She held up the covers, he lay down beside her, and she drew the quilts over him. “Now what?”
He adored the disgruntled edge to her question. “You ravish me within an inch of my sanity.”
She curled up along his side and wrapped her fingers around his arousal. “That shouldn’t take long at all.”
“For you, the work of a moment, but Eleanora, might we discuss—Eleanora?”
Her head disappeared under the covers, and Rex’s sanity—along with any comprehensible offers of marriage—vanished as well. He barely had a moment to grip the spindles of the headboard before she put her mouth to an intimate location. By the time she emerged from her mission of mischief, Rex was in a state of uproarious desire, Eleanora was clearly pleased with herself, and one of the spindles had come loose from its moorings.
“I like to start out on top,” she said, straddling him. “What have you to say to that?”
“A gentleman never argues with a lady, and I like for you to be happy.” He would also like to burn the damned nightgown, but settled for bunching it up around her waist.
“I’m not a lady.” She curled down onto his chest and mashed her nose—no longer cold—against his throat.
“You are a lady. My lady, and my lover.” Won’t you be my wife? That was what made Eleanora so precious. She would be not only Rex’s duchess, appearing on his arm for the requisite social occasions, managing his households, and guarding his interests. She would also be his wife, his ally, his confidante, his lover. The safe haven for his soul, the intimate delight of his heart.
She kissed him on the mouth, then sat up, whisked off the damned nightgown, and aimed it over her shoulder. “You say the most outlandish things.”
For the next little while, Rex said nothing with words, but with his caresses and kisses, he tried to communicate to her that she was infinitely dear, that his yearning for her went well beyond mere erotic fixation.
Perhaps Eleanora understood, for her touch became lyrical and sweet, until they were joined and moving as one.
As a younger man, Rex had indulged in the usual excesses, or perhaps more than usual, given the privileges of his station. Making love with Eleanora was new, though. Intimacy built on aspirations of a shared lifetime imbued the experience with something approaching reverence. When Eleanora at last came undone in his arms, he followed her into a completion so limitless that for a moment, there was no Rex or Eleanora, there was only surrender and joy.
She sighed against his neck, the sigh of a well-pleasured lady. “We’ll make a mess,” she murmured.
The nature of the undertaking meant…Rex’s rosy mental peregrinations came up against a rock wall of chagrin. He hadn’t withdrawn. Great God Jehovah have mercy on a miserable duke, he hadn’t withdrawn.
“Eleanora, I am so—”
She pushed herself off his chest, yawned and stretched, and reached for the linen cloth on the night table. “I’m not much of a talker in these situations.”
The handkerchief disappeared beneath the covers, and Eleanora arranged herself along Rex’s side.
She did not seem upset—far from it, which boded well for Rex’s ambitions. Time enough in the morning to offer matrimony, and really, Rex ought to begin by asking to pay his addresses, just as he would with any woman whom he aspired to marry.
And he’d need a ring. Flowers, French chocolates, bended knee, the whole production, which he would happily plan down to the last detail tomorrow.
Now, Eleanora’s breath fanned across his chest and her knee rested against his thigh.
“Did I acquit myself adequately?” he asked, freeing her braid from between the pillows.
“If you had acquitted yourself any more adequately, I would have expired from a surfeit of pleasure. A woman underestimates you at her peril.”
He gathered her near, loving the feel of her warm and naked next to him. Perhaps he could broach the topic of marriage preliminarily, in a general sort of way.
“I look forward to the day when such pleasures are a regular aspect of my situation. Domestic bliss and all that.”
She said nothing, but then, he’d probably been too general.
“Do you ever contemplate marriage, Eleanora? Speculate about what benefits it might offer with the right fellow?”
Rex waited, mapping the curve of her hip and the turn of her waist in slow strokes. She was small but sturdy and ye gods, she was passionate. “Eleanora?” He seized all of his courage and whispered, “Will you marry me?”
The fire crackled softly in the hearth. Somewhere on the floor below, a longcase clock bonged the quarter hour.
