“Are we making any progress, Eleanora?”
She tucked her skirts over her toes and sent him a glance. She had not commented on his use of her given name at dinner, and she was not commenting on it now—not verbally.
“This is how an audit proceeds,” she said. “You feel as if you have all this wet laundry and nowhere to hang it, but you forge ahead, wringing pillowcase after sheet after tablecloth, and then, when you think the ordeal will have no end, the bottom of the basket comes into view. Based on this afternoon’s work, I can tell you that your four northern properties are in good order.”
That was not necessarily good news. “I have no family at the northern properties.”
“None?”
“James recently visited the castle in Peebleshire, but no family resides there, and the accountings come straight to me, not through any London steward or manager at the bank.”
She rearranged the pillow at her back. “You will sleep much better when you disentangle your family’s finances from your bank. I understand the temptation to lump them together for the sake of efficiency and generosity, but it’s not a sound practice.”
Meaning the Duke of Walden, arbiter of all things financially prudent, doubtless ordered his finances so his bank and his family holdings never touched, like a toddler with his vegetables.
“Such an adjustment would require significant changes.”
“Make them,” Eleanora retorted. “The bank’s loyalty should be, in theory, to its customers. Your loyalty should be to your family, but as a director, you must also prioritize the welfare of the bank’s customers. Those loyalties are more likely to conflict, the more you entangle your family with your business, and then you will have no good choices when a problem arises.”
“And my family employed at the bank?”
“Ideally, they would work elsewhere. Most of the aristocracy adheres to the convenient rather than the ideal, however.”
“Where do you bank?” The question felt intimate, but then, the fire was burning low in the grate, the household was largely abed, and darkness had fallen hours ago.
“I don’t, precisely. When I was employed as a mercer’s clerk, I kept an account at Wentworth and Penrose. Now, I have a sum invested in the cent-per-cents, but when I amass coin of a certain value, I buy silver goods.”
“Your teapot.” The little vessel sat in pride of place on her mantel, and he’d never seen her use it.
“I have a porringer, some spoons, a vase. Silver is portable and can be engraved with marks of ownership that are not easily altered.”
“How do you know these things?” The itch to unravel her secrets was approaching a compulsion. Where had she learned her skills, why was her sole confidant a semi-reformed alley cat?
“Most people with few means know the value of silver,” she said, pausing to yawn behind her hand. “Silver can withstand proximity to fire, serve a purpose, and be easily stuffed into a traveling bag should a swift departure be necessary.”
Silver could also be melted down and recast for myriad purposes, though in all of creation there was only one Eleanora Hatfield. “You need to depart this office for your bed, madam. I’ll light you to your room.” Rex stood and offered her his hand.
“Coming out here was a fine idea, Elsmore,” she said, grasping his fingers and rising. “I’d forgotten how much more clearly one thinks when breathing fresh country air. How the mind settles when nature is always in sight just beyond the window.”
She’d known that once. When and what had obscured the knowledge?
“I love it here,” Rex said, a prosaic admission, also a confidence. “I love the quiet and the privacy. I can ramble in my woods for an entire afternoon with no company but a curious rabbit or a lazy pheasant.”
He took up a carrying candle and led her through the chilly corridors. No wind set the old house to creaking or groaning, no footman stayed awake anticipating a late night summons. Ambledown was a functioning estate, not a duke’s elegant showpiece.
“Your affection for this property is evident,” Eleanora said as they mounted the steps. “But I suspect all of your holdings are well maintained. Do you visit them regularly?”
“I either visit or I send a cousin to show the colors.” He paused outside her room. “I might not find another time to say this, so I will say it now: Thank you.” Gratitude was not all he wanted to express to her, but it seemed a good place to start.
“I’m merely performing a service, Your Grace, one I enjoy providing.”
Your Grace. His thanks apparently embarrassed her. Rex opened her bedroom door, letting a warm draft into the corridor.
