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

by Christi Caldwell

  Shifting on the bench, Eleanor claimed her daughter’s hands. “We are not leaving,” she said firmly.

  The girl’s eyes formed round moons. “We aren’t?” she whispered.

  Eleanor shook her head. “We are going back to London.” To Marcus and Aunt Dorothea. And whatever danger lurked in London, still, they would face it as a family.

  An excited cry split Marcia’s lips and Eleanor grunted as her daughter slammed into her side. The book tumbled off her foot and she glanced distractedly down. A scrap of ivory vellum caught her attention. Furrowing her brow, Eleanor retrieved it and unfolded the note. As she skimmed the page, her heart caught.

  Oh, God.

  “Mama, what is it?” Concern made that question come out hesitantly.

  Eleanor managed to shake her head.

  “Mama?”

  “It is—”

  And then thundering hooves registered in the silence. The rumble of the driver’s voice split the quiet countryside and penetrated the lacquered carriage.

  “Is it highwaymen?” Marcia whispered, as she scrambled over to the window.

  “I’m sure it is not, sweet.” Fingers shaking, she drew back the curtain and peered out the window—at Marcus. She gasped and the fabric slipped from her fingers. There was nothing else for it. She was seeing him everywhere. Even in the countryside, away from London.

  “Who is out there, Mama?” Anxiety wreathed Marcia’s face as she curled close against Eleanor’s side.

  “No one, sweet,” she murmured and peeked around the curtain once more. Her heart started. His face shadowed with a day’s growth of beard, his clothes rumpled and dusted, and his golden tresses gloriously tumbled, there was not a more magnificent specimen of a man in all the kingdom. She gulped. Even if he did wear a ferocious scowl.

  Turning the reins of his mount over to the duchess’ servant, Marcus strode the remaining distance to the carriage. “I have been looking for you, Eleanor,” he called out. Those words echoed through the quiet countryside.

  Marcia gasped and scrambled over Eleanor’s lap. She yanked the curtains all the way open. “Marcus!” Excitement rang in her tone.

  Such unabashed love and happiness lit her daughter’s eyes, that tears blinded Eleanor’s vision, blurring Marcus as he strode the remaining distance to their stopped carriage. Reaching past the driver, Marcus boldly drew the carriage door open. His muscle-hewn frame shrank the space in the carriage as he leaned inside and looked about. His gaze locked with Eleanor’s and the breath stuck in her chest at the heated intensity of his stare. She desperately tried to make out the veiled emotions there. Did he despise her now as much as he had then for leaving? Even as he knew the reasons for her flight? Then he reluctantly moved his attention over to Marcia.

  He sketched a bow. “Hullo, Miss—oomph.”

  Marcia flung herself into his arms and he lurched back under the unexpectedness of that assault. With the ease of any natural father, he closed his arms about the bundle in his arms, and a fluttering danced in her belly as Eleanor fell in love with him all over again. She fell in love with him not with the innocence of a young girl but rather with the heart of a woman who’d known pain and suffering and the power of love in healing.

  “Are you here to save us from the highwaymen, Marcus?” Marcia chirped excitedly.

  With his elegant white-gloved finger, he tweaked her nose. “Are there highwaymen about?”

  She nodded seriously. “There must be.” Marcia dropped her voice to a less than conspiratorial whisper. “Mama was so scared.”

  “There are no highwaymen,” Eleanor said softly.

  Emotion lit the blues of his eyes and his throat worked. At his protracted silence, Marcia took his face between her hands and squeezed. “Why are you here, Marcus?”

  He is here for me… nay, for us…Her daughter’s mouth formed a small moue. “You aren’t a highwayman, are you?” she breathed, wonder and excitement which would surely one day be the death of Eleanor, sparkled in her expressive eyes.

  When at last he spoke, there was a gruffness to his tone. “I am afraid to disappoint you but I am nothing more than a mere, dull viscount.” There was nothing mere or dull about him. From the crooked half-grin to his ability to charm and cheer young girls to dowagers, he was a man who commanded notice. He looked over the top of Marcia’s gold curls and their gazes caught and held. “I am here because your mama has something that belongs to me and I have something to give to her.”

