Chapter 2
She’d vowed to never return.
Mrs. Eleanor Collins gazed out the carriage window at the passing streets. Her spectacles lay forgotten on her lap and she fiddled with the wire frames. The carriage hit another bump on the cobbled road and threw her against the side of the conveyance. The sudden movement sent her glasses tumbling to the floor. Eleanor quickly righted herself and, for now, left that small, but important-to-her disguise, piece forgotten at her feet.
She’d vowed she would die before setting foot in the cruel, cold, and hateful world of London. Nor had those words been the overdramatic ones of a young, naïve miss. It had been a pledge she’d taken as a young, naïve miss who’d seen the malevolent side of that town and knew there was nothing worth reentering that darkness for. Not when the risk was having the remainder of her soul consumed by ugly memories.
Until life had ultimately shown her that there, indeed, was something worth braving anything and everything for.
“Mama, your glasses.”
Eleanor turned her attention to the small, golden-curled girl who held her spectacles in her small, delicate fingers. At just seven, Marcia was that something. That person she’d sacrifice anything and everything for. Including her sanity. Managing her first real smile that day, Eleanor accepted the wire-rims and placed them on her face. “Why, thank you.”
“Are we almost there?” Excitement tinged her daughter’s words.
She’d once shared this same eagerness to leave the countryside and enter the glittering metropolis. What a naïve fool she’d been. Her smile fell. “We are, love.” Unfortunately. “Almost, there,” she murmured, throwing her arm around her daughter’s small shoulders and bringing the girl close to her side. Eleanor dug deep for strength.
“Ouch, you are squishing me.”
Tamping down the nervousness churning in her belly, Eleanor forced herself to lighten her grip. “It’s because you’re so very squishable.”
Marcia giggled. “Is it because you are excited?”
The familiar stone in her belly, formed somewhere between her father’s death, her aunt’s missive, and the arrival of the Duchess of Devonshire’s carriage, tightened. “Oh, indeed,” she managed at last.
A spirited glimmer lit Marcia’s eyes. “I am ever so excited, too, Mama.”
Regret tightened in her chest. “Did you not wish to remain in Cornwall?” Hadn’t Eleanor, with her late father’s guidance, carved a life that her daughter found joy in?
Marcia pumped her little legs back and forth. “Not forever, silly.”
With a sigh, she absently stroked the top of her daughter’s soft crown of curls. Yes, there had been a time when the thrill of the unknown had taken hold of her. She’d been full of fairy tales and dreams of magic and mystery and intrigue. Her heart tightened. And for a brief, very brief, moment, she’d known the joy that came from that grand adventure. His grinning visage flashed to her mind’s eye, as it sometimes did. Eleanor pressed her eyes closed and did not thrust the memory of him away, as she often did. This time, she accepted the memory of Marcus, the Viscount Wessex, and let it wash over her with a familiarity born of yesterday, even with the passage of time.
He’d been her dream. He’d been the joy and the excitement. And in one shattered evening, nothing more of him remained…but the memory. Unease churned in her belly. By the very nature of his family’s connection to her aunt and his residence alone, the risk of meeting was great. As such, the reality of that brought thoughts of him back with a shocking frequency…and when the first missive had come from her aunt, Eleanor had allowed herself an infinitesimal moment of hope—the hope of seeing him.
Her gaze trained unseeingly upon the carriage bench opposite her, she let open the gates she’d constructed to keep him out. Since their parting, she’d become a woman who confronted life with frankness. So it was the honesty she insisted upon that she acknowledged the truth—she missed him. And she always would. Nor was it just the memory of innocence she’d known in their time together. She missed what could have been. His smile. His laugh. Who they’d been when in each other’s company.
Marcia tugged at her fingers and she glanced down distractedly. “What is it, dear?”
“Are you thinking of Grandfather?” Wide brown eyes stared back at Eleanor.
Sadness stuck her hard for altogether different reasons. “I always think of Grandfather,” she murmured noncommittally, and it was true. Gone just six months now, there was no better father, nor could there ever have been a better man than he was while living.
