“I loved you the moment I saw you,” she told him, smiling down at him as her tears fell freely, and not a single one of them because she was sad. “On that terrible horse.”
“Everything,” he said again, as if he thought she might have missed it. “A ring on your finger and my babies in your belly, to start. After that, who knows? We can take over the world. I have no doubt you could topple a regime or two in a few weeks, if you put your mind to it. You did it to me.”
“I don’t want to do anything unless Geraldine’s okay with it,” Eleanor said, biting her lip as she considered his ward. “The poor thing doesn’t need to feel any more abandoned.”
“Geraldine will never be abandoned again.” Hugo’s words rang out like a vow. “She and I have come to an understanding, you see.” He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers. “We can’t rustle around in that great big house without you, Eleanor. It doesn’t work. We need you. I need you.”
“Your Grace,” Eleanor whispered, wrapping her arms around this man who could never be a monster, not to her. “You know your wish has always been my command.”
He kissed her on that lonely street, with only the faraway stars as witness, and tossed them straight on into forever.
And then, together, they found their way home.
* * *
Hugo married his governess in the spring, when Groves House was bursting with flowers and life, and even the screeching tabloids were as nothing next to the benevolent sunlight of a pretty Yorkshire afternoon.
Geraldine stood in as Hugo’s Best Man, which was appropriate on a number of levels. Vivi was Eleanor’s Maid of Honor, and it was interesting how she’d changed, Hugo thought. The new Vivi didn’t have to worry about making connections or finding a husband or whatever plan it was the sisters had cooked up all those years ago.
“That’s a terrible plan,” Hugo had said when they’d laid it all out for him after Christmas that first year, probably because everyone was a touch too merry after their sumptuous dinner. “The worst I’ve ever heard.”
The adults had been sitting about like overstuffed lords and ladies of old in one of Hugo’s salons, waiting for their meals to digest a bit so they could stuff in a few more mince pies. Geraldine had been lying in front of the fire, her face in a book.
It was, Hugo had reflected with some surprise, the happiest Christmas he could recall. Ever.
“It’s a plan that’s worked to change the circumstances of impoverished women since the dawn of time,” Eleanor had pointed out.
“It has significant downsides,” Hugo had argued. “First and foremost, the rich man in question always knows exactly why he was found so marriageable. Believe me, he’ll demand payment for that. Forever.”
“There is always some form of payment,” Vivi had said quietly. “That’s just life.”
Eleanor and Hugo had exchanged a look, but neither one of them had said anything—out loud—about that weary cynicism in Vivi’s voice.
Later, when they were alone in the rooms that Hugo had moved her into shortly after he’d taken her home from London and put the Grovesmoor emerald on her finger, Eleanor had settled herself astride him and smiled down into his face.
“Is this part of my payment plan?” she’d asked mischievously.
“Of course.” Hugo had run his hands along the crease where her thigh met her hip. “I’ll insist on certain sexual favors, to be spelled out in the marriage contract.”
“I have only one condition,” Eleanor had said, very solemnly, angling herself down so her breasts filled his greedy palms and both of them could feel how slick and ready she was for him, as always.
“Name it.”
“Love me,” she demanded. “Forever.”
On his wedding day, Hugo found that promising her exactly that came easily. So easily he laughed at the tabloids that called him all manner of names. So easily that he found even Vivi amusing, as she seemed to veer between finding the fact her sister had become Hugo’s duchess romantic and armoring herself in that world-weariness she seemed infinitely more comfortable with.
“She’ll come around,” Eleanor said confidently on the dance floor as they’d moved together where everyone could watch them, in that ballroom where everything had changed between them previous autumn. Tonight she was dressed in a white gown and she wore his ring, but he could still see her the way she’d been then, with her hair down and her feet bare. “How can she help herself?”
Time changed everything, Hugo discovered. First Vivi, who took a solid year to relax around him. Then another year to really become comfortable in her new role, as a woman of some means with a very powerful brother-in-law.
“It’s amazing how many people I thought I wanted to talk to when I was poor,” Hugo overheard her telling Eleanor one lazy weekend in France at Hugo’s vineyard. “And how little it turns out I like them now that they’re the ones pursuing me.”
“Imagine,” Eleanor replied with a laugh. “You can spend time with only the people you like now.”
And so, Hugo realized, could he.
