The Duke’s Perfect Wife hp-4

by Jennifer Ashley

  “Duke of Kilmorgan, miss? He’s very popular with our customers.”

  Eleanor jumped as a tall, narrow-limbed young man with a pointed face and dark eyes looked at the photographs in her hand. She couldn’t help noticing that the angle of his glance took in the curve of her bodice and lingered there.

  Eleanor took a step to the side. “You don’t have many of him.”

  “Because his photographs sell as quick as we get them in. The young ladies, they find him handsome.”

  Of course they did. How could they not? Even the stiff poses didn’t mar the attractiveness of Hart Mackenzie.

  “I have others if you want to see them.” The clerk winked. “More discreet photographs, as they say. In the French style.”

  Eleanor’s heart beat faster. The clerk was a bit repulsive, but Eleanor could not afford not to check what he had. She pulled the veil of her hat over her eyes and tried to appear shy. “Perhaps I ought to have a look at them.”

  “In the back.” The clerk gestured toward a curtained doorway. “This way, miss.”

  Eleanor looked at the heavy velvet draperies that blocked all view of the back room. “Can you not bring the photographs out to me?”

  “Sorry, miss. Shopkeeper would have my head. He sells the things, but they stay in the back.”

  He kept his arm out, pointing at the curtain. Eleanor drew a breath. She needed to know. “Very well. Lead on.”

  The shopkeeper grinned, charged over to the doorway, and held the curtain up for her. Eleanor made a staying gesture to the maid and ducked into the back room, trying not to sneeze at the dust when the clerk let the drape fall.

  The dim room looked innocuous—nothing more than a jumble of tables and boxes and much dust. Eleanor tried, and failed, to stop another sneeze.

  “Sorry, miss. Here we are.”

  The clerk pulled a pasteboard box out from the bottom of a haphazard stack and opened the lid. Inside lay a cluster of photographs, all of Hart, all showing much skin. Eleanor shook the box, scattering the photographs across its bottom and counted about a dozen of them.

  Eleanor looked up and found the clerk standing an inch from her. He was breathing hard, his face perspiring.

  “Are there any more?” she asked him in a businesslike tone.

  “No, miss, that’s all.”

  “Did you have more before? I mean, has someone else bought any others?”

  The clerk shrugged. “Don’t think so. Shopkeeper bought these a while ago.”

  “Who sold them to him?” Eleanor tried to keep the excitement from her voice, not wanting to arouse his suspicions. Or arouse anything else for that matter.

  “Don’t know. I wasn’t here then.”

  Of course not. That would have been too helpful.

  Why no one had found or purchased these since their arrival was explained by the chaos of the room. The photographs would have been difficult to chance upon in this jumble, and if the proprietor refused to bring them to the front, a person would have to ask for them specifically.

  “I’ll take them all,” Eleanor said. “These and the three I found in front. How much?”

  “A guinea for the lot.”

  Her eyes widened. “A guinea?”

  “Told you, His Grace of Kilmorgan is popular. Now if I could find some of the Prince of Wales in his altogether, I could fund my retirement.” He chuckled.

  “Very well. A guinea.” Hart had already started giving her wages for typing, but Hart could pay her back for this.

  The clerk reached for the box. “I’ll just wrap that up for you.”

  Eleanor reluctantly put the box into his hands and stood by while he folded brown paper around it and secured it with twine. She took the package he handed her and headed for the curtain, but the clerk stepped in front of her.

  “The shop shuts for tea, miss.” His gaze roved down her primly buttoned bodice. “Perhaps you could stay and share it with me. We could look at more photographs together.”

  Most decidedly not. Eleanor gave him a sunny smile. “A kind offer, but, no. I have many errands to attend to.”

  He put his arm across the curtained door. “Think about it, miss.”

  The clerk’s arm was thin, but Eleanor sensed a wiry strength in this young man. She was highly aware that only she and Maigdlin were in the shop, aware that she’d voluntarily gone alone into the back room with him. If Eleanor screamed for help, passersby were as likely to condemn her as to help her.