“Someday you’ll meet again,” Marcia said with entirely too much maturity for a child of seven. “He promised we would and he would never, ever lie, Mama. So don’t be sad.” She laid her head against Eleanor’s arm. “And remember what he said. ‘Goodbyes are not forever.’”
They are just temporary partings.
Marcus’ visage flashed behind her eyes. Once more. Perhaps it was her return to London, a land they’d lived in together, back when she’d been innocent and smiling and he’d needed laughter, but she could not extricate the thoughts of him from her now. Nor had that goodbye been temporary. The day she’d boarded her aunt’s carriage and made her return to Kent, unchaperoned, alone, and broken, she’d known with an absolute certainty, for all her father’s beliefs on goodbyes, the final one between her and Marcus had, indeed, been a forever goodbye.
And she wagered for the love she carried of him still in her heart, he would feel no such fondness for the woman who’d broken his heart.
“We’re here.”
“Hmm?” She blinked and then glanced about before her daughter’s words truly registered. Her heart dipped somewhere to her toes and she plastered a smile onto her face, fearing the forced grin would shatter and reveal her a charlatan once more.
Married war widow. Grand lie.
Smiling, oft-happy mother. Sometimes a lie.
Thrilled to return to London. Absolute lie.
Seeming unaware of the tumult raging through Eleanor, Marcia bounced up and down on her seat, clapping her hands together excitedly. “Oh, Mama, it is to be the grandest of adventures.”
Regret pulled at her heart. For Marcia, it should be a magical experience. Yet, the sad truth was mother and daughter’s presence here was no mere familial visit. Though Eleanor had exchanged nothing more than letters with Aunt Dorothea over the years, the woman had proven herself the same benevolent relative who’d taken Eleanor in for a London Season. Now, however, Eleanor would come to her as a poor relation, in desperate need of salvation.
The carriage door opened and one of the woman’s liveried servants held a hand inside. He helped Marcia down; all the while a budding panic filled Eleanor, tightening her throat, and threatened to choke her. She could not stay here. Even with Father’s passing and her aging aunt’s need of her, this place was not for Eleanor. The secret scandal left in Eleanor’s wake had confirmed with the absoluteness of death itself that there could never be anything for her here in London.
“Mrs. Collins?”
She started and stared blankly at the white-gloved fingertips. For anything and everything that could or would ever be said about her, no one could dare utter the word coward of her. Eleanor slipped her hand into the footman’s and allowed him to hand her down. The spring breeze pulled at her modest brown cloak and she tilted her head back staring at the front, pink stucco façade of a home she’d never thought to see again—a home she’d never wanted to see again.
Drawing in a steadying breath, she slipped her hand into Marcia’s and gripped those fingers hard, drawing strength from the only person left in her life who truly mattered.
“Mama?” the little girl’s whisper was nearly swallowed by the busy street sounds of passing carriage wheels rattling by.
Eleanor dropped to a knee beside her daughter and settled her hands upon the girl’s shoulders. “What is it, love?” she brushed an errant golden curl that tumbled low over Marcia’s eye.
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p; “It is so very beautiful.” Awe coated the little girl’s words.
Raising her head, Eleanor looked up at the front of the townhouse seeing it now through a woman’s eyes. There had been a time when she’d been so very captivated by the mere impressive sight of the pink stucco finish townhouse; far grander than the modest cottage she’d lived in with her father. She’d brimmed with excitement.
“Ouch,” Marcia flinched. “You are squishing me again, Mama.”
She dropped a kiss atop Marcia’s brow, and shoved to her feet. “Sorry, poppet. Come along.” Stealing another peek at Aunt Dorothea’s home, Eleanor drew in a steadying breath. The wildly animated woman with her two beloved dogs that Eleanor remembered was kind. “Shall we go see your aunt?” But would that still be the case after Eleanor had stolen from her home, without a goodbye, and a subsequent hasty marriage in the country?
“Oh, yes.” With an excited giggle, Marcia slipped her small hand, warm, slight, and yet strongly reassuring, into Eleanor’s. Her daughter tugged Eleanor toward the handful of stairs leading up to their new home—a home where they’d be poor relations, taken in and saved by Aunt Dorothea. All it would require was Eleanor to set aside the horrors of her past, remain hidden from the present, and accept the uncertainty of her future. She raised her hand and rapped once. How very difficult could all those feats be?