He stopped paying attention to the papers, the way he should have years ago. He cultivated what friendships he had left, gratified to discover that those who’d truly known him had never believed the stories about him. And he let his beautiful wife guide him, with her quiet resolve and her cheerful determination, away from bitterness. More and more with each day that passed.
She knew the names of every staff member in his employ within a month. She continued Geraldine’s schooling herself because she liked it. She quickly became popular in the village, with the no-nonsense demeanor good Yorkshire folk appreciated and that kindness of hers that Hugo thought could set the world alight. She took over some of the managerial aspects of the estate, because her keen mind and attention to detail far outstripped that of some of Hugo’s aides.
She even built a bridge with the dour Mrs. Redding.
“She allowed as how she didn’t trust me before,” Eleanor told him, laughing, wrapped around him in their bed as she reported the conversation, “because the women ran all over you like water and none with a single thought about anything but themselves.”
“Exactly the image I wish to have implanted in my wife’s head.”
“And then, of course, she waited to see if I drained the family coffers and attempted to divorce you for half of what wasn’t mine.”
“As well you should. There was no prenup. You have the Grovesmoor fortune entirely within your control, little one.”
Eleanor pressed her mouth against his chest, sending a new heat spiraling through him. And that deeper weight that had nothing to do with sex, but everything to do with her. His miraculous Eleanor. “It’s not the fortune I want to control. Just the Duke.”
“He’s a lost cause.”
But he was laughing as he said it, and he grinned at Eleanor when she frowned at him.
“No,” she said crisply, “he is not. And more, he never was.”
And the more time passed, the more he believed it. Isobel had only ever told stories. Torquil might have believed them, but both of them had paid far too high a price for that.
Hugo didn’t need to pay it, too. Not anymore.
And he certainly didn’t intend to let Geraldine pay a single penny.
She was nine when she got her hands on the tabloids they’d deliberately kept from her for years.
“Is it true?” she asked, her fierce little face screwed up tight, as if she was keeping herself from sobbing by will alone. “Do you keep me only to get revenge on my mother?”
“How would that work, exactly?” Hugo asked mildly. He and Eleanor were reading in his library, but he noticed Eleanor kept very still. Letting the little girl speak to him directly. “I suppose I could lock you in a cupboard, if that would help. Beneath a stair, perhaps?”
“Do you hate me?” Geraldine had asked. She’d looked at him full on , and there was no mistaking the fact that she was a nine-year-old then, no matter how
precocious she seemed at other times.
And this was how Hugo knew that Eleanor had changed him, from the inside out. He remembered sitting in opposite chairs from his ward and deciding that they should get Eleanor back. But that Hugo had been handicapped by his own distrust of everything. This Hugo knew what love was. He lived it every day.
So he reached out and pulled the little girl onto his lap, where she belonged.
“You are my ward by law,” he told her gruffly, liking the weight of her solid little body against his. Liking the feeling that rose in him, thick and real, that told him he would protect this child against the world with his own hands if necessary. “But as far as I’m concerned, Geraldine, you have always been my daughter.”
And as she snuggled into him he lifted his head, and saw Eleanor wiping tears away across from him, her face wreathed in smiles.
A year or so after that, Geraldine pushed her way into the library one summer evening, already slouching about as she walked, like the teenager she would be entirely too soon for Hugo’s peace of mind.
“I’m certain I’ve asked you to knock,” Hugo said mildly, his attention on the drink in his hand and his lovely wife, who was frowning intently over the book in her lap. Eleanor had decided to get the university degree she’d been too busy to get when she’d been younger, and was spending the summer with a reading list.
Hugo wasn’t sure it was physically possible to love her more.
Geraldine held his gaze. “Knock, knock,” she said, because she was as smart-mouthed as anyone else in this house.
“Charming,” Hugo murmured.
“I’ve thought about it and I’ve come to a decision,” Geraldine told him.
“Have you changed your mind about school?” Eleanor asked, lifting her head.
“I still want to go,” Geraldine replied. “It will be fun to board and I’ll come home all the time. But you two will be so lonely without me.”
Hugo’s mouth twitched. “Indeed.”
Eleanor’s dark eyes danced, but she nodded seriously. “I’m sure that’s true.”
“Well, I know what you need to do,” Geraldine said, and then she smiled. “You need to have a baby. As soon as possible.”
And Hugo would never know how both he and Eleanor kept from laughing at that, but they didn’t. They thanked Geraldine and then, when she’d skipped back out again to enjoy the long, blue evening, they’d dissolved into the laughter they’d been holding at bay.