“I’ll light your candles,” he said, gesturing her to precede him into her sitting room. “You are doing more than performing a service, Eleanora. You allow me to raise difficult questions with absolute faith that my confidences will not be betrayed. You take my interests to heart. You instruct me on matters nobody has seen fit to include in my ducal education. I am indebted to you.”
He was also attracted to her, and not in the casual sense he was attracted to any comely female. He liked watching her mind work. He liked arguing with her. He liked hearing the click of the abacus beads because she moved them around with the brisk speed of a sharpshooter wielding a favorite weapon.
She closed the door, plunging the room into deep gloom.
“Somebody kept my fires built up,” she said. “You cannot imagine what a luxury that is for me.”
She wore a plain wool shawl when he wanted to wrap her in cashmere and silk. Her bun was drooping, and he yearned to unravel the lot and learn how long her hair was, learn the feel of it in his hands.
He wanted…her. To cherish, explore, appreciate, and indulge.
“The bedroom candles, if you please, Elsmore. I’ll not be using the parlor tonight.”
A man intent on observing propriety would pass her the candle, bow, and wish her sound slumbers. Rex thought back over the day, when Eleanora had slept so trustingly against his side in the coach. She’d come to dinner with the barest minimum of a fuss.
She’d patted his hand.
She’d toed off her house slippers in his presence.
She’d taken his arm as she’d traversed the steps.
Now, she was inviting him into her bedroom on the most mundane of pretexts.
“Eleanora, are you flirting with me?” Please say yes. Please, please, please.
“If you must ask, then the venture isn’t being very competently executed, is it?”
“Why?”
She stepped closer, took the candle from him, and put her arms around him. “Because I’m an idiot. I’d like to kiss you.”
“I’d like to kiss you too.” The words of a fellow-idiot, but Rex meant them from the bottom of his heart.
* * *
Ellie had not always been honest with Elsmore, but she’d told him the truth about the progress of the audit: The end was approaching, and the findings looked to be fairly predictable. The people closest to the duke, most familiar with him and most secure in his affections, were the least conscientious about keeping his books and the most likely to dip their fingers into his pockets.
With a little oversight, some changes of procedure and changes of staff, his personal accounts would withstand prenuptial scrutiny from any quarter. Ellie had misgivings about matters at his bank, but auditing Dorset and Becker would be a massive undertaking that could put her loyalties in conflict.
Her common sense and a mad impulse to share more than a kiss with Elsmore were already waging a war.
“An interlude can’t mean anything,” she said.
Elsmore took her by the hand and led her not to the bedroom, but to the sofa. “I’m to be a lady’s passing fancy? How novel.” He had the grace to sound both amused and chagrined.
“You are a director of an institution that competes with my employer. I should not allow you even passing fancy status.” How her family would crow, to see her ethics wavering for the sak
e of pleasure.
“Eleanora, no less person than His Grace of Walden has given his blessing to your review of my personal books. If you wanted to ruin me, my bank, and my family, you have the means. I’m willing to take that risk. Can’t you trust me to be even a fleeting indulgence?”
He was making a sort of sense, but Ellie could not follow his logic when distracted by the pleasure of watching his mouth.
“I am about to be horrendously foolish,” she said. Also daring and, for once, even a little selfish.
Elsmore enfolded her hand in both of his and kissed her fingers. “I rejoice that I have the honor to be the object of your foolishness.”
The gesture was both courtly and intimate, and Ellie’s last hope of reversing course sank beneath a tide of anticipation. Elsmore would not bungle these intimacies. If she permitted herself one spectacular lapse of judgment, he’d make the experience more than worth the regrets.
“I’m not chaste,” Ellie said. “You needn’t worry that my feminine sensibilities are overly delicate.”
“I’m not chaste either,” Elsmore replied. “Feel free to indulge your every fantasy and whim with me.”
That would take far more than the few days they had. “You also aren’t in any great hurry, apparently.”
