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Undone by the Billionaire Duke

Page 15

by Caitlin Crews


  Strange how that failed to make her feel any better.

  “There’s nothing wrong with a tart,” Vivi had admonished her, then flashed one of her grins. “It’s all in the quality of the pastry, I promise you.”

  Eleanor didn’t know what that meant. Or, rather, she opted not to pick up on her sister’s innuendo. What she did know, within seconds of entering the club, was that she was most certainly too old for this scene. Perhaps not chronologically. But she had nothing in common with the blissed-out, gleaming creatures who danced madly and drank deeply and didn’t seem remotely aware of the fact that there was a world outside where people were already tucked up in their beds, ready for the next morning.

  And yet, as soon as she recognized that she wasn’t built to enjoy flinging back spirits and then leaping around the dance floor like Geraldine on too much sugar, she really rather enjoyed herself. It was too loud to worry about Hugo. It was too dark to worry about herself and what on earth she planned to do with her life. It was too noisy and too chaotic to do more than smile and then duck away from the strange men who tried to speak to her now and again.

  Maybe tottering around town on a random Wednesday was exactly the medicine she needed, come to think of it. Eleanor decided it was, and let the night wash over her.

  It was coming on three in the morning when Vivi was finally ready to leave her pack of posh friends and their innumerable dramas. Eleanor was quite pleased with herself for contriving to keep her eyes open the whole of the night, even if she’d lapsed into a strange state where she couldn’t tell if she was actually asleep or not. It hadn’t seemed to make much of a difference.

  Vivi was chattering, as much to herself as anyone else as far as Eleanor could tell, about summoning a taxi driver with her mobile and about which of her circle she’d rowed with over the course of the evening. And Eleanor let it all wash over her, too. Because yes, she thought she really was half-asleep. But also, none of this felt like life. None of it felt real.

  London didn’t fit her anymore. The thought slid into her head and stayed there, taking up space. Growing with every breath. She had no idea what she was going do about that, because the only place she’d felt as if she’d fit, she’d lost. Yorkshire was as closed to her as if there was a wall around it and several armies keeping her out.

  Stop, she ordered herself. Stop thinking about Hugo.

  “I cannot imagine what you think you’re doing, Miss Andrews.”

  Eleanor froze. Surely that voice was only in her head, the way it had been all week—but no. It was still going.

  “Role models for proper young ladies, the wards of dukes, no less, cannot be carousing in the streets of London at this hour. Whatever would the tabloids say?”

  That voice was straight from her dreams. It couldn’t be real. Eleanor didn’t react—but Vivi did. She froze solid next to her.

  And Eleanor let herself believe what was right before her eyes, a car or two down from where she and Vivi had exited the club.

  Hugo.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  OF COURSE IT was Hugo.

  He lounged at the curb next to a gleaming sports car that was as sleek and muscular—and expensive—as he was. It was hard to tell the difference between them. Both seemed to light up the dark all around them with the same kind of danger.

  She’d dreamed this a thousand times since she’d left Groves House, but now it was happening and Eleanor didn’t know what to say. What could she possibly say?

  “Hugo...” she whispered.

  The Duke straightened, pushing away from his leaning position against the side of the powerful vehicle. He looked elegant and dangerous with the streets of London arrayed there behind him, as if his presence rendered the ancient, ever-settled city as wild and untamed as the moors up north. His dark gaze was almost too hot to bear.

  And he focused on Eleanor as if she was the only other person for miles.

  For a moment she thought she was.

  Then Vivi cleared her throat, and Eleanor felt reality slap her again. Hard.

  “I’m sure you must be very angry,” Vivi began, looking and sounding as uncertain as Eleanor felt. At a later point, she might reflect on the fact that she’d never actually heard her sister sound remorseful before. But at the moment, she was too busy greedily drinking in the sight of Hugo. Right there in front of her and who cared how.

