Seduced by a Lady's Heart

by Christi Caldwell

  That isn’t altogether true, a silent voice jeered. Her olive-hued skin had gone waxen at the sight of him and his empty coat sleeve. Lucien had long ago accepted the physical loss he’d suffered on the battlefield. He’d even learned to live with the frequent nightmares of soldiers being cut down in battle and their agonized cries as they sucked in a last, shuddery breath of life. Yet, with Eloise’s sudden, unexpected and unwelcome appearance, he’d mourned the loss of his arm. The slight tremble on her slightly too-full lips had conveyed louder than any words the one loathsome emotion he abhorred more than all others—pity.

  He didn’t want pity. And he most certainly didn’t want it from her.

  He growled and the maids jumped in unison. Lucien ignored them and they resumed their daily task.

  His resentment at her visit with the marchioness spiraled. How dare she come here and question the honest, respectable life he’d carved out for himself. He’d been one quick, slightly awkward hand movement away from ending his life and then Lady Drake, in her tenacity, had pulled him back from the edge of despair.

  The truth of those dark days, he could at last admit. In her steadfast devotion, Emmaline had roused thoughts of the girl who’d been friend to him and Richard through the years. The marchioness had sustained him to the point he’d not taken his life as he’d wished, but ultimately it had been the memory of Eloise, there with her crooked lower row of teeth and the dimple in her right cheek.

  From the windowpane he absently studied the maids’ meticulous, practiced movements and then shifted his attention to the street below. A grand, black lacquer carriage not unlike the one Eloise had arrived in rattled by, a loud, rolling reminder of the vast difference between them. As children, those differences hadn’t mattered. Somehow, their roles had shifted and he, Mr. Lucien Jonas, son of a viscount, now served tea and held doors open for married ladies.

  My husband is dead…

  His gut clenched at the whispered admission. Not for the first time since she’d arrived did he feel like an utter bastard who’d kicked the kitchen cat. He’d spent the past five years hating his father, hating life, hating that he’d never known his child, held his wife as she died and selfishly never considered Ellie Gage, who’d been a friend. A faint smile turned his lips. A friend, when that is the last relationship young boys ever sought to forge. His smile withered. She too had known loss, no less great than his own.

  “Jones, we’ve finished.”

  He started and found the young maids patiently waiting, expressions familiarly blank. He gave a nod. They dipped polite curtsies and scurried from the room.

  Lucien took a slow, lonely turn about the empty parlor. With the fresco ceilings and gilt frames, the space was still more lavish than any of his viscount father’s holdings.

  You shouldn’t be here…

  Eloise’s softly spoken words filtered through his mind and melded with the definitive command issued by the marquess earlier that morning. Their charges and concerns all rolled together until their voices blended as one in a cacophony inside his head. He pressed his fingers against his eye in an attempt to blot out the noise of it.

  He didn’t belong here, yet he didn’t belong in his past.

  There was no place for him. There was no station that, after his years of fighting and coarsened manners, he truly belonged.

  The marquess had presented him an option: life in London in this post he detested where servants feared him, and worse, he’d have Eloise thrust painfully back into his life. Or the respectable post as steward in the countryside where he’d be forced into remembering the person he’d left behind. He tried to bring her memory up, to draw forth Sara’s plump cheeks and lush hair, but the image blurred and shifted as Eloise’s face danced behind his eyes. “Damn you, Eloise, what have you done?”

  And worse…what had brought her here.

  With the bond forged between him, Eloise and his brother when they’d been just children, Lucien suspected just what that something was. Or rather who. The muscles of his stomach clenched involuntarily. For years he’d shut his family out of his life. He’d buried the memory of his brothers, father and Eloise, resolved to never see them again. Yet, here was Eloise. And where Eloise was, surely his brothers and father were to follow. Now, he’d wager the sanity he’d secured in these recent years, that his eldest brother, Palmer, had his hand at play here. He fisted his hand at his side.

