By the restoration of her gap-toothed smile, he’d succeeded in his endeavor. “You must like her very much because Aunt Dorothea said Mama is a rotten dancer.”
His heart missed a beat. From the mouth of babes… “I should return to the ballroom,” he murmured.
Eleanor’s daughter sighed and, once again, the gesture so very much her mother’s brought forth another swell of regret for all that could have been, but would never be. “I expect you’ll help her,” Marcia called out as he started to leave.
He froze mid-step.
“With her list. I told her you would help her because she is afraid and you are her friend.” At his silence, the little girl stitched her eyebrows together. “You will help her?” There was hesitancy in that inquiry.
He had resolved not to. He had decided when he’d sent her abovestairs to politely decline and move on from Eleanor Collins. Standing here, with her wide-eyed daughter before him, he could no sooner reject the offer to help than he could cleave off his own right hand. “I will,” he said quietly.
She beamed. “I knew it. Thank you for making sure my mother is not scared.” Then dropping a swift curtsy, Marcia fled down the corridor and raced up the servants’ entrance Eleanor had disappeared through a short while ago.
And as he stood there, staring after Eleanor’s daughter, the first niggling question crept in—what did Eleanor Collins have to be fearful of?
Chapter 13
The following afternoon, Marcus sat in his office and stared into the contents of his brandy glass. He swirled the snifter in several slow circles and took a sip. With a curse, he took a long swallow of his drink, grateful when a knock sounded at his office door. “Enter,” he called out.
The door opened. “Oh, dear,” his sister said from the entrance of the room. “You’re ever so serious again.” He stiffened and turned around.
Lizzie sailed into the room in a noisy flurry of skirts. Her faithful friend, Lady Marianne, trotted along behind her, attired in a low-cut, sapphire satin gown a mistress would have compunctions wearing at this hour.
Marcus could not help but compare this woman’s jaded cynicism to Eleanor’s reserved thoughtfulness and dignity. Years younger than Eleanor, Lady Marianne possessed a worldliness that had once appealed to Marcus. Now he found himself repelled by the brazen promise in her eyes.
Sensing his attention, Lady Marianne misinterpreted it as favorable and toyed with her décolletage. Marcus quickly shifted his attention away. He set aside his glass and sketched a bow. “Lizzie,” he greeted wary of the mischievous glimmer in her revealing eyes. With her telling reactions, she would have been horrendous at the gaming tables.
“Marcus. I thought you might accompany me,” she cleared her throat. “That is, accompany us,” she motioned to the young lady hovering at the edge of the door. “To Kensington Gardens.”
He glanced over at the dark-haired young lady, Lord Atbrooke’s sister. “Hello, Lady Marianne,” he greeted, struck not for the first time by a flash of pity for the young woman linked to the notorious reprobate.
“My lord,” she whispered. A suggestive smile danced on her lips and lest he encourage his sister’s friend any more than he had with his two dances earlier that Season, he glanced away.
“The gardens, Marcus,” his sister prodded calling him back to the real reason for their visit. “Will you accompany us?”
“I—” Two pairs of wide, hopeful eyes studied him intently and he sighed. The alternative to not joining them would be to remain here haunted by the memory of Eleanor, last evening…and every evening before. “I would be honored to accompany you ladies,” he acquiesced, wincing as his sister emitted a loud squeal.
“I’ve already had the carriage ordered up.”
Of course, she had. He’d been unable to deny his sister anything through the years, and she knew he was neatly wrapped about her smallest finger and had been since she was a blubbering babe with barely any hair atop her head.
Except a short carriage ride later, strolling behind Lizzie and Lady Marianne, Marcus found himself wishing he were just this once, a less devoted brother. The infernal prattling that had filled the confines of his barouche continued with an incessant force, as he longed for the sanctuary of his office. Or his clubs. A parlor. A stable. An empty church. Really, anywhere but here in the midst of Hyde Park during the fashionable hours.
