A Heart of a Duke Regency Collection : Volume 2--A Regency Bundle

by Christi Caldwell

  “Ten thousand pounds,” he said and she winced, wondering just how much else she’d revealed. Eleanor took a steadying breath and the flimsy plan she’d concocted following Aunt Dorothea’s revelation showed its thin threads. Marcus brushed his knuckles along her jaw, bringing her gaze up to meet his. “And these funds are important to you.”

  She managed a jerky nod. The funds represented everything.

  “Your husband did not leave you cared for, did he?”

  “It was not his fault,” she said. After all, a fictional gentleman, helpful in some ways, was in other ways useless. Not wanting to become tangled in the web of her lies with more talk of the war hero, Lieutenant Collins, she continued hurriedly. “I will receive the funds set out in the will, if I…”

  “If you…?”

  Eleanor fished around the front pocket sewn into her cloak and withdrew the well-read scrap of paper. She turned it over to him.

  Wordlessly, he accepted it and scanned the page.

  “If I complete those items, then I will attain the funds…” She wet her lips. “That is, I’d thought you might help me.” Even as the words left her mouth she realized how very pathetic her request was; how grasping and self-serving. Her rapist’s face as it had been last evening, taunting and triumphant, flashed to her mind and Eleanor’s mouth went dry. To not face the threat of that monster alone, she would hand over what remained of her pride if Marcus so asked it.

  He picked his head up from that damnable list and studied Eleanor with a dogged intensity.

  She shifted on her feet. Of course, it had been wrong to ask him. This was not the Marcus of old. “Forgive me,” she murmured, and snatched the paper back. She’d survived that long ago night, alone, and as much as terror threatened the very whole of her sanity, she could face a handful of not so very difficult tasks on her own. She had no choice. Eleanor stepped left. He matched her movements and she raised a perplexed gaze to his.

  “You wish me to court you?” Had there been the cool, mocking edge to his words to match the tone he’d taken since their chance meeting on the street days earlier, it would have been easier on her heart than the gentleness she saw reflected in his eyes that proved he was still the man he’d always been, even as Eleanor would never be the girl she’d been.

  She drew in a breath. “It would appear that way to Society, but I do not wish to wed,” she assured him on a rush. That much was true. The whole truth she could not utter; she feared all men’s attention, proper or improper. “I thought with you there, and our history, that I would be spared from any possible interest,” she warmed. How very arrogant he must find her. “But now I realize how foolish,” and wrong, “it is to ask for your help.”

  Through this, he watched her with his thick, hooded, gold lashes. “Why should I help you?”

  He shouldn’t. “You are correct, you shouldn’t.” She dropped a stiff curtsy.

  Marcus blocked her escape once more. “I didn’t say I shouldn’t. I asked why I should.”

  By the hard glint in his eyes, he expected her to turn his words of love and the affection he’d held for her into tools to manipulate. She couldn’t do that. Just as she’d fled and spared him the trial of turning her from his life, for the love she had of him, so now she would not use his emotions as a way to force his hand. Instead, she appealed to the person she knew him to be. “There is no reason you should help me,” she said matter-of-factly. “I am neither your obligation nor your responsibility and yet, I require help.” And there was no one else to trust and no one else to turn.

  He captured his chin between his thumb and forefinger and scrutinized her. “You’d have me deter suitors and lovers?”

  Heat climbed up her neck and set her face ablaze. “I would.”

  Marcus leaned down, so close his lips nearly brushed the shell of her ear. She sucked in a breath. The faintest stirring in her belly only Marcus could rouse reminded her again of the woman she’d once been. A woman who’d hungered for this man and had done so without fear. “What if you want to take a lover, madam?”

  “Never,” she vowed. There would never be another to take Marcus’ place.

  “Then you’ve not taken the right gentleman to your bed, Eleanor.” There was a promise there; words, darkly seductive and forbidden and by the very nature of them, should have sent her heart thudding in terror, and yet the warmth in her belly, fanned out and grew the flames.

  “I do not care to speak of my bed or a man’s place in it,” she managed to get those words out, steady and calm. “Will you help me?”