  A bell rang and he welcomed the blessed diversion provided his employer. Glad to thrust memories of Eloise from his mind, he stalked out of the room and strode down the corridors with determined steps. He entered the same parlor Eloise—nay Lady Sherborne—had entered a short while ago. He froze. The marchioness cradled her child, not quite two, upon her lap.

  The agonizing regrets flooded him. Of the child he’d never even known, of the wife who’d carried that child for nine months, while he’d missed the opportunity to see her grow round. He cleared his throat and the marchioness jumped. “Forgive me,” he said, sketching a bow. “You called, my lady?”

  Lady Emmaline smiled, a generous one that reached her eyes. “Oh, you startled me.” She wagged a playful finger in his direction. “You always do that.”

  With his life having been dependent upon that silence through years of battle, one tended to carry those lessons. “My apologies,” he said gruffly. He’d likely carry them to his grave.

  She shook her head. “I’m merely teasing you, Jones.”

  He’d forgotten all those old expressions of teasing and laughter and smiling and didn’t imagine he’d ever remember them. He fell quiet.

  “No sleep,” the small girl, Regan tugged at her mother.

  “Yes, sleep,” she said in a sweet sing-song tone. She motioned to the nursemaid with flaming red hair who rushed forward. The young woman scooped up the girl and carried her from the room. Lady Drake shifted her attention back to Jones and gone was all hint of earlier teasing. “I understand Lord Drake spoke with you about the post of steward.”

  He stiffened and remained silent.

  “When I met you, you were such a dark, lonely man, Jones.”

  He clamped his lips tight to keep from pointing out that he was still a dark, lonely man.

  “I hated seeing you as you were daily and was ever so glad when the marquess offered you a post on our staff.” The marchioness stood and wandered over to a rose-inlaid table behind the pale pink, upholstered sofa. She picked up a leather book upon the otherwise immaculate surface and held it out. “Here,” she said with a firm set to her mouth that brooked no room for disobedience. This resolute young woman was the same who’d refused to let him turn himself over to death.

  On stiff legs, he moved to accept the volume. He looked down at the title. A Collection of Coleridge’s Works.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  “My lady?” he said, his tone harsher than he intended. He knew.

  “The day you opened your eyes for the first time in London Hospital that was the book I read to you from.” She smiled and said gently, “Take it.”

  He handed it back over. “I can’t.” More, he didn’t want to. What did he have need of a book of poetry? He wasn’t the sonnet-reading gentleman he’d been with Sara any longer.

  She held her palms upright. “I insist.” The resolute note in her words indicated to reject the offering would be the height of rudeness and for all his protestations, Eloise had been indeed correct earlier when she’d said he’d been raised a gentleman. “For whatever reason,” the marchioness went on, “you opened your eyes that day. And if you hadn’t, and we’d not spoken, and you’d not learned my husband, Lord Drake, had been your commanding officer, and had he not gone to you and eventually offered you employment, you’d not be here.” She paused and looked at him meaningfully. “And after today,” Eloise. Her meaning as clear as if she’d uttered the lady’s name aloud. “Well, after today, I believe you were supposed to be here.” A knowing glint lit her eyes. “For very specific reasons.”

&
nbsp; Lucien’s fingers tightened reflexively about the book until he had a white-knuckled grip upon the volume.

  “That will be all,” she said softly.

  He managed a jerky nod and with volume in hand, he strode from the room, hating that he saw the truth in her words.

  Chapter 7

  Eloise stared at the double doors with the same sense of dread she had on her first visit to this very place. You found the marchioness and now found him. You do not need to be here. Leave. “Coward,” she muttered to herself.

  “My lady?”

  She jumped at Nurse Maitland’s bemused question. Eloise dusted her moistened palms together, giving thanks for the gloves that concealed her humiliating fear—an irrational fear she knew. “Uh, nothing,” she said belatedly. “I was merely…” Woolgathering. Seeking courage.

  The woman gave her a gentle smile and held the door open. “I…” The nurse looked at her questioningly. “I do not require an additional escort,” she assured her. “I imagine you are quite busy.”