Just then, another round of giggles erupted. “Come along, Marcus, we are to the private gardens,” his sister cheerfully ordered. With a sigh, he followed after them, down the dirt path, to the less traveled, floral sanctuary completed not long ago by Queen Charlotte. Lady Marianne stole a peek over her shoulder at him. She hooded her smoky eyes in a sultry invitation. His sister said something to the dark-haired young woman, calling her attention back but not before he saw a spark of promise in her gaze. Lizzie tugged her friend into the thick maze of flowers.
He took a step to follow behind them, but then with the same dogged awareness that existed since Eleanor had first stepped outside her aunt’s townhouse and into his life, he felt her there.
Lizzie and her friend glanced over their shoulders, back at him, and Marcus waved them on. As the pair rushed off, he trained his gaze on Eleanor’s familiar sun-kissed curls tightly drawn back. She sat upon a blanket, beside a kaleidoscope of colored blooms. Seated as she was, she may as well have been a woodland sprite stealing a moment in the floral gardens. A book lay on her lap, while she stared down at those pages as though they contained the answer to life.
The breath left him on a slow exhale. It took a concerted effort, but he removed his gaze, and looked to where his sister and her companion strolled, and then turned once more to Eleanor. After last evening’s sherry and champagne indulgence, he’d believed the lady would be shut away battling a wicked megrim. Then she closed her book, a small groan escaped her, as though the slight thump of pages meeting pages had ravaged her head.
She stilled and stretched her long, proud neck like a startled deer. How many times had he worshiped the wild, fluttery pulse that had beat with an awareness of him? Eleanor glanced about and her gaze locked on his.
For an instant, joy radiated from the crystalline blue depths of her eyes. Then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, so he was left to wonder if the moment had merely been fleeting. He gave her a long practiced, wry smile. “Mrs. Collins,” he greeted, sketching a bow.
Eleanor hesitated and then with obvious reluctance, stood. “My lord.”
Someday, you shall be a viscountess… I don’t care about that, Marcus… No, it hadn’t mattered. In the end, she’d chosen love. Someone else’s love. He should leave. Instead, he took a step toward her. Marcus stood before her feeling like an untried youth. He beat his palm against his thigh. “Are you here—”
“With my daughter,” she finished for him.
Then, they’d always had an uncanny way of knowing what the other had been thinking. How could he have failed to realize the secrets she’d kept from him?
Eleanor motioned beyond his shoulder and he followed her point. “She is with Mrs. Plunkett.”
The little girl allowed one of the duchess’ pugs to pull her down the walking trail. Her nursemaid, struggling to hold onto the feistier dog, matched Marcia’s pace. He returned his attention to Eleanor and searched for some hint that she remembered their dance with madness in the halls of her aunt’s townhouse. Her face, however, remained peculiarly blank. He should be grateful that she didn’t recall the favor she’d put to him and yet…disappointment filled him.
Eleanor fiddled with her brown skirts. In all her golden splendor, she should be in satin fabrics as she’d been last evening, of hues to rival the blooms they stood amongst.
“I trust you are well?” Eleanor put forth the tentative question, better reserved for a stranger.
“I am and what brings you to these parks you’ve long avoided?” A soft, spring breeze filled the air, pulling at her skirts and a gold curl tugged free of her chignon.
He shot a hand out and tucked the strand behind her ear. Her breath caught on an audible inhalation. He let his hand fall uselessly to his side. “Forgive me,” he said quietly. At one time that would have been his right. Not anymore. Marcus turned stiffly on his heel and made to search out his sister and her friend.
“Reading.” Her whisper soft response brought him spinning back around. “Marcia wished to visit the park and I came to read.” She gestured over to the blanket at their feet. How many sonnets had he read to her during their two-month romance? Countless poems of Wordsworth, Keats, Coleridge.
His gaze fell to the ground and he started. A smile pulled at his lips. “What is this, Eleanor?” He stooped to better examine the title. A Vindication of the Rights of Women? Marcus picked it up and fanned the pages of the scandalous words of Mary Wollstonecraft. “You’ve become political?”