Rex knew the feel of Eleanora in slumber, knew the peaceful weight of her in his embrace. He’d loved her within an inch of her sanity, apparently, all the way to a sound sleep.
He kissed her temple and drew the covers up over her shoulder.
“Tomorrow, then, or certainly before we return to London, we will embark on that conversation. I look forward to being your doting duke, if you’ll have me.”
* * *
“So where is she?” Jack asked, accepting the slice of buttered bread Pamela passed him. He had to let the brat on his knee have a bite first, and wee Mickey—named for his cousin—knew to take as much at one go as he could manage.
“Down with you,” Jack said, putting the boy on the floor. “If you keep eating like that you’ll soon be eight feet tall.”
The lad grinned around a mouthful of bread—no manners whatsoever—and skipped off.
“Go tell your sister to stop pestering Mrs. Hilton,” Pamela said. “The girl’s been up there for half the day.”
Jack had, to his shame, timed this call for noon, when food might be in evidence. Waiting around in doorways was hungry work this time of year.
“Ellie hasn’t gone to the chop house,” he said. “Not since Saturday. It’s Tuesday noon, and no Ellie. What if she’s ill?”
As far as Jack knew, no Naylor kin had ever set foot on the premises of Ellie’s fine lodgings, nor had they darkened the door of the Wentworth and Penrose bank. Never let it be said Ellie’s family had betrayed her before her betters. Kept a watchful eye on her, of course, but nothing more.
Pamela passed him the baby and rose to pour him a cup of tea from a pot swaddled in a towel in the dry sink. The towel was dingy, but the tea was steaming hot.
“Ellie has the constitution of a horse,” she said. “You are simply out of work and looking for inspiration. You won’t find it spying on her.”
“She could have been set upon by thieves, be lying in a ditch somewhere unshriven, and all you can think to do is scold me for caring about her.”
The tea was actual tea, not some imitation concocted of meadow weeds and the orts and leavings of a tea chest. Mick’s generosity was being put to good use.
“You care about yourself,” Pamela said, taking the other chair at the table and situating the baby in her lap. “Not that I blame you for it. The agencies aren’t hiring?”
“The better families are leaving for their Yuletide holidays in the country, while half the yeomanry has come to Town looking for work now that the harvest is in. Any merchant will hire his cousin’s neighbor’s niece’s boy from Greater Sheepshite before he’ll turn to the agencies.”
The baby reached for Jack’s teacup, which was still half full of hot drink. Jack moved it aside and offered the child his hand, for his pockets were empty of all treasure.
“Do you think Ellie can find you a job?” Pamela asked.
The question was merely curious rather than derisive. Jack took encouragement from that. “I’m almost as good with numbers as Ellie is, and as you said, I know all the rigs and schemes even better than she does. I can keep honest books, and I often have.”
Once, he’d even alerted an employer to a valet padding his accounts. Two weeks later, the mistress’s nacre-handled penknife had been “found” by a housemaid among Jack’s effects, and he had learned a valuable lesson. If you’re not working
a rig, somebody else in the household likely is.
“Clerks don’t earn much,” Pamela said. “Not at first. You could ask Ellie if any of the banks are hiring.”
“I can’t ask her if I can’t find her.”
“Ask among the clerks from Wentworth and Penrose,” Pamela said. “They doubtless have their favorite pubs and chop shops, the same as all of London. The City thrives on the custom of the counting house clerks.”
The City of London, which encompassed the walled bounds of old Roman Londinium, had traditionally been the safest place for merchants to transact business. As Britain’s trading empire had grown, the heart of English finance had remained within and near those walls even as the metropolis had sprawled to the west along the Thames.
The infant seized Jack’s thumb and, like every healthy baby, tried to put what he grasped into his mouth.
“Ask where my own cousin has got off to?” Jack mused around a mouthful of bread. If Ellie had spun some yarn for the bank about influenza or lung fever, nosy questions could undermine that story.