  But for years, Eleanor had dealt with the inappropriate advances of gentlemen who thought her fair game. After all, she’d been engaged to the notorious Hart Mackenzie and afterward had retreated home to look after her father, never to marry anyone else. Had Mackenzie ruined her? Not a few people speculated on this. On occasion, a gentleman would do his best to find out.

  Eleanor smiled up at the clerk, putting on her best innocent expression. He started to bend to her, lips puckered in a ridiculous way. He even closed his eyes, the silly man.

  Eleanor ducked under his rather musty-smelling arm, spun herself out the doorway, and slammed the heavy velvet drape back into him. The clerk shouted and fought the dusty folds. By the time he’d untangled himself, Eleanor had slapped her coins onto the counter and was heading out the front door.

  “Come along, Maigdlin,” she said as she hurried to the street. “We’ll go and have some tea.”

  “My name’s Mary, my lady,” the maid said, panting behind her. “Housekeeper should have told you.”

  Eleanor set a brisk pace west along the Strand. “No, it isn’t, Maigdlin Harper. I know your mother.”

  “But Mrs. Mayhew says I should go by Mary. So the English can pronounce it.”

  “Absolute nonsense. Your name is your name, and I’m not English. I’ll speak to Mrs. Mayhew.”

  The maid’s disapproving look softened. “Yes, my lady.”

  “Now, let us find some tea and sandwiches. And heaps of seedcake. His Grace will pay for it all, and I intend to enjoy myself.”

  The house in High Holborn looked the same as it had the night Angelina Palmer had died, the night Hart had walked out of it forever.

  The house was to let, but none had taken it this Season, perhaps because it lay too far from fashionable quarters for the rent Hart was asking. Or maybe he’d set it so high because he truly did not want anyone here. The house should sit empty until its ghosts died.

  Hart told his coachman to return for him in an hour. The town coach rumbled away, and Hart opened the front door with his key.

  Silence met him. And emptiness. The downstairs rooms had been cleared of furniture, save for a stray piece or two. Dust hung in the air, the cold heavy.

  He’d not wanted to come here. But Eleanor’s assertion that a clue to the photographs might be found in the house made sense. Hart did not trust anyone in his employ enough to confide in them about the photographs, and he certainly didn’t want Eleanor there, so he’d come himself.

  As he climbed the staircase he’d lightly run up as a younger man, he fancied he heard whispers of laughter, the trickle of whiskey, deep voices of his male friends, the high-pitched chatter of ladies.

  The house had at first been a nest for Angelina Palmer, when Hart had been proud to be only twenty and yet to have caught such a ladybird. The house had then become his refuge. Here, Hart had been master, his brutal father far from it. The old duke hadn’t even known of the existence of the place.

  The house had also become a point of contact during Hart’s rising political career. Hart had hosted gatherings here in which alliances had been formed and plans made, which resulted in Hart now being at the head of his coalition party. Here, Hart had celebrated his first election to Commons at the tender age of twenty-two, he unwilling to wait until he inherited his seat in the Lords to start telling Parliament what to do.

  Here, also, Angelina Palmer had lived to please Hart. When Hart’s friends had gone, and he and Mrs. Palmer were alone, Hart had explored the darker side of his needs.
He’d been unafraid to experiment, and Angelina had been unafraid to let him.

  Angelina at first had assumed that Hart, still at university, would be too young and inexperienced to prevent her from straying with whatever gentleman she wished. But when Hart discovered her transgressions, Angelina for the first time had seen Hart change from laughing, devilish rogue to the hard, controlling man he would become. Hart had looked her in the eye and said, “You are with me, and no other, whether I see you every night or once a year. If you cannot obey that simple stricture, then you will go, and I will advertise the vacancy of your position.”

  He remembered Angelina’s reaction—irritation, then surprise, then shock when she realized he meant it. She’d humbled herself, begged his forgiveness, and Hart had taken his time about granting it. Angelina might be the older of the pair, but Hart held the power. Angelina was never to forget that.

  Later, when Angelina had sensed that Hart was growing bored and restless, she’d brought in other ladies to keep him entertained. Anything, Hart realized now, to prevent him from leaving her.