  “Marcus?” Their gazes swung as one to the end of the walking trail where Lizzie stood beside her friend. Both young women shot glowers his way.

  “I’ll be but a moment,” Marcus said to his sister.

  All the while, the young lady with midnight black hair and catlike eyes, glared at Eleanor the way she might one of the slithering snakes atop Medusa’s head. A knot pebbled in her belly. With her venomous glances at Eleanor and the possessive stares turned on Marcus, the young lady cared for him, that much was clear.

  The two women wandered off once more.

  The foolishness in this scheme again reared its head when presented with the lovely, more importantly, innocent young lady with eyes for Marcus. “This was wrong,” she said stiffly, for too many reasons. The threat he’d pose to her heart, her senses. With jerky movements, she spun about and strode back the path they’d traveled.

  “I will help you.”

  His words brought her to such an abrupt halt she nearly pitched forward. She remained with her back presented to him.

  “I will help you,” he repeated, from just beyond her shoulder and she jumped, failing to have heard his approach. Her heart raced at his nearness. “A pretend courtship then,” he whispered into her ear. She angled her head sideways to look at him and there, in his eyes, was all the passion of their youth, only restrained with a man’s total and absolute control. God help her, for the fears she’d carried these years and terror of ever having to bear the vile touch of a man, she now longed for Marcus’ kiss. Mayhap then, she could purge the ugly from her person.

  “A pretend courtship,” she said, detesting the breathless quality of her voice.

  He turned his lips up in a slow, seductive grin. “But for the rest of the Season.”

  A protest sprung to her lips and he lowered his eyebrows. “My mother has unleashed every matchmaking mama and fortune-hunter upon me. My offer to help is not based on purely magnanimous reasons, Eleanor.”

  “Marcus!” Lizzie called out, her tone this time beleaguered.

  She gave a slow nod of capitulation. “Very well. You should go.”

  “Will you miss me, sweet Eleanor?”

  Until she drew her last breath. Eleanor forced a smile. “You’re a hopeless flirt, Marcus.”

  He winked.

  “Marcus!”

  Their gazes swung together to the entrance of the gardens. Marcia sprinted past her nursemaid, not heeding the woman’s quiet reminder on proper behavior. She staggered to a halt before them, her little chest heaving with the exertion of her efforts. “Marcus. Mama, look. It is Marcus.”

  “I see that, sweet, but you must refer to him as ‘my lord’.”

  Alas, Marcus had always possessed a charm that could make a dowager forget the rules of decorum at Almack’s. “Oh, you needn’t do any such thing.”

  “Yes, she does,” she said with a sharpness that brought her daughter’s head up. Not born a lady, nor even legitimate for that matter, Marcia would have to conduct herself in a manner above reproach.

  Marcus favored Eleanor with a crooked grin and then he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I wouldn’t have you go about referring to me as Wessex. Rather dreary name.”

  And Marcia was as charmed as any of those dowagers at Almack’s. She giggled into her hand. “I do prefer Marcus, but Mama has always said Wessex is a splendid name, too.”

  He met Eleanor’s gaze and held it. “Ha
s she?”

  Even Marcia in all her girlish innocence detected the interest in his tone. “Oh, yes.”

  Oh, no. Eleanor gave her head a slight shake, but her daughter either failed to see or chose to ignore that subtle movement. “His Lordship must return to his—”

  In one smooth, effortless movement, Marcus sank to a knee and smiled at the little girl before him. With gold heads bent together and matching mischievous glimmers in their eyes, they may as well have been father and daughter, sharing a treasured moment while the world watched on. Marcia glanced up with her brown-eyed stare—the eyes of her true father, a monster who’d shattered Eleanor’s life, but also left her a gift.

  “And has your mama spoken often of the name Wessex?” Amusement threaded his words, except under the nuances of that humor there was something deeper there; something that hinted at an urgency to know.

  Seeming to delight in Marcus’ undivided attention, Marcia nodded with a solemnity better reserved for a woman years older. “Oh, yes. Surely you’ve heard the fairytale?”