  Setting Marcia on her feet outside the carriage, Marcus stared at Eleanor for a long moment. His gaze went to the page in her hands and she swallowed hard, pulling it close. “Wh-what is it?” What game did he play? And to what end?

  “Surely you know.” Marcus’ voice was low and soft, thickened with gentle warmth that fanned her heart. “You left and you took my note from the archbishop.”

  She blinked several times and then dropped her gaze to the page. Wordlessly, she held it out, and the air left her on a swift exhale as he tugged her out of the carriage and into his arms. Lowering her to the ground so her body slid down his frame, he held her close. “You took my heart, and my happiness, and my very reason for being.” Raw emotion roughened his tone and tears sprung to Eleanor’s eyes. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out an oddly shaped velvet case. Eleanor watched as he withdrew a gold heart pendant with a filigree setting. “This was given to me,” he murmured. “I was told the legend behind this necklace will earn the heart of a duke.”

  Did he believe she could ever want the heart of anyone but him?

  “Are you giving my mama that pretty necklace so she can find a duke?” Marcia piped in.

  He dropped to his knee beside her daughter. “Well, you see, there is more to this necklace. It doesn’t truly win the wearer a duke’s heart, but rather, it brings love to the woman who wears it.” Marcus looked meaningfully up at Eleanor.

  “Marcus, p-please,” she whispered, that aching plea catching with the force of her desire for eternity with him.

  “I would tell you a story,” he said gruffly, shoving up to his feet. “It is the real reason I’ve come all this way, you know,” he said to Marcia who giggled at the thought. “Once upon a time, there was a king who lost his wife.”

  “Orfeo!” Marcia exclaimed behind them.

  He nodded, looking at Marcia. “This story is much like that one. You see, an evil man found the queen under a cherry tree and took her far, far away from the king who loved her so much. The king searched years and years for her. He never gave up hope that he would one day find her.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek. “But he hated her while she was gone.” For that was the truth he’d not speak on, but that animosity and resentment had been there.

  “He hated how empty his life was without her,” he corrected. He dusted a hand over his mouth. “He hated that he’d once been happy and that she was gone. He hated himself for not being worthy enough to hold her at his side.”

  Another tear sailed down her cheek. Followed by another. And another. Is that what he’d believed all these years? He’d seen a flaw in himself as the reason for her departure. How many years had she spent protecting Marcus from the horrors of that night in Lady Wedermore’s gardens? Just then, she hated herself for having ever filled a man so wholly honorable and devoted and good, with doubt in himself.

  Marcia’s perplexed voice slashed across Marcus’ telling. “Why is there so much talk about hatred in the story? Isn’t it a fairytale about love?”

  Yes, because with a child’s eyes, mind, and soul, the world was a fairytale where there was no hatred or darkness or sadness. There was only love and eternal happily-ever-afters.

  Eleanor tried to force out a reply suitable for a child’s ears.

  “It is,” Marcus supplied for Eleanor. “For you see, this king loved his queen so desperately, he battled all for her. Even the darkest demon who stole her away all those years ago.”

  A little sob caught in her throat. She shook her
head. For it wasn’t possible.

  “It is possible,” he spoke with a quiet insistence and his breath fanned her lips. How harmonious their thoughts had always been. “He slayed the demon of her past.”

  “How?” she whispered. How when Atbrooke would always be present, in the shadows, lurking in wait to shatter Marcia’s existence and, with that, Eleanor’s every happiness.

  “Yes, how?” Marcia urged, giving another impatient yank of his fabric.

  “The man who took the queen was very selfish and greedy. He lost all his money and wealth to the king. The king promised he could live, if he allowed the queen and king to live in happiness.”

  Her heart tripped a beat and Marcus gave a meaningful nod.

  “So he sent him far away?” Marcia’s excited question fed those on Eleanor’s lips.