  Hart reached the first floor of the house, fingers skimming the banisters. The day Angelina had ruined his betrothal to Eleanor, Hart had quit the house and never lived there again. He’d sold it to Angelina—through his man of business—telling her to do whatever she liked with the place.

  Angelina had turned it into an exclusive bawdy house that accepted only the best clientele, and had done very well out of it. Hart had returned for the first time five years later, right after Sarah’s death, seeking refuge from his grief.

  Hart walked down the hall toward the bedroom where one of Angelina’s girls had died, his footsteps reluctant. Behind that door, he’d found Ian asleep and smeared with the young woman’s blood. He remembered his dry-mouthed terror, his fear that Ian had committed murder. Hart had done everything in his power to protect Ian from the police, but he’d let his deep-seated fear blind him for years as to what really had happened in that bedroom.

  He shouldn’t have come here. The house held too many memories.

  Hart opened the door to the bedroom, and stopped.

  Ian Mackenzie stood in the middle of the carpet, gazing up at the ceiling, which was painted with nymphs and cavorting gods. A mirror hung on the ceiling, right over the place the bed used to be.

  Ian stared up into the mirror, studying his own reflection. He must have heard Hart come in, because he said, “I hate this room.”

  “Then why the devil are you standing in it?” Hart asked.

  Ian didn’t answer directly, but then, Ian never did. “She hurt my Beth.”

  Hart walked into the room and dared put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. He remembered finding Angelina with Beth, Beth barely alive. Angelina, dying, had told Hart what she’d done, and that she’d done it all for Hart. The declaration still left a bitter taste in his mouth.

  “I am sorry, Ian,” Hart said. “You know I am.”

  Eye contact was still a bit difficult for Ian with anyone but Beth, but Ian took his gaze from the mirror and directed it at Hart. Hart saw in Ian’s eyes remembered fear, worry, and anguish. They’d almost lost Beth that night.

  Hart squeezed Ian’s shoulder. “But Beth’s all right now. She’s at your house in Scotland, safe and sound. With your son and baby daughter.” Isabella Elizabeth Mackenzie had been born late last summer. They called her Belle.

  Ian ducked out from under Hart’s hand. “Jamie walks everywhere now. And he talks. He knows so many words. He’s nothing like me.” His voice rang with pride.

  “Why aren’t you in Scotland with your beloved wife and children, then?” Hart asked.

  Ian’s gaze drifted to the ceiling again. “Beth thought I should come down.”

  “Why? Because Eleanor was here?”

  “Yes.”

  Dear God, this family. “I wager Mac rushed out and sent Beth a wire as soon as Eleanor turned up,” Hart said.

  Ian didn’t answer, but Hart knew the truth of it.

  “But why have you come here, today?” Hart went on. “To this house, I mean?” Ian was sometimes pulled to places that had frightened or upset him, such as his father’s private study at Kilmorgan, where he’d witnessed their father kill their mother in a fit of rage. After Ian’s release from the asylum, Hart had found him in that room many times, Ian sitting huddled behind the desk where he’d hidden that fateful day.

  Ian kept his gaze on the mirror as though it fascinated him. Hart also remembered that, because Ian had trouble with lies, he’d learned to be very good at simply not answering questions.

  Oh, bloody hell. “Ian,” Hart said, his rage boiling up with nightmare force. “Tell me you didn’t bring her here.”

  Ian finally looked away from the mirror, but he never looked at Hart. He wandered across the room to the window and peered out at the fog, his back firmly to his brother.

  Hart swung away and strode into the hall. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. “Eleanor!”

  Chapter 5

  The word echoed up and down the staircase, soaring to the painted cherubs that lurked at the very top of the house.

  Silence.

  Silence meant nothing. Hart took the stairs to the next floor two at a time.

  One of the doors on the landing stood ajar. Hart shoved it open with such force that the door banged into the heavy bureau that partially blocked it.

  Someone had moved excess furniture up here, and now the chamber was a jumble of bookcases, dressing tables, chests of drawers, and armoires. A velvet sofa, coated with dust, canted at an odd angle in the middle of the room.