But they obeyed her.
Ten months later, the Duke was delighted to catch his first son and heir as he roared his way into the world. But not, perhaps, as delighted as his ward, who was sure she’d plotted out the whole thing.
And Eleanor had never done one thing when she could do three instead. That was how the future Duke of Grovesmoor found himself with a little brother and a baby sister in short order, all of them loud and rowdy and perfect.
“Look at that,” Eleanor said as she shepherded their little brood through the village on a blustery sort of fall afternoon that reminded Hugo of the day they’d met. She was even wearing that hideous puffy coat of hers, that she’d steadfastly refused to throw away no matter how many glorious, sleek, and flattering coats he’d gifted her with over the years. Obstinate woman. “I hardly recognize the man in those headlines.”
Hugo glanced over at the newsstand and saw his own face, but didn’t bother to read whatever nonsense they’d spouted about him this time. He took his wife’s hand in his and raised it to his mouth. His sons were running ahead of him toward the green, chasing Geraldine who was for all intents and purposes their older sister, and he was holding his baby girl against his chest.
“Ah, little one,” he said with a deep and quiet contentment that was pressed down into his bones now, a part of him forever. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
His family was complete. His heart was whole.
Eleanor looked at him as if he’d always been the man she was so proud of, and Hugo believed, at last, that he was.
And would be for as long as they were together—which would be for the rest of their natural lives and far beyond if he had anything to say about it.
Which he bloody well did. He was the Duke of Grovesmoor, after all.
* * * * *
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
When chauffeur Keira Ryan drives into a snowdrift, she and her devastatingly attractive passenger must find a hotel…but there’s only one bed! Luckily Matteo Valenti knows how to make the best of a bad situation—with the most sizzling experience of her life. It’s nearly Christmas again before Matteo uncovers Keira’s secret. He’s avoided commitment his whole life, but now it’s time to claim his heir…
Read on for a sneak preview of Sharon Kendrick’s book
THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS SECRET
One Night With Consequences
‘Santino?’ Matteo repeated, wondering if he’d misheard her. He stared at her, his brow creased in a frown.
‘You gave him an Italian name?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because when I looked at him…’ Keira’s voice faltered as she scraped her fingers back through her hair and turned those big sapphire eyes on him ‘…I knew I could call him nothing else but an Italian name.’
‘Even though you sought to deny him his heritage and kept his birth hidden from me?’
She swallowed. ‘You made it very clear that you never wanted to see me again, Matteo.’
His voice grew hard. ‘I haven’t come here to argue the rights and wrongs of your secrecy. I’ve come to see my son.’
It was a demand Keira couldn’t ignore. She’d seen the brief tightening of his face when she’d mentioned his child and another wave of guilt had washed over her.
‘Come with me,’ she said huskily.
He followed her up the narrow staircase and Keira was acutely aware of his presence behind her. She could detect the heat from his body and the subtle sandalwood which was all his and, stupidly, she remembered the way that scent had clung to her skin the morning after he’d made love to her. Her heart was thundering by the time they reached the box-room she shared with Santino and she held her breath as Matteo stood frozen for a moment before moving soundlessly towards the crib.
‘Matteo?’ she said.
Matteo didn’t answer. Not then. He wasn’t sure he trusted himself to speak because his thoughts were in such disarray. He stared down at the dark fringe of eyelashes which curved on the infant’s olive-hued cheeks and the shock of black hair. Tiny hands were curled into two tiny fists and he found himself leaning forward to count all the fingers, nodding his head with satisfaction as he registered each one.
He swallowed.
His son.
He opened his mouth to speak but Santino chose that moment to start to whimper and Keira bent over the crib to scoop him up. ‘Would you…would you like to hold him?’
‘Not now,’ he said abruptly. ‘There isn’t time. You need to pack your things while I call ahead and prepare for your arrival in Italy.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. You can’t put out a call for help and then ignore help when it comes. You telephoned me and now you must accept the consequences,’ he added grimly.
Don’t miss
THE ITALIAN’S CHRISTMAS SECRET
By Sharon Kendrick
Available November 2017
PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Copyright ©2017 Sharon Kendrick
ISBN: 978-1-474-05297-9
UNDONE BY THE BILLIONAIRE DUKE
© 2017 Caitlin Crews
Published in Great Britain 2017
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characte
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Undone by the Billionaire Duke Page 16