  Marcus nodded. “He sent him away. But the queen still was sad and scared.” Tears misted her vision and blurred his beloved visage at his thinly veiled words spoken of a fictional queen. “She’d been taken away once and feared her happiness would be stolen, again. Do you know what she did, Marcia?” With the backs of his knuckles, Marcus wiped the tears from her cheeks. The task proved futile as those warm, soft drops continued to fall.

  “What did she do?” Marcia pleaded.

  Marcus stilled that gentle stroke and she mourned the sudden loss of his soothing caress. “I don’t know,” he said sadly.

  No! The silent cry ricocheted around her mind. She needed the end of that story, needed to know how the fate of those two once tragic figures ended, how their lives turned out.

  Marcia stamped her foot. “You don’t? Surely you muust.” Disappointment stretched out that last word.

  He shook his head regretfully. “I am afraid not. I am afraid only your mama knows the end of this story.”

  Warmth suffused her heart and the air left her on a slow exhalation. With her daughter staring on, and the driver as their witness shifting awkwardly on his feet, Marcus had put their future into Eleanor’s hands. So long, she’d perceived herself as powerless; at the mercy of a cruel man in a cold world. Marcus, however, stood asking her to love, to trust. “What if he returns?” The ragged whisper danced about them.

  “Then we will face him together,” Marcus pledged softly, drawing first one hand and then the next to his lips.

  With the gift and promise he dangled before her, she closed her eyes wanting to grasp it, wanting to hold it close, and face forever with him at her side. “I ordered the carriage stopped,” she said at last, opening her eyes and bringing the fairytale back to the now. “I could not leave.” If she had, she’d have spent the remainder of her days hating herself for her weakness, hating herself for not believing in Marcus. In believing in them, together.

  “I know you did.” Marcus palmed her cheek. “Just as I knew you would not leave me again.”

  “How does the story end, Mama?” her daughter asked with a girlish exasperation.

  Forcing her eyes open, Eleanor held Marcus’ endless blue gaze teeming with love. “Why, how all fairytales end, love,” Eleanor said with a watery smile. “With a happily-ever-after.”

  Marcus grinned. Lowering his head, he claimed her mouth in a gentle meeting that promised forever.

  Epilogue

  Two nights later

  Spring 1818

  The problem with weddings is that they ended, as did wedding breakfasts, and when they were all concluded and the house empty of the handful of guests celebrating said wedding, all that remained—was the wedding night.

  Eleanor made a show of reading the pages of Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s work on her lap. With the fire crackling and snapping in the hearth and Marcus at her side, his head bent over the copy given him of King Orfeo by Marcia earlier that morning before she’d gone off with Aunt Dorothea, they presented quite a bucolic picture.

  The words of the page blurred together. Perhaps this was how they’d spend their wedding night. Perhaps there would be no climbing abovestairs and seeking out their chambers, and undressing and—

  “Would you care to go abovestairs?”

  Eleanor shrieked and the book tumbled to the floor where it landed indignantly upon its spine. “N-now,” she croaked. “H-have you finished reading for the night? S-surely you have more pages left about King Orfeo? Or are you not enjoying it?” she asked on a rush when he opened his mouth to speak. “Or perhaps you’d care for another book.” She searched about the expansive library, which certainly offered many selections. Filled with a building panic, Eleanor jumped to her feet just as Marcus spoke.

  “I would go abovestairs with my wife.”

  She swallowed at his husky, mellifluous baritone. It ran over her like a warm summer sun. And there was nothing terrifying in that tone. This was Marcus, whose kiss she’d craved and even now…whose kiss made her heartbeat wildly erratic. She closed her eyes. But then, it was never Marcus she’d feared.

  He settled his hands on her shoulders and her eyes flew wide. She stiffened and braced for that kiss, praying for the wildly erratic beat and not the long ago memories that once haunted her. He touched his lips to the corner of her temple. The caress was so gentle, so soothing, that the tension drained out of her.

  Eleanor leaned against his back. “I am scared,” she conceded, taking the strength provided in his arms. And for the fear, there was something freeing in actually giving those words truth. It was her fear and it would always linger at the back of her mind, but she was no longer that scared, silent woman who’d been claimed by the darkness of that night.

  “I know, love.” He placed another kiss against her temple and then tucked an errant blonde curl behind her ear.