  Eleanor Ramsay looked up from where she’d been searching the sofa cushions, a cloud of dust around her.

  “Good heavens, Hart,” she said. “You do make a lot of noise.”

  Hart’s world took on sharp edges. Eleanor Ramsay could not be here, in this place with its horrible memories of anger, greed, jealousy, and fear. Eleanor here was like a daffodil in a quagmire, a fragile blossom all too easily pulled to its doom. He did not want this world, this part of his life, so much as touching her.

  “Eleanor,” he said, voice tight with fury, “I told you not to come here.”

  Eleanor shook out a cushion and plopped it back onto the sofa. “Yes, I know you did. But I thought I should get on looking for the photographs, and I knew that if I asked you for the key, you’d never give it to me.”

  “So you went behind my back and asked Ian?”

  “Well, of course. Ian is much more logical than you, and he does not bother me with pesky questions. I did not tell him about the photographs, if you are worried about that. They are quite personal, after all. It did not matter anyway, because Ian never asked me why I wanted to come.”

  Hart gave Eleanor a look that had made Angelina Palmer drop her poised courtesan smile and whiten in fear. Eleanor merely stared at him.

  On her head perched a pillbox hat with an absurd little veil. She’d pulled the dotted veil up out of her eyes, but not completely—it hung lopsidedly, dangling over her right brow. Her dark brown dress was filmed with dust she’d raised, and dust caught on her damp cheeks. One lock of hair had escaped her coiffure, a red snake dancing down her bodice. She was delightfully mussed, and dear God, he wanted her.

  “I told you, I do not want you in this place,” he said. “Not now. Not ever.”

  “I know.” Eleanor moved, calm as she pleased, to the bureau that blocked the door and leaned to open the bottom drawer. “I wasn’t silly enough to rush here by myself, if that is what is bothering you. I met my father and Ian at the museum, sent my father and Maigdlin home in your landau, and had Ian walk with me here. I’ve been watched over every step of the way.”

  “What is bothering me is that I asked you not to come here at all and you flagrantly disobeyed my wishes.” His voice rang through the room.

  “Disobeyed your wishes? Dear, oh, dear, Your High and Mighty Grace. I ought to have mentioned that I’ve always had troub
le with obedience, but then, you knew that. If I sat quietly and waited to obey my father, I would long ago have become a dried-up skeleton on a chair. Father is very bad at making any sort of little decision, even including how much sugar he wants in his tea. And he never can remember whether he likes cream. I learned at an early age to not wait upon anyone’s permission, but simply to do.”

  “And now you work for me.”

  She rummaged in the drawer, not looking at him. “I’m hardly your servant, but the same principle applies. Were I to wait for your commands, I’d be in that little study with Wilfred, tapping my fingers on the desk, wondering when you would bother to appear. Even Wilfred wonders at your absences, and he is a man of few words.”

  “In that study is exactly where I want you to be!”

  “I don’t see why. Wilfred doesn’t really need me to type your correspondence. He gives it to me for something to do, because he feels sorry for me. My time is much better spent trying to discover who is sending the pictures and what they mean by it. And you could help me search instead of standing in the doorway shouting at me.”

  She made his blood boil. “Eleanor, I want you out of this house.”

  Eleanor blithely ignored him to open the next drawer. “Not until I’ve finished looking. There are many nooks and crannies and much furniture.”

  Hart pushed his way around the bureau, seized Eleanor by her shoulders, and pulled her upright. She came up swiftly, one blue eye now completely shielded by the veil.

  Before Hart registered that he did it, he skimmed his hands down her arms to her wrists and pulled them behind her back. He knew how to lock a woman’s hands, knew how to hold her still. Eleanor stared up at him, red lips parted.

  Need streaked through him, a craving that closed him in razor-sharp claws. Hart studied the red lips that beckoned him, breasts rising against her tightly buttoned bodice, the lock of hair, fallen, gold red against her cheek.

  He leaned and took the curl in his mouth. Eleanor drew a breath, and Hart turned his head and caught her lip between his teeth.