  “I don’t get angry,” Hugo said in that low way of his that made everything inside Eleanor seemed to run liquid and hot, then shudder before starting all over again. “What is another scandalous story in the tabloids to me? One fiction after the next, without end. One life destroyed by my touch only to appear in a bathing costume in Ibiza the following summer on the arm of a film star. Who can keep track?”

  It was the cynicism in his voice that almost killed her, Eleanor thought. The weariness. It felt like a knife straight into her gut.

  Because she remembered. She remembered what it had been like in his bedchamber that night. She remembered the look on his beautiful face then. Open. Filled with longing and wonder and almost too much light to bear.

  “You should keep track,” Eleanor heard herself say, just as she heard the huskiness in her voice that she was sure told him far too much. Gave too much away. Made her far too vulnerable. She didn’t care. “Someone should keep track. Someday you will make a note of all the lies and I wouldn’t be surprised if apologies followed.”

  Beside her, she felt Vivi tense, but she couldn’t spare a glance for her sister. Not now.

  “Don’t be so naïve,” Hugo murmured, all weary cynicism and a bit of censure besides, as if he was in some snide ballroom making cutting remarks behind a quizzing glass, like the Dukes in Eleanor’s favorite novels. And yet his voice seemed to fill the street, then reverberate around inside of her, too. “There are never any apologies. Especially when the lies are proven to be falsehoods. No one cares about that. They care about the story, and the more salacious and slanderous it is, the better.”

  Eleanor stepped in front of Vivi then, because the tension in the air felt like a weapon. “It’s not her fault. She was taking care of me.”

  Hugo smirked, and it made Eleanor flinch.

  “Because I am the big bad wolf, after all,” he agreed in that same dark way. “Despoiler of maidens when they are so unfortunate as to cross my path. Hunkered down in my Yorkshire cave, picking my teeth with the bones of my enemies.”

  “It is because you say things like that with such obvious relish,” Eleanor pointed out crisply, “that it’s difficult to imagine you are anything else.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Vivi said over Eleanor’s shoulder. Unwisely, in Eleanor’s opinion. “Everyone knows what you’re like. If you’ve come down here to bully us, or make things difficult because of the story, you should know that I’m more than capable of taking care of Eleanor as well as myself.”

  “Are you now?” Hugo’s smirk could have taken chunks out of the old, listed building behind them. Eleanor was surprised it still stood. Or that she did. “Let me guess. You will smile prettily. Eleanor will frown. And before you will fall the whole of London and assorted villains just like me. With a click of your fingers.”

  Hugo didn’t wait for an answer to that. He did that thing with his hand again. He merely lifted it, and just like that a cab came screeching to a halt in front of him. He moved from front of his own sports car to the cab, and opened the passenger door with great flourish.

  “Your carriage awaits,” he said.

  Eleanor blinked. It seemed absurd to her that Hugo would appear before her at three o’clock in the morning only to summon them a taxi, but maybe Vivi was more right than she’d wanted to accept. Maybe men were in fact this mystifying at all times. She set her teeth in that way that was becoming a little too common, straightened her shoulders to match, and she marched toward the cab.

  “Not you,” Hugo said, a current of something like laughter in his voice. Or maybe Eleanor was so desperate to pretend he did
n’t hate her that she was imagining it. Either way, he reached out a hand and hooked her arm. “You’re coming with me.”

  Vivi stopped on Eleanor’s other side. “Oh, no, she’s not. Don’t go after the weak link. If you want a fight, fight me.”

  And Eleanor stood there on a London street in the middle of a Wednesday night that had long since become a Thursday morning, her sister fierce at her back and this maddening, intoxicating, gorgeous man before her.

  It seemed as if her whole life had come down to this moment. Did she fall back into what was comfortable and let Vivi do her thing the way she always did—the way she’d done when she’d left Yorkshire without a word to Hugo, in fact? Or did she step forward into all the blistering unknown she could see shining there in Hugo’s eyes—whether he hated her as he should...or didn’t?

  How would she live with herself if she didn’t try?