She rushed down in a flurry of skirts and fell to a knee. “It is my aunt’s.”
“Ahh,” he said, drawing out that one syllable, knowing her so very well to know she could never quell her curiosity.
“What?”
“It is your aunt’s.” He held the volume from her reach. “And yet you are reading it.”
Eleanor compressed her lips into a tight line and abandoned efforts to retrieve the small, leather tome. “I’ll not defend my reading selection to you.”
“Nor would I expect you to,” he replied, returning his attention to the words within the book. A stray breeze stirred the air and the pages danced, drawing his attention down. “But tell me,” he touched a finger to those words. “Do you believe, ‘It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men’?”
Her cheeks blazed crimson. “I believe it is vain to expect honor from gentlemen.” She snatched the book from his hands.
He lowered his eyes. “Are you questioning my honor and after your words to the contrary last evening, no less?” No one in the course of his life had questioned his honor and yet the woman who’d deceived him and left, should have doubt? Except now, the faintest of warning bells blared at the back of his mind as he recalled the favor she’d put to him.
“Yes. No.” She pulled Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s work close. “Not just you.”
Ah, all men. The Eleanor of his youth had been filled with a wide-eyed optimism, seeing good in everyone and everything, even members of the peerage who’d turned their noses up at her entry to Society. They’d had but two months together. Eight years was an eternity and the time had transformed her. What accounted for the death of those innocent sentiments? Nay, someone had transformed her. “Was it Lieutenant Collins who has thrown all gentlemen’s honor into question?” At last he gave that question life; the same one to plague him since last evening and it emerged as a low growl, born of feelings that he would forever carry for her. Thinking that the man she’d chosen had somehow wrought this transformation where she should trade sonnets for sermons on politics, made him want to drag the man from the dead and end him, all over again.
“No,” she said softly. “He was a good man.” That quiet assurance quelled all the furious questions that had turned through his head.
His chest throbbed with a dull pain and he resisted the urge to rub his hand over the still wounded organ. Odd he should feel equally but very different hurts in worrying that she’d not been loved the way she deserved and knowing she’d been loved by the honorable Lt. Collins. “Yes. A soldier you said.” He cleared his throat. “I am glad,” he said, those words hollow to his own ears and yet, he was happy that, at one point, she’d known happiness.
“Marcus, are you coming?” his sister called from somewhere deep within the garden maze.
He glanced back reluctantly to where her voice had traveled from. Lizzie stood with her hands planted akimbo and a disapproving frown on her lips with Lady Marianne glowering at her side.
“You should go,” Eleanor acknowledged.
Yes, he should. In fact, he should have never come over and interrupted her reading, but the questions of last evening lingered and by the spark of disquiet in her eyes, Eleanor feared he’d raise the matter. He held out his arm.
She eyed his elbow as though he’d offered her the head of a serpent. “What is that?”
“It is my arm, Eleanor.” He’d have his answers. “Walk with me.” And know why she’d wished for him to court her.
With a guardedness in her gaze, she continued to peer at him; that damned volume close to her chest as though she used it as a shield to protect herself from his attention. She glanced about and then eyed the book.
“Surely such freedoms are permitted among friends.” Nearly lovers and almost his wife. Why had he waited to put an offer to her? Perhaps she’d tired of waiting. He tugged the book free of her fingers and tossed it to the ground, settling the matter for her. “Will you say no?”
“Would you allow me to?” The mischievous glimmer in her eyes momentarily robbed him of thought, as she became that girl and he became that young man.
“No,” he said with a forced smile.
Eleanor placed her fingertips along his sleeve and walked stiffly at his side. Tension fairly seeped from her lithe frame. He took in the tautness of her narrow shoulders and the pinched set to her mouth. He frowned. By God… she was nervous—Of him? Or the request she’d put to him last evening? “I’ll not bite you, Eleanor.” He paused and stole a sideways glance at her. “Unless you want me to.”
Her skin went ashen.
Where had gone his girl who’d laughed and teased? “I was merely jesting,” he said quietly.