“Ask if they’re hiring, if they’ve heard of any work for a man who’s good with numbers. I’d like to know that you have a job before Clyde and I head north.”
“You’re definitely leaving Town?” Clyde had still said nothing to Jack about this decision.
“Clyde wants to be back in Scotland by New Year’s. I’ll let Ellie know the next time she comes calling.”
Mick was off to Antwerp, Ellie nowhere to be found, and now Pamela was leaving for bloody Scotland? “I don’t like this, Pammie. We do better when we stick together.”
“I married Clyde more than five years ago. His family is in Scotland, and Mick shouldn’t come back this way for some time, if ever.”
True enough. “Then I’ll wish you well, and thanks for the tea and sympathy.” Jack finished his bread, the first food he’d had since yesterday, and would have risen, except the baby bit him hard on thumb. “You wretched little rascal!”
Pamela smacked the infant gently on the nose. “For shame, Mickey mine. You’ll get food poisoning snacking on our Jackie.”
Jack shook his abused hand—the rascal had exactly four tiny teeth—and downed the last drops of the tea. “I might come to Scotland with you. No sense biding here if Ellie’s going to ignore her own family.”
“Talk to Clyde,” Pamela said, positioning the baby on her hip. “I have all I can do to keep track of the children.”
Pamela wasn’t prepared to argue for Jack to join the caravan to Edinburgh, in other words. Nothing like family loyalty when a man was down on his luck.
“I’ll do that. Stay warm, and mind the weather. Looks like we’re in for more snow.”
“Winter has arrived,” Pamela said. “Can the head colds and lung fevers be far behind?”
Jack had been fed, he’d been fortified by a cup of tea, and Pamela was right: Ellie had found a job at a bank, and she was female. A man equally versed in ciphering might be able to do likewise.
Chapter Eleven
I will look back on this week and recall that once, I was happy.
That refrain had run through Ellie’s mind for the past two days, as Elsmore had shared quiet meals with her, asked her opinion on what to do with this or that farm, and told her stories of his boyhood escapades.
He had not—thank heavens—renewed his inquiries about Ellie’s family.
Elsmore, to Ellie’s surprise and delight, was an affectionate man. When he held her cloak, he patted her shoulders. If they wandered arm in arm down a row of stalls in the stable, his hand rested over hers. When he wanted to point out a portrait of him with a trio of blond, smiling boy cousins, he took her hand simply to guide her along the gallery.
He never presumed or gave the servants reason to gawk, but he let Ellie know that he enjoyed touching her and being with her, whatever the reason.
When they piled into a sleigh to admire the view from the belvedere, he tucked in right beside her and gave her a turn at the reins, a pleasure she hadn’t known since childhood. He kissed her at the top of the tower’s steps, a stolen pleasure where nobody could see them and nothing more than a kiss could transpire.
“That’s the home farm,” he said, leading Ellie to the railing and pointing to a plume of smoke drifting up through the trees to the east. “There and there are two of the tenancies.”
A tidy estate village huddled at the foot of a rise to the west, and to the northeast, a gray pall gathered on the horizon.
“London,” Elsmore said, wrapping his arms around Ellie from behind. “That it should wear a mantle of darkness seems appropriate.”
Ellie was comforted to think he’d be sad to leave the next day. “But now you know where the boggy ground is with your account books. I hope that makes the darkness less oppressive.”
Unfortunately, the boggy ground lay mostly with his London household. A steward in Northamptonshire was sloppy, perhaps a matter of needing spectacles, for the mistakes went in all directions. Elsmore’s aunties were overstating expenses, and a widowed cousin was engaged in the occasional 3-for-5 swap, but the other holdings were reasonably well accounted for.
“Actually, no,” Elsmore said, turning loose of her and propping his elbows on the balustrade. “I must confront four female family members and ask them why they have been dishonest with me. My cousin in particular bothers me, because I’m putting two of her boys through Oxford, and I increased her quarterly remittance only last year.”