  There was a part of her that wanted to wait and see. She wanted to see who Hugo would choose. This wasn’t a ballroom, in the middle of the night, empty of everyone save the two of them. This was a London street, and both she and Vivi were dressed for the night they’d just had. That meant skin. Skin and lean, lanky attractiveness on Vivi’s part. Skin and abundant curves on Eleanor’s.

  There was a part of her that wanted to act as if she and her sister were a buffet. Line them both up and watch him as he made his decision, so she could see if she was the one he’d chose because she was convenient, or because he really was the only man she’d ever met who wanted her, not her sister.

  And she was tired of everyone around her making decisions for her. Even if they were well-meaning. Even if the decisions were in her best interest.

  Maybe it was time for Eleanor to make a choice herself.

  “It’s okay,” she said. She kept her eyes trained on Hugo, but she squeezed her sister’s hand. “You can go Vivi. Really.”

  “But—”

  “Go,” she said again, with soft certainty. “I’ll see you at home.”

  There must have been something in her tone, then, that brooked no disobedience. Or any back talk. Vivi squeezed her hand back, hard, and then got into the waiting car. She slammed the door behind her, and the cab headed off, chugging down the street and then around the corner.

  And Eleanor was left standing on a quiet street in a busy city, with the man she never thought she’d see again. Not face to face. Not anywhere but in her head and on a screen or a glossy tabloid page.

  “Eleanor. Little one.” Hugo shook his head, and it made heat spiral through her, charging through her where she stood as if he’d lit a match. Making the heels she wore seem that much more precarious. “Whatever are you wearing?”

  “In comparison to most of the girls I saw tonight, I might as well be wearing a grandmother’s cardi and a suit of armor.”

  “A suit of armor would be a good start.”

  “I’m wearing a perfectly lovely dress, thank you,” Eleanor said primly, and kept herself from tugging on the hem of it by sheer force of will. “If I was working, I’d be wearing something appropriate for work.”

  “Your hair.”

  His voice sounded almost tortured, and Eleanor stopped breathing. He reached out and raked his fingers through the dark mass that Vivi had made wavy and thick.

  “I hate your hair up, Eleanor. Have I told you that?”

  “It’s a good job it isn’t up to you, then. Isn’t it?”

  “Are you certain it isn’t up to me?”

  Hugo moved closer, but all Eleanor could feel was what hung there between them. That tabloid story. Eleanor’s innocence. Geraldine. Or the fact she was in love with him, just like a silly, clingy virgin in a story who didn’t know enough to guard her own heart. Too many things to bear.

  But Hugo moved closer as if he was as entranced she was. As if he couldn’t stay away. And Eleanor stopped thinking about anything but him and the half smile on his face as he looked down at her.

  “Maybe you haven’t heard. I’m a great and glorious peer of the realm. My every wish is law. Or close enough.”

  He shifted closer. He moved so he could cup her face in his hands, his hundred-percent-proof eyes intent on hers. And everything inside her shivered. Rocked a little bit, then rolled, deep and low.

  And this time, she didn’t think it was the shoes.

  “The tabloids...” She whispered. “Hugo, I’m so very sorry. I don’t know how I can ever make it right.”

  “I don’t care about the tabloids.”

  Eleanor scowled at him. “Well, you should. It’s not a small thing to have all these lies told about you. You should care and you should fight and you should—”

  “But that’s the thing. In this case, the tabloids are no more than the truth. I did take advantage of you. You worked for me and I shouldn’t have touched you. But I did.”

  “I wanted you to.”

  “I didn’t say I was sorry.”

  He shifted again, and there was a look on his face that Eleanor thought she’d seen before, though she couldn’t quite place it. And then it came to her. It had been that night. Locked away in his bedchamber, just the two of them, with nothing outside his door between them. He’d propped himself over her, he’d sunk himself deep inside of her, and he’d looked at her. Just like this.

  Her heart began to beat at her, slow and intense.

