took it upon himself to instruct me on the proper way to plant one a facer.” From that point, he’d become her best friend—whether he wanted her friendship or not. Then, he’d welcomed her friendship. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and worried the flesh. Now was an altogether different tale.

  The marchioness placed a hand on Eloise’s and she started. The woman held her stare and then said, “I visited Jones for several years…and upon each of my visits, he never opened his eyes. He would sit with his face directed at the window, but his eyes closed. I despaired of ever seeing them. I sometimes wondered if he were incapable of opening them…and yet, one day, he just…” Her expression grew far-off. “He just opened his eyes,” she repeated. “I believe he will open them once more, Eloise. I truly do.”