Another kiss, this one to her wrist. “Does one swill the finest vintage like cheap ale?”
Clearly not, if one was the Duke of Elsmore. Whatever parts of his business education had been neglected, he knew how to thoroughly please a lover. He brought to life in Ellie the long dormant glory of being a female in contemplation of intimate congress with a man she desired.
His lips wandering from her wrist to her elbow conjured heat and longing. When he shifted to kneel over her on the sofa, she relaxed into the pleasurable posture of a woman who need only enjoy being kissed, caressed, and cherished.
She endured tenderness upon tenderness. Elsmore’s thumb brushing the inside of her elbow, his fingers teasing the pins from her hair, his heat and scent enveloping her in warmth and a promise of pleasures to come.
He gently removed her spectacles, which Ellie allowed, a much greater gesture of trust than he knew.
Long-held tension unraveled as Elsmore wrapped her in an embrace, her face pressed to his chest, her jaw cradled against his palm. The moment was ineffably sweet. Whatever else came after—passion, pleasure, repletion—Ellie would recall those few instants of peace and closeness.
“You won’t regret this?” Elsmore asked, sitting back.
I will regret so much, but never this. “No more than you will.”
He rose and when Ellie would have taken his hand, he instead scooped her against his chest. A reflexive inclination to protest slipped away on a sigh, for to be carried in Elsmore’s arms was lovely. The bedroom was as well heated as the sitting room, meaning several degrees above chilly. Elsmore was a toasty male brick and Ellie curled into his warmth.
He deposited her in the reading chair by the hearth and knelt to remove her slippers.
“I haven’t a sheath with me,” he said. “I want your promise, Eleanora, that if our passion has consequences, you will notify me.”
“I can make that promise.” She’d notify him, though she would first quit London if she so much as suspected she’d conceived. The notion was sobering, but then, Ellie knew all the tisanes to bring on menses, and she—like most women of modest station—kept at least two of them on hand.
Elsmore shrugged out of his jacket and draped it across the back of Ellie’s chair. He dispensed with her stockings next and when she stood, he undid the hooks at the back of her dress.
“Shall I brush out your hair?” He kissed her nape and wrapped his arms about her middle. “I want to see it down, I want to know what the prim Eleanora Hatfield looks like all undone and eager.”
Ellie turned and looped her arms around his neck. “I look forward to seeing His Grace of Elsmore winded and satisfied, not a flowery compliment or pithy insight to his name. I want him panting and dazed, his only thought an incoherent sense of gratitude and joy.”
She was already panting and dazed.
“I want you to forget what an abacus is.”
“I want you to forget your own title.”
They shared a smile, for their discourse was becoming silly and, clearly, neither of them cared. Ellie would not forget Elsmore’s title or his station—not ever—and neither would she forget that once upon a time, he’d been her lover.
She allowed him to wield the brush on her unbound hair, then re-braided it while he undressed. He was un-self-conscious of his nudity, using the bed warmer while Ellie dodged behind the privacy screen to change into a nightgown and dressing robe.
“You are modest,” he said, propping an elbow along the top of the wooden screen. “I would not have anticipated that in such a practical woman. I like it.”
Ellie tossed her dress at him. “You are naked. I like that.”
“A duke is always appropriately attired for the occasion.”
“You are awful.” Awfully dear, drat him.
“Come to bed, Eleanora, and I’ll improve your opinion of me.”
And there was the problem no amount of tallying or rounding could solve. Ellie not only desired Elsmore, she respected him and liked him. She was truly enamored of him, which meant, when her audit was concluded in another few days, her path and his would diverge, permanently and absolutely.
As she settled onto the warmed mattress, and Elsmore drew the covers up over her, she admitted a quiet, devastating truth: This was how it should be between a woman and the man with whom she chose to share intimacies—comfortable, pleasurable, and so very special.