  Settling her hands upon her daughter’s shoulder, Eleanor made one more attempt at freedom from the humiliating agony of the exchange. “Marcia, it is time to return to see Aunt Dorothea.”

  “But you said Aunt Dorothea was resting.”

  At the knowing glint sparking in Marcus’ eyes, Eleanor pressed her lips into a firm line. “Surely Marcia might first share the fairytale of Lord Wessex,” he prompted.

  “Is not about Lord Wessex, silly.” A giggling laugh escaped Marcia. Then with an impropriety that would have shocked any lords or ladies who happened to pass by, Marcia placed her palms on Marcus’ cheeks and spoke in very serious tones. “It is about King Orfeo.”

  With matched solemnity he whispered, “Tell me about this King Orfeo.”

  The world fell away as Eleanor stood transfixed, struck by the sight of Marcia’s small, delicate fingers upon Marcus. Any other gentleman would have likely stiffened or shifted with discomfort at the attentions given him by a child.

  “Mama, do you wish to tell Marcus?”

  But this was Marcus and he’d never been like any other gentleman, nor would he ever be—even with this natural ease around children.

  Marcus leveled a piercing stare on Eleanor, blue eyes seeing too much; more than could ever be safe.

  “Mama?” Marcia pressed, her tone befuddled.

  Eleanor managed a jerky nod.

  “Come, Mrs. Collins, will you not tell me your stories?” She’d have to be deafer than a dowager with cotton in her ears to fail to detect the suggestive twist of his words that sought far more than stories of pretend and legend.

  Eleanor opened her mouth to call Marcia to her side when, with her small hands, Marcia forced his head back around to face her. “I will tell you, Marcus.”

  And Eleanor, whose heart had broken for the loss of him and the dream of them, now broke all over, for entirely different reasons. He was a father Marcia would have been deserving of. Her throat closed with an aching regret.

  “Poor Sir Orfeo lost his wife.” As her daughter launched into tales of make believe, Eleanor darted her gaze about, searching for intervention from a bolt of lightning, the ground opening, Marcus’ sister and the lady who’d been making eyes at Marcus.

  “Lost his wife, did he? How does one go about losing something as important as a wife?” he teased, tweaking Marcia’s pert nose.

  Well, mayhap not the friend making eyes, but Eleanor would settle for any other of the small miracles or interruptions.

  Marcia giggled, her hands falling to her sides. “Mama said it’s very easy to lose someone.”

  Tension jerked Eleanor erect and this time, with all traces of amusement gone, Marcus met her stare again with questions. “Did she?” he questioned.

  Eleanor held his gaze. All the while, her heart thumped a hard, fast rhythm. She must have more care what she said to Marcia in the future. It would appear nothing was safe or private.

  “Yes.” Marcia tugged at his sleeve, forcing his attention back to her. “The horrible fairy king stole her away from under the cherry tree.” Large, brown eyes formed moons as she became absorbed in her telling. “He brought her to the Otherworld where she could no longer see her king and poor Orfeo wandered and wandered searching for her.”

  “What happened to them?” At his quiet inquiry, Eleanor folded her arms close to her stomach and held tight. Did he see her own story in the legend? Unnerved by the sideways look he cast her way, she glanced about.

  Marcia captured his face once again in her small palms. “Why, he finds her, of course, silly.” Because in tales of fairies and make believe, love never died and hope lived on.

  Silence met the innocent recounting. Eleanor was the first to break into the tense quiet. She cleared her throat. “Now, we really must be going, Marcia. His Lordship has been good enough to stop and speak with us, but he must rejoin his sister.” And Eleanor desperately needed to place distance between her and Marcus. For with every sweet, gentle interaction with her daughter, he threw her world into greater tumult so that the offer she’d put to him proved just another dangerous folly made.

  With a smooth grace, Marcus shoved himself to his feet and captured her gloved hand in his larger one. He brought her hand slowly to his mouth. Yesterday, before her aunt’s ball, she would have seen this innocent, yet wholly seductive, gesture as a means of taunting her. “Mrs. Collins.” That smooth, husky whisper washed over her. Some great shift had occurred between them and as he placed his lips along the fabric of her glove, her breath caught. Marcus reminded her that she was still a woman capable of desire; for a touch, a caress, a kiss—proof that for everything stolen by the nameless stranger long ago, he’d not completely robbed her of this innate part of her.