  “I forgot how to fight,” Hugo said. “At first I didn’t care. And then I did care, but I thought I was taking the high road. And then the high road somehow became this endless act of self-immolation, acted out in the public eye as if that might make it better. It never occurred to me that the flames would take over. Or that my own father would burn.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” she said fiercely. “This was something that was done to you. You shouldn’t beat yourself up for the things you did to survive it.”

  “I’m a selfish man, little one. I want to believe you because it’s convenient, not because I think it’s true.”

  “You are not a monster.” Eleanor poked her finger in his chest as punctuation, and saw that hint of a smile deepen. It was like the sun coming out. “If anyone’s a monster, it’s that Isobel.”

  “I think you’re letting me off the hook,” Hugo said, his voice serious again. Too serious. “And I like that about you. But the truth is, I was callous. Unfeeling. There were any number of ways I could have handled Isobel at the start to avoid all of this, but I didn’t. I suspect I must have hurt her, deeply.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “It’s an explanation.”

  Hugo blew out a breath. Eleanor started to say something else, but he laughed then.

  “You need to stop defending me, Eleanor. I’m trying to tell you what I should have realized sooner. I love you.”

  All the air went out of Eleanor’s body. She was too hot. Too cold.

  She thought it was a fever.

  Or possibly joy.

  “Yes,” Hugo said, as if he knew every last inch of her insecure little soul. “You.” There was a wondering look on his face, and she thought his hands weren’t entirely steady as they smoothed over her hair to settle at the nape of her neck. “I was so busy thinking of myself as a dragon in a cave, spouting off fire nonsense whenever anyone dared approach. And then you came. And you didn’t see a dragon. You didn’t see a duke. You saw a man. An irritating man, if memory serves.”

  “Surely not, Your Grace.” But her voice was barely a whisper. Barely a scratch of sound against the night.

  “You treated me like a person, nothing more. Even though you read all the same tabloid stories as anyone else. You took my ward under your wing, and more than that, stood up for her. You actually put her first.”

  “That’s the job.”

  “You would be shocked how few of Geraldine’s governesses considered her at all. You made a lost child feel found, Eleanor.” His dark eyes gleamed. “And you made a lost man feel whole. For a few short weeks, and one long night, I completely forgot that I’
m meant to be the boogeyman.”

  Eleanor shook her head at that, her eyes feeling much too full. “I had no idea Vivi was going to do that, Hugo. You have to believe me.”

  “I never fought before,” he told her, his voice low and intense. “I never stood up for myself. But I’ll be damned if those rags will drag you through the dirt. I’ve already had my attorneys contact them. I am the Duke of Grovesmoor. And I am finished hiding.”

  “Hugo...”

  “And more importantly, I love you.” He laughed, and it was a sound so pure, so filled with life and light, that Eleanor forgot it was the middle of the night. “I didn’t care enough to fight before, because I never loved Isobel. She was an annoyance, but she never hurt me. I only recognized how much I loved my own father after he died, disappointed in me to the end. I worked so hard to pretend I didn’t care about my best friend or the fact he chose Isobel over me. And I decided I’d be damned if I’d soften toward the little girl he and Isobel left in my care. The truth of it was, I was fine.”

  Eleanor didn’t realize that tears had started to slide down her face until Hugo wiped them away. She felt caught in a tight, hot grip. Unable to speak. Unable to do anything but float there, gleaming bright and buoyant.

  And Hugo was still talking.

  “But then you appeared. You marched up my drive in that ridiculous coat and you ruined everything. In the best possible way.”

  Eleanor ran her hands up the wall of his chest, indulging herself.

  “What’s the matter with my coat?” She tipped her head back and frowned at him. “It’s very warm, Hugo.”

  That made him laugh again, and then he was picking her up and spinning her around and around, as if she was weightless. But then, he made her feel that way when her feet were on the ground.

  “I don’t know how to be anything but everyone’s favorite monster,” he told her when he stopped spinning them, though he still held her there against him in the cool, close night. “But I want to try. I want to watch you frown at me for the rest of my life. I want your dry tone and your prim little remarks and Eleanor, you need to understand me on this, I want everything.”

 

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