Nonetheless, she would enjoy her passing fancy, and then slip away to her safe, predictable life, there to remain in obscurity as long as she possibly could.
* * *
Rex paraded around in the altogether because a quantity of cold air was one sure way to take the edge off his passion. Nothing would entirely defeat nascent desire when Eleanora Hatfield, now swaddled in exactly one layer of soft white cotton, had given him permission to become her lover.
But this occasion was more than a casual coupling.
He dithered at the hearth, arranging coals, trying to assemble an erotic strategy, because his objective was more than a few minutes of shared pleasure. He wanted to be with Eleanora well beyond a stolen interlude and even past the duration of a discreet liaison.
Rex’s conviction in this regard had been building since the moment she had first bickered with him over the privilege of holding her chair. To her, he was not a lofty aristocrat owed deference as a result of an accident of birth.
Her esteem was earned, her favors given or withheld based on her honest regard.
This was not, of course, how it should be. A duke did not fall in love with anybody excepting perhaps himself. He might humor an infatuation with this or that temporary partner. Affection for a lady was within permissible bounds, and he owed his duchess proper respect.
A duke did not become attached to a party far beneath his station.
Except…he did. British history was rife with examples of mésalliances between the blue-blooded and the common, and whatever Eleanora’s antecedents were, she herself was unassailably decent. She was also nestled amid the quilts like a contented cat, while Rex wasted precious moments deciding between lovemaking and proposing.
“Are you joining me under these covers or pondering the fate of the realm?” she asked, tossing a pillow to the foot of the bed.
A little of both. Rex fished in the pockets of the breeches he’d draped over the back of the reading chair and found a wrinkled handkerchief.
“Stay right where you are,” he said, putting the linen onto the bedside table and pouring a glass of water from the carafe on the windowsill. “I’m plotting my course.”
“I will plot your course, lest you catch your death. You climb into bed, we make passionate love, then we fall asleep on a cloud of contentment. Y
ou will not apply your cold feet to my person at any time, and you will discreetly take yourself off in the small hours, lest there be awkwardness in the morning for the chambermaid.”
He sauntered to the bed. “I like the part about passionate lovemaking and the clouds of contentment. I’m increasingly displeased with that nightgown.” Though if he was about to propose, she might rather be wearing at least one article of clothing when he did.
“Too bad, Elsmore, because you won’t get it off me until the candles are blown out.”
She was serious. “You are the pocket Venus who has haunted my dreams since the day we met, and now you—Eleanora, have you borne a child? Is that what prompts this excess of modesty?” Where was that child, and who was the father? Rex sat on the edge of the bed, his conscience at war with his body, because he did not approve of dueling in the general case. “Is there a Mr. Hatfield? Please be honest with me.”
She thrashed free of the covers and knelt up to wrap him in a hug from behind. “Mr. Hatfield is a figment of my craving for propriety. I have never married, and I have no children. I am also not like you—casually naked, confident in my appeal. I haven’t…”
She buried a cold nose against Rex’s neck, a peculiar sensation when her cheeks were so warm.
He kissed her forearm, the part of her that happened to be closest to his lips. “You haven’t taken many lovers?”
“I have not, and I haven’t taken any in recent years. You have confidence I lack.”
“If you were any more confident, you’d hold a Cabinet post and the realm would be better for it. Turn loose of me, and I’ll blow out the candles.”
She kissed his nape, an odd, tender gesture, then let him go.
Rex made a circuit of the room, gratified to note that Eleanora watched him, and her gaze was frankly appreciative.
“Like what you see?” Like it enough to marry me?
“I like who I see, though I will doubtless regret that admission. Come to bed, Elsmore.”
Yes, ma’am. He paused on the step beside the bed, one knee on the mattress. “My given name is Wrexham, though under the circumstances, Rex will do.” We are to be married, after all. His allegedly abundant confidence did not allow him to assay that observation, for with Eleanora, he dare not make any assumptions.
Forever and a Duke Page 16