Her skin pricked with the sensation of being studied and she stiffened, but remained with her gaze trained on the door. It had been eight years since she’d made her hasty flight from London. No one would recall anything of the eccentric Duchess of Devonshire’s niece who’d come to London, a girl of eighteen, and left but two months later.
Marcia shifted back and forth on her feet. “Why isn’t the door opening? Did Aunt Dorothea change her mind? Do we have the wrong townhouse?”
Choosing the safest question to respond to, Eleanor said, “No, we do not have the wrong townhouse.” She’d forever recall the extravagant home in the most respectable part of Mayfair. This was the very street where they’d met—
Emotion lodged in her throat and she rapped the door once more. Why wasn’t the servant opening the door? Why was she here, on display for bored lords and ladies passing, while she wondered after him? In the earlier days, when her world had crumpled beneath her, she’d read the scandal pages, by then weeks old when they’d made their way to the quiet removed countryside of her home. She knew the day he’d become viscount. Knew when he’d become a rogue, gossiped about for his scandalous escapades with unhappy widows.
It had been the day she’d balled the papers up, put them under her bed and accepted that they’d both changed. She drew in a slow, calming breath and raised her hand to knock once more—when the door was blessedly thrown open. Her shoulders sagged with the weight of her relief as a different butler from the older man she remembered stood there. He eyed her a moment, this young man of indeterminate years, with a bewigged head and powdered face. He stepped back and then allowed her entry. To the man’s credit, he gave no outward reaction to the coarse cloak worn by the duchess’ poor relation.
Eleanor shrugged out of the garment and it was passed off to a waiting footman, leaving her horribly exposed in her old, brown skirts.
“Ohhhhhhhh,” her daughter’s irreverent whisper carried through the high-ceilinged marble foyer.
Pinpricks of regret stuck her heart once again, as she was confronted with a world her daughter would never, nay, could never, belong to. There would be no lavish life or soaring ceilings. A young maid rushed over with a wide smile on her plump cheeks. “May I escort you to your rooms, Mrs. Collins?”
Swallowing back the trepidation threatening to choke her, with Marcia’s hand held in her firm grip, she silently followed the young woman up the stairs.
She’d broken a vow she’d taken almost eight years to the day—she’d returned.
Chapter 3
From the edge of the majestic floor-length windows, Eleanor gazed through the gap in the brocade fabric, down into the crowded London streets. A small, sad smile played on her lips, reflected in the crystal windowpane. How very much had changed in eight years. Innocence died. Funds faded. And security became—precarious, making her dependent on that beloved aunt who once took her in for that first, and only, London Season.
Eleanor pressed her forehead to the sun-warmed windowpane and the cold metal of her spectacles bit into her face. Ignoring the biting sting of the wires, she surveyed the people below. Lords and ladies moved arm in arm down the fashionable end of Mayfair. A particular couple snared her notice. For the impeccably attired gentleman with golden curls and the blonde-haired lady on his arm might have been a moment frozen in time eight years earlier…of herself…with another, equally grinning, whispering, young lord.
The massively rounded, panting dog at her side scratched Eleanor’s skirts. Distracted, Eleanor looked down and found the incongruous pair of her aunt’s dogs—two pugs, one black, one fawn—now eying her.
They had been sniffing at her skirts for the better part of the morning. Eleanor sighed. And all because she’d made the mistake of giving one of the mischievous devils a biscuit from her breakfast tray the first morning meal she’d taken here, one week earlier.
That dratted biscuit. She stroked them both atop their silken heads and leaned close. “Now, go.”
They sat, showing her precisely what they thought of her and her orders.
Secretly she’d admit only to herself, she rather loved their devotion.
“They don’t listen well,” her aunt called across the room. As though to accentuate that very point, she pounded the bottom of a silver cane, crafted in the shape of a serpent, upon the hardwood floor, calling them over.