  “I-I know it is s-silly,” she whispered, as he trailed kisses down her cheek, worshiping her with his questing mouth, and settling his lips at the place where her pulse pounded madly from her need of him and her fear of what that would entail. “I-I am not a virgin,” she prattled. She hadn’t been a virgin for eight years. “I-I birthed a daughter.” And yet her teeth chattered with a virgin-like fear of their inevitable coupling.

  Marcus swung her into his arms and pulled her against the protective shelter of his chest. “It is not silly.” His chest rumbled and she turned her cheek against the soft fabric of his lawn shirt. She inhaled deep of the purely masculine sandalwood that clung to him, finding a calming peace in the familiar scent that was his and no other’s. It was a smell that did not belong to her terror and the nightmare of her past, but entirely to Marcus, and she breathed in the pureness of it, letting it fill her lungs, and blot out remnants of another.

  Marcus captured her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped it up. “You are as innocent now as you were eight years ago, Eleanor, and I would be the man to show you how beautiful lovemaking can be.”

  She caught the inside of her cheek, aching to cling to that offer he made, and tearing from the room in terror for what that might entail.

  “Trust me.” And the simplicity of his gentle urging drove back the fear.

  As though he carried nothing more than a sack of Cook’s flour, he made his way from the room and through the quiet, now darkened, corridors. The candle’s glow flickered from the satin wallpaper and she swallowed. “Marcus, someone will see.”

  “The servants have been dismissed for the night.”

  Her heart thudded with panicked dread as he mounted the stairs. “But—”

  “My mother and sister have departed for the country.” He dropped his chin atop the crown of her head. They reached the top of the landing and his smooth, even breaths gave no indication of the burden in his arms. “It is only we two tonight, Eleanor.”

  She closed her eyes and counted her deliberately drawn breaths. That truth should calm her and yet… He stopped outside a closed door. Her palms dampened as she forced her eyes open. The door stared threateningly back at her. It was just a door. A wood panel, really. She shook. Yet, it was what stood on the other side of that panel that sent fear dancing in her bel
ly. Eleanor shook her head. “I am bound to disappoint you, Marcus,” she said on a rush. “You have been with so many women and they were experienced,” and not afraid, “and brought you pleasure and I hate it, and—”

  Marcus touched his fingertips to his lips, gently silencing her terrified ramblings. “This night belongs to you, Eleanor Gray.”

  Eleanor Gray.

  Her heart skipped a beat. After years of taking a fictitious name and assuming it as her own, Marcus had conferred an honorable name, given in love.

  He brushed his thumb over her lips now turned up in a smile. “That is better, love,” he said. Reaching past her, he pressed the handle and stepped inside.

  Eleanor’s breath hitched as he closed the door behind them. The inviting fire glowing within the hearth cast a soft light upon the room. A pink rose-petal path stretched out the length of the room, leading to a wide, four-poster bed sprinkled with those gentle blooms. “Oh, Marcus,” she whispered, palming his cheek.

  Wordlessly, he carried her across the room and then, as though he handled a gift of the Queen’s china, he lowered her upon the downy soft mattress. She pushed up on her elbows as he shrugged out of his jacket and tossed the elegant black garment. It sailed to the floor in a silent heap. She wetted her lips, her heart pounding in a frantic beat.

  Except, this moment was not born of fear of the past or what was to come, but rather a breathless anticipation for what was now before her. Marcus lay beside her, propping himself on his elbow and slowly touched his lips to hers.

  Eleanor’s lids fluttered closed and she turned herself over to the slow growing warmth spiraling in her belly and spreading out. Then, as fleeting as a butterfly’s caress, he broke that tender contact. He moved to the edge of the bed and knelt at her feet. “What…?”

  Her heart caught as he delicately drew off first one slipper and then the next. He set them down beside each other at the side of the bed and then drew her foot to his mouth. Bowing his head over it, he placed a kiss upon the top and worked those gentle caresses up to the point where her ankle met her leg. He worshiped the deliciously sensitive skin at the inner portion of her foot until a breathy little moan escaped her.