“I know,” she said weakly. They stepped onto the graveled dirt path. His sister and Lady Marianne just ahead, glanced at them.
Lizzie inclined her head. “Mrs. Collins, what a surprise to see you.”
He scowled at his usually cheerful sister’s frosty tone.
“Likewise,” Eleanor called back. Her gaze lingered a moment upon the frowning Lady Marianne and then the two younger ladies resumed their stroll about the well-manicured grounds, leaving Marcus and Eleanor alone once more.
“Why are you here?”
He winged an eyebrow upward. “And where should I be?” He’d sought to protect his wounded heart through the years and had erected walls about that broken organ.
“Your clubs, seeing to your gentlemanly pursuits.” As such, he well knew the attempt of another to protect oneself from hurt.
“My gentlemanly pursuits?” Despite himself, a chuckle rumbled up from his chest. “And what precisely does that entail, sweet Eleanor?” The endearment slipped out as effortlessly as it had eight years ago.
“I daresay you know a good deal more, as a gentleman.” Her serene face giving no indication that she’d noted his use of that special endearment.
Regret pulled at him again, only this time for entirely different reasons. “Time has made you somber, Eleanor. I preferred you smiling,” he said turning her own words back on her.
“I’ve told you, Marcus,” Not “my lord” but Marcus. “Time changes us. You are certainly not the same man I remember.”
“You know me not at all,” he pointed out, chafing at the ill-opinion she expressed with her blue eyes that may as well have been a mirror into her soul. He stopped and she withdrew her fingers from his person. “Come, surely we’ll not dance around it.”
Eleanor clutched at her throat, giving her head a shake, pleading with her eyes.
He lowered his voice, speaking in hushed tones for her ears alone. “You’d have me ignore your request.”
She let her hands fall to her sides. “M-my request?” A crimson blush blazed across her cheeks.
“Tsk, tsk. You’d feign forgetting your request?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Marcus,” she hissed.
“For me to court you,” he continued over her.
“I’ll not have this discussion,” she whispered, glancing past his shoulder for interlopers to an exchange that should have occurred long ago.
She made to leave.
“And you will do what you do best, then, won’t you?” he snapped and she froze mid-step, her foot failing to complete that final step. “Leave.” He closed the distance between them so just a hairsbreadth separated them. “Nothing to say, Eleanor?” He cursed the waxen hue of her cheeks and the hurt, wounded expression in her eyes. What had she to be hurt for? She had left.
She held her palms up. “I do not want to argue with you, Marcus.”
The fight drained out of him. For the truth was, Eleanor was, indeed, correct. This sniping and snapping didn’t serve to make him feel better; it didn’t provide answers. He ran his gaze over her face. “What do you want of me, Eleanor?”
What did she want?
Security. For her and Marcia. Safety; an assurance that she’d never again experience the horror and loss she’d known. She wanted those intangible dreams with such ferocity that she’d humble herself before the only man she’d ever loved for the hope of them. The warning given to her by that dark devil slid around her mind. Unbidden, she skittered her gaze about. Was he here even now? Watching in silent disapproval? Forcibly tamping down the terror he sought to rouse, Eleanor looked down at her and Marcus’ interlocked fingers. “I want—” You. Several lines creased his brow. “To be friends again,” she finished lamely. But for her father, Marcus had been the only honorable, true gentleman she’d known. She needed him to not hate her and she knew it was selfish, as he was deserving of his feelings. But there it was.
“Friends?” he repeated incredulously. “Is that what you believed we were?”
“No,” she’d not lie to him on that. “I l—” Loved you. “Looked at you with great fondness.”
“You’re mad,” he said, more to himself. He turned to leave.
Panic pounded in her chest; an agonizing fear that he’d leave and she’d never again see him. That this parting would be forever. “Wait!” She placed herself in front of him, giving him the full truths, the unfinished truths from last evening. “I believe I mentioned my uncle has left me a substantial settlement in his will.” In the light of day, her head throbbing from too much drink, she could not sort out all she’d confided in Marcus last evening.
A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle Page 17