The dogs sniffed again at Eleanor’s skirts. “You settling in, gel?”
“Quite,” she murmured, patting Devil and Satan on their backs. They really were quite atrocious names for such docile, bothersome creatures.
…You could charm the devil himself, Marcus Gray…
Unbidden, Eleanor slid her gaze over to the window and pulled the brocade curtain aside. No, it was not a hope of seeing him that called her notice, but rather the crisp, blue skies and abundant sunshine and—
“And your daughter?”
Eleanor released the edge of the curtain with alacrity. “Also, well, Your Grace. Thank you for asking.”
“Your Grace?” Her aunt settled back in the sofa she occupied and gave an inelegant snort. “Who is this polite, proper gel and what has she done with the spirited, always giggling girl I remember?”
The operative word being girl. “She’s grown up,” Eleanor replied automatically, looking down at her aunt’s loyal dogs. Then, life did that to a person. It jaded you and chipped and cracked away at the innocence you carried, so all that remained was a glimmer of who you had once been.
“I preferred you giggling.”
Eleanor smiled.
“There, that’s better. Now, look at me, gel.” The gruff command brought Eleanor’s gaze to her aunt. “Stop hovering at the edge of the window. You’ve hardly left the corner since you arrived five days ago.”
“Seven,” Eleanor swiftly amended. She’d returned seven days ago without so much as a glimpse or whisper of him beyond the gossip sheets. The muscles of her belly tightened. Gossip columns that happily reported on the gentleman’s roguish pursuits; so much so that she dared wonder if there was, in fact, another Viscount Wessex. Then, the king would not have been in the habit of turning out multiple Viscount Wessexes.
Eleanor stole another glimpse. It was curiosity more than anything else that called her focus back to that cobbled road.
“You counting, gel?”
She whipped her head back around. “Counting?”
“Seven days and not five. Are you unhappy here? I didn’t bring you here to be melancholy and sad.”
“I’m sorry.” Remorse filled her and Eleanor quickly released the curtain. Widowed almost a year now, the Duchess of Devonshire had demo
nstrated her first display of weakness in the form of a letter she’d sent to her only niece offering employment as her companion. Eleanor’s fingers tightened reflexively into tight balls as anxiety swamped her chest, making it difficult to draw breath. She could not be sent away. The allowance given Eleanor was the stability she would rely on to care for her daughter and never have to be dependent upon the whims of a man through the uncertain fate of marriage. “I will strive to do better,” she pledged.
Her aunt leaned forward and Eleanor stiffened as the other woman brandished the tip of her cane under her nose. “Do you think I’m one of those miserable ladies to send a girl away? My niece, no less?” The dogs shifted nervously under the suddenness of their mistress’ movement.
“No,” she said softly. “I…” Except, she allowed those words to trail off, unspoken. For she no longer knew what to believe of people’s motives and intentions. The truth was, for all her silence on the matter, her aunt likely knew that there had never been a Mr. Collins, and that the golden-haired child belonging to Eleanor would never possess the lineage to gain her entry into the ton. Cool, smooth metal touched her chin as Aunt Dorothea used her cane to nudge Eleanor’s attention upward.
“Look at me, gel.” Attired in her usual round gown made of Italian muslin, with its high waistline, her aunt’s dress was suited to styles at least twenty years ago. “The modiste sheds tears when I order my gowns made up.” Eleanor’s lips twitched. “I’ve two dogs that sleep in my bed and accompany me wherever I go. Do I strike you as a woman who gives a fig for Society’s opinion?”
Eleanor took the older woman in for a moment; her father’s sister who’d married well when no one had dared dream a merchant’s daughter would ever make an estimable match. The older woman had always marched to the proverbial beat of her own drum. Oh, how Eleanor admired her that strength.
Noting her scrutiny, Aunt Dorothea wagged her eyebrows. “Because I don’t care a jot about what anyone thinks or says.” There was a wealth of meaning to those words. Words that conveyed the clear truth that Eleanor had already suspected—she knew. Or rather, the duchess likely thought she knew, but in actuality could never glean the full truths of Eleanor’s sad, sordid past.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 3