  She hesitated. “I’m certain.” Not pausing and allowing the woman to protest, she entered through the doors. Her feet, in serviceable boots, padded quietly upon the floor, a wiser selection after her near mishap with the marchioness nearly a week ago.

  The men confined to their beds raised first their eyebrows in shock and then their hands in greeting. Her mouth turned up wryly. Then, they’d probably identified her cowardice upon her first visit and marked her as a bored young lady who didn’t intend to return.

  Shame needled her that she’d not considered them before she’d entered these lonely walls. Lucien had driven her here. The men here, collectively, had brought her back. She kept her gaze trained on their faces and not those stark, white linens that danced around her memory.

  She paused mid-stride as the flash of crisp linen from her past nearly blinded her, until all she saw was white. The white of Sara’s cheeks, drained of color from the doctor having bled her for too many days. The white of the linens as she’d lain motionless, empty-eyed, staring at the ceiling overhead. Eloise shot a hand out, seeking purchase and finding it on a convenient pillar.

  “Are you all right?”’

  She jerked and blinked several times as the concerned question pulled her to the moment. With sanity restored, she nodded slowly and looked about for the owner of those words.

  A cheerful soldier with a wide-toothed smile met her eyes. The bright shock of his orange-red hair perfectly suited to one of his high spirits. “I’m…” Her words trailed off as she registered the absence of both limbs. She marveled at Lucien’s seeming ease in moving through life missing one of those much-needed arms. That this man should miss two…Sadness knifed through her.

  His grin widened. “You’re afraid of hospitals.”

  The momentary twinge of pity fled. “Beg your pardon?”

  He jerked his chin about. “I’ve seen you now both times you’ve entered. You become all queer.”

  Her lips twitched in an involuntary smile. “Queer?” she asked, appreciating his candor. Eloise wandered closer and edged forward to the lone chair.

  “Ah, if I’d but known that such flowery speech could draw such a lovely lady close, I’d have long ago bandied about such compliments.”

  She laughed, taking a seat beside him. “Indeed, such talk would be sure to turn any lady’s head.”

  He inclined his head. “Lieutenant MacGregor.”

  A lieutenant. The same distinct rank attained by Lucien, a position that signified wealth and status to grant such a position. “Lady Eloise, the Countess of Sherborne,” she said belatedly.

  “I didn’t believe you’d return,” he said with surprising candidness.

  “Oh?” She almost had not.

  He lowered his voice and waggled fiery eyebrows. “Some of us even had wagers on it.”

  She supposed she should be scandalized by such an admission but embraced the honesty. Her humor fled. “I almost didn’t,” she confessed, oddly freed by that truth. Perhaps it was his sudden, unexpected, stoic calm, or perhaps it was that he was a stranger who didn’t know of her past or even her present. “I have a fear of the color white.” Even as the words left her mouth, her cheeks blazed. “Not merely the color white, but nurses and doctors…” Though she’d not seen the stern-faced, somber doctors with their grim thoughts and dark pronouncements. “I imagine that seems wholly silly,” she said her words running together. “And quite irrational.” She allowed her gaze to wander to a point beyond his shoulder to the rows of beds.

  “I’ve learned there is sometimes no accounting for some fears,” he said pulling her back. “But I’ve also learned, more often than not, there are reasons for those fears.” He paused. “We all have them, my lady.”

  Eloise thought of the muscle jumping at the corner of Lucien’s eye. “Yes,” she agreed. “We do, don’t we?” She appreciated his admission when everyone else had only seen in her an unfortunate young widow, but not thought much beyond that loss to know all the collective losses she’d suffered, the ones that all together kept her awake.

  “And for that fear, you came back.” He shifted his body, angling the empty place his arm used to be and she imagined if he’d still possessed his arms he would have held a hand up to her. Her heart wrenched unwittingly at his loss.

  Yes, she had. For what would be the alternative? Dwelling in a lonely world with melancholy reminders of who they’d been before they’d matured into somber, altered people?