  And there was something freeing in that truth, only just now realized.

  Chapter 14

  “The beginning is always today…”

  The beginning is always today.

  Seated on the nauseatingly pink sofa where she kept company with her Aunt Dorothea, Eleanor repeated those words in a quiet mantra, over and over. The black inked words of Mary Wollstonecraft stared up at her.

  Following her meeting with Marcus yesterday afternoon, she’d arrived home and begged off attending the planned events for the evening. Instead, she’d reflected on this inherent weakness where Marcus, the Viscount Wessex, was concerned. Oh, she’d never ceased to love him. Not one day in eight years had passed where she’d not remembered at least one memory they’d shared.

  However, the cool practicality of life had conditioned her to the cold, empty fact—there could never be anything between them. Not in the way she’d wished or dreamed of. That one night in Lady Wedermore’s gardens had shattered their present and any hope of a future. Such a fact had been an easy one to resolve herself to as the war widow, in the far-flung corners of Cornwall. Then, she’d accepted that their lives had continued and they’d been forced down two very divergent paths.

  Only, seeing him with Marcia, waltzing with him, knowing the brush of his lips upon her palm, she wanted down the other path with an intensity that she’d crawl, kick, or beg for a right to travel once more.

  The beginning is always today.

  But that wasn’t always true. Not where Eleanor was concerned. Or could it be true? Could her life begin anew—?

  “What is it, gel?”

  Eleanor glanced up suddenly at the old duchess, who wore a questioning frown on her face. “Do you disagree with Mrs. Wollstonecraft?” The stern set to her mouth indicated Eleanor would be wise to not question the esteemed philosopher so revered by Aunt Dorothea.

  Dropping her attention to the handful of words that had frozen her, Eleanor traced the tip of her fingernail over each small letter. The writer, with her progressive, if scandalous, beliefs, spoke with an unerring accuracy on the injustices known by women and touted a world where women were not dependent upon men for their survival and happiness. Words that usually reso
nated, in this instance did not. “Today cannot undo yesterday.”

  “Of course it can’t.”

  Her aunt spoke with such a blunt matter-of-factness, a smile pulled at Eleanor’s lips. Shoving aside her distracted amusement, she sought to make sense of the writer’s words. “Yet, she speaks of each new day as a new beginning. By the sheer nature of yesterday, Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s words of today can never hold truth.” Even as Eleanor would have sold the only parts of her unsullied soul to make it so.

  Aunt Dorothea leaned over and tapped Eleanor on the knee. “Those beliefs are not mutually exclusive, Eleanor. Yours and Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s. I believe the lady would not have spoken fanciful thoughts about erasing time and changing fate. Those are impossibilities.”

  Eleanor knew that better than most. And yet… “But how can today represent a new beginning if yesterday—”

  “It’s not a matter of changing the past, Eleanor. It is a matter of setting the past aside and seeing today as a new beginning.”

  A knock sounded at the door and they looked up to where the butler, Thomas, stood at the entrance of the room.

  The duchess spoke over him. “Never tell me it’s another of the scoundrels here to court my niece?” The older woman had become an almost vigilant protector of Eleanor, since gentleman after gentleman had come calling that afternoon.

  “Er, no my lady.” The servant with his powdered hair scratched his brow. “Er, that is I don’t believe so.”

  “Humph,” Aunt Dorothea groused. “I’ll decide if the bounder is worthy of Eleanor.”

  At that maternal protectiveness in her aunt’s tone, some of the tension went out of Eleanor’s frame replaced instead with warmth. Her mother died when Eleanor had been just one. She’d known only a father’s unwavering love. Moved by her aunt’s parent-like devotion, she captured the older woman’s wrinkled hands and gave them a quick squeeze. “Thank you.”

  “Come, enough of that,” the gruff woman patted her knee awkwardly in return. “Well,” she called out to the servant hovering in the doorway. “Who is here this time?”