“Ask for receipts,” Ellie said. “Tell them you are checking up on your accountants and ask for receipts.”
“They can falsify those too, can’t they? You accurately stated some time ago that as long as I am not doing business directly with the person supplying the invoices, I am to some degree at the mercy of whoever is incurring the cost.”
This apparently bothered him, but for the first time in her life, Ellie did not want to discuss figures, ciphers, or account books. The insight was…daunting, for all too often, she’d insisted that a conversation remain rooted in numbers, when the other party had tired of the subject.
She and her duke had so little time left, though, and she did not want to spend the waning hours discussing two pounds here and a shilling there.
“Hold me,” she said, moving into Elsmore’s embrace.
His arms came around her securely, no need to ask again. “We have reached the end of our task, have we not?”
“We have. I will send you a summary of my findings next week.” Ellie had suspicions about the goings-on at his bank, but those concerns were beyond her marching orders. “I will miss you, Elsmore. I had become a walking abacus, nothing to occupy me but the next report or statement, as a starving cat thinks only of mice. Nobody sees me as anything else, and I convinced myself that was for the best.”
“I see you as much more than that.”
She knew he did. He asked her opinion about whether to offer a tenant’s son articles for a clerkship, and then he listened to her reply. He grumbled about his sisters’ prospective beaus, as he’d grumble to a friend. He braided her hair, then unbraided it, all the while discussing the Irish question with her.
In the evening, he sat patiently with Ellie, reading while she worked at her accounting, occasionally reciting a humorous passage for her, quibbling with the author’s turn of phrase.
“I saw you as merely a duke,” Ellie said. “Those words should not make sense in the English language—merely a duke—for what status could be more intriguing than that of a man who ranks below a king and often has more power than one?”
The sun was traveling the inevitable journey to the horizon, the temperature dropping. The gray haze over London had acquired a fiery red underbelly, and Ellie’s heart was breaking.
“How do you see me now, Eleanora?”
You are the man I love, the man I must leave. “You have become a friend, Elsmore. An intimate friend. I will always treasure the time spent with you.”
Even as the count
ryside settled in for another frigid night, Ellie was warm in her lover’s embrace. He sheltered her from the elements and from a loneliness so crushing she dreaded her return to it, but he could not shelter her from the reality that they must part.
“I would like to be more than a friend, Eleanora. Much more.”
If she’d been any other woman besides Eleanora Naylor, granddaughter of the disgraced Jacob Naylor, sister and cousin and—most damning of all—daughter to ne’er-do-wells and criminals, she would have accepted his offer.
Her own cousin had very likely stolen from him, though. Her mother lived an isolated life under an assumed name in France. Her grandparents didn’t dare even write to her. And as for poor Papa…
“I cannot be your mistress, Elsmore. You would grow tired of me, and I would miss my ledgers.”
He rested his cheek against her temple. “You daft woman, I am asking you to be my wife.”
Ellie first heard the affection in his endearment—you daft woman—then the sense of his words cut through the fog of sorrow and longing in her heart. She wiggled away, though she had to be insistent about leaving his embrace.
“Your wife? I do not understand. You are a duke. You do not marry a bank auditor.”
“His Grace of Chandos married a hostler’s castoff wife. Bought her at a wife sale, in fact. His Grace of Devonshire married the mistress with whom he and his first duchess had lived in an open arrangement for years. He did so with his late duchess’s blessing and nobody dared refuse to receive any of them. John of Gaunt, a royal duke, married his children’s governess after having four illegitimate children with her. This fiction that a duke cannot marry where he pleases is a recent invention designed to serve everybody’s interests but the duke’s.”
Ellie’s grasp of the aristocracy’s history was shaky, but she was absolutely certain that she and Elsmore could not marry.
“I don’t know how to waltz.” A stupid fact to seize on, but a lack she was acutely aware of. Only women with wealth, free time, and social ambitions learned how to waltz.
Forever and a Duke Page 17