  The door opened. She looked to the front of the room. Her breath caught at the cherished figure who strode through the doors, commanding in his black attire. With his long, graceful strides, this man bore every hint of the noble birthright he’d been born to.

  “That is Lieutenant Jonas,” Lieutenant MacGregor said, noting her interest. “Though he prefers to be called Jones,” he added more as an afterthought to himself.

  She said nothing, instead a voyeur as Lucien paused beside a bed to speak to one of the men.

  “…He comes every Sunday,” MacGregor was saying.

  “Does he?” she asked. Hope slipped into her heart. This was the man he had been. Not cold, not unfeeling, but one who’d been a boy of twelve and shrugged out of his jacket to give it to a girl who’d been pushed into the lake by his older brother.

  “I imagine it is his day off. I understand he is a butler to the Marquess of Drake.”

  Lucien stood conversing with a balding gentleman leaning on crutches. He nodded at something the soldier said, that increasingly familiar hard set to his unsmiling mouth held her transfixed. What would it be like to teach those lips to curve up in that teasing half-grin as they once had? The same muscles, the same lips, and yet, a gesture seeming so impossible with the hardened stranger he’d become.

  Even with the space between them she detected his whipcord muscles go taut with awareness, noting her scrutiny and she jerked her attention away from him, back to Lieutenant MacGregor…

  Whose gaze was now fixed elsewhere. The young gentleman angled his head in greeting. “Hello,” he called out.

  She swallowed hard, having little doubt who that greeting was intended for.

  Bloody hell.

  Bloody hell! What was she doing here?

  Lucien moved with determined steps along the white walls he’d called home for too many years. First, she’d infiltrated the Marquess of Drake’s townhouse, his place of employment. Now, she’d wheedled her way into this place he visited on the lone day he called his own. He stopped before MacGregor, a debt-ridden baronet’s second son, who’d fought alongside him in the Thirty-first Regiment. “MacGregor,” he drawled, deliberately fixing his gaze beyond the crown of riotous blonde curls.

  “Jones,” the man called out with his usual, unexplainable cheer. He’d never understood how the man could smile after all he’d seen and all he’d lost.

  “It is good to see you,” he said, very deliberately ignoring Eloise, though attuned to the nuances of her body’s every movem
ent.

  “I must warn you, if you’ve come to fleece me today in a game of faro, I’ve lovely company instead.”

  A becoming blush stained Eloise’s cheeks.

  “I see that,” he said, reveling in the pale pink that flared to a crimson hue. “My lady,” he murmured.

  Eloise sprang to her feet. Her skirts snapped noisily about her feet. “Luci…” She cast a sideways glance at a curious MacGregor. Her blush deepened. In all the years he’d known her, she’d never been one of those blushing, fainting ladies. She’d possessed an indomitable spirit and boldness. Had the unknown Lord Sherborne wrought that affect? He found he rather hated the dead man for that crime.

  Then, he was guilty of far greater crimes than hating a dead man.

  MacGregor looked back and forth between them, interest piqued. “You know each other,” he said as though he’d solved the mystery of life.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  He arched an eyebrow.

  Eloise clasped her hands in front of her. “That is, what I meant to say…” The two men looked at her expectantly. “Is yes,” she finished lamely.

  The lieutenant sat back in his bed. “Well,” he said, with no small trace amount of shock. “I’ll leave you to your visit.”

  This time they spoke in unison. “No!”

  Lucien tugged at his lapel disliking the unease she roused in him. He preferred his life well-ordered, rigid, devoid of emotion. Not this uncertain, volatile pull between them whenever they came together. “Uh…”

  “I should be going,” Eloise said quietly. She dropped a curtsy. “Lieutenant MacGregor.” Then, she met Lucien’s eyes with the directness he remembered of her. “I wouldn’t dare interfere with your visit. Forgive me.” Her meaning clear; as a servant he had but one day granted his own. She, an elevated lady—a countess—was permitted those small, but valuable luxuries when she desired.