“Isobel,” Eleanor whispered.
Hugo didn’t like her name in Eleanor’s mouth. As if that alone could poison the woman who stood before him against him. Just the mention of her.
“Isobel and I dated, if that is what it can be called, for two weeks.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his tone. The truth was, he didn’t really try. Because what was there now besides that bitterness? What was left? Only the stories Isobel had told about him, his inability to refute any of them, and the long game of revenge he was playing against all those who’d chosen to believe it. “Two weeks, that is all. There was no on-and-off nonsense, stretching on for years. There was barely any affair to speak of. There were two entirely physical weeks when I was too young to know better, and then I cut it off.”
Eleanor’s gaze searched his. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t understand. I assure you, I do not understand it myself. Isobel didn’t like the fact that while she wanted our relationship to be something more than it was, I did not.” He felt his mouth flatten. “And she didn’t see why she should have to accept any reality that she didn’t like. So she made her own.”
“You can’t mean...” Eleanor took a deep breath that made her hair move about on her shoulders. And Hugo couldn’t keep himself from reaching out then. If he was honest, he didn’t try too hard.
He reached over and ran his fingers through the fall of her hair, dark and enticing. It felt warm against his fingers, as if she was giving off heat like some kind of sun, and as soft as he’d imagined. And when he was finished running his fingers through it—at least for now—he didn’t let go. He held on to a hank of her hair, as if he needed it. As if it was some kind of talisman.
Or she was.
“At first it was just sad.” He didn’t like talking about any of this. It only occurred to him then that he never had before. Because who could he have told? Everyone had already come to their own conclusions. “She would contrive to be somewhere I was and the next thing I knew there was a photograph in a tabloid, and breathless speculation about whether or not we were back on. At first I didn’t even realize that she was the one calling the paparazzi herself. But as time went on, of course, the coverage took a distinctly darker turn.”
He didn’t know what he expected from Eleanor. An instant refusal, perhaps. After all, Isobel had been a sunny ambassador of goodwill. Everyone said so. She had been all that was light and good and the only strange thing she ever done in her life, according to the coverage of her that she’d manipulated constantly, was try to date a monster like Hugo. It wouldn’t have surprised him if Eleanor had argued with him. If she’d tried to deny the story that he was telling.
But she didn’t say a word. Her solemn gaze was fixed to his, and she seemed ready enough to hear him out.
No one else had ever given him that courtesy. Hugo felt something sharp, wedged there in the vicinity of his heart, but he had no name for it.
“As time went on Isobel became more and more unhinged. She got together with Torquil, of course, but that wasn’t enough for her. Because the truth was, she knew that wouldn’t hurt me. If he wanted to be with her that meant nothing to me either way, and that was what she couldn’t stand. It was right about the time she convinced my friend, who’d known me all his life, that I’d treated her abusively in private that it occurred to me her only real goal was to hurt me. However possible.”
“If you didn’t care for her at all,” Eleanor said softly, “and you weren’t even involved with her in the ways she claimed, how could she ever have hurt you?” She seemed to think better of that as she said it. “Your friend’s betrayal must have hurt, of course.”
Hugo shrugged. “Sometimes a woman comes between friends. To be honest, I wasn’t worried. I thought that he’d come out of it with continued exposure to her.”
“I can’t pretend to know how it feels to have lies about myself splashed all over the paper,” Eleanor began.
“It was my father.”
It sat there so starkly. That ugly little truth that Hugo had never dared utter out loud before to anyone but Isobel, and only that once. And not only because there was no one else to hear it. But because naming it gave it power and he had never wanted to do that. He had never wanted to give Isobel the satisfaction—not even in death.
“I was all the old man had,” Hugo managed to say, aware there was a kind of earthquake in him, tearing through him and reducing him to rubble. And yet he stood. “And I was a terrible disappointment to him.”
“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” Eleanor breathed, that honey in her dark eyes gleaming with sympathy. “Maybe you only thought he felt that way.”
“I know he felt that way, little one.” Hugo’s voice was soft. “He told me so.”
And he stopped trying to fight that feeling inside of him then. That sharp thing in his chest only seemed to bleed out more at that stricken look on Eleanor’s lovely face. As if she couldn’t imagine such a thing, that an old man could think so little of his only son.
But Hugo knew he had.
“My father was prepared to put up with a certain amount of foolishness, because he was old-school and he’d had what he called his ‘day in the sun.’ He very much believed that boys were indeed boys.” Hugo felt his mouth curve, though it was no smile. “But his expectation was that such conduct unbecoming in a Duke of Grovesmoor would end. If not during my university years, then shortly thereafter. Except I met Isobel two years after I left Cambridge, when I was still committed to every wild oat a man could sow. And that was when she started her campaign.”
“Surely your father didn’t believe the tabloids.”
“Of course not. My father would never sully his eyes with such trash. The trouble wasn’t the tabloids themselves. It was that everyone who did read the tabloids accepted everything they read in them as fact. And it wasn’t only the scandal rags. There were cleverly disguised hit pieces in more reputable magazines that made me seem seedy and vaguely disgusting. And soon enough, that was how I was discussed. Not just in salacious news programs, but right here, in my father’s own home. To his face.”
“Who would do something like that?” Eleanor asked, and if he hadn’t been looking right at her, with her eyes wide and filled with distress, he might have imagined she was faking. “And why would your father believe the kind of person who would slander his own son directly to him?”
It was an excellent question, and one Hugo wished he could ask the old man.
“Sometimes a rumor is far worse than a fact,” he said instead. “Facts can be proven or disproven, most of the time. But rumor can live on forever. It commands a life of its own and dignified silence doesn’t refute it. And sooner or later, whether you mean to or not, you find that you’re living in it. Against your will.”
“There was nothing you could do?” She shook her head as if to clear it. “No way you could tell the truth?”
“That’s the thing about rumors like that, little one,” Hugo murmured. “They’re more believable than the truth. My father was a man of the world. He’d flirted with his own share of potential scandals in his day. It made no sense to him that a pretty girl like Isobel, who could have anyone, would waste her time pretending to have a relationship with the one man who didn’t want her. And I think you’ll find that it didn’t make sense to anyone else, either.”
“But surely you could prove it.”
“How?” Hugo wasn’t surprised when Eleanor didn’t have an answer. “Where there’s smoke, people always look for a fire. And the more that fire burns, the more everyone believes that you must have had a hand in setting it, or you’d put it out. But Isobel had no intention of ever letting it die down.”
He thought of that endless blue afternoon in all that Santa Barbara sunshine. The way Isobel had smiled at him.
You’ll always be mine, Hugo. Always. No matter where you go or what you do, no one will ever see you without thinking of me.
“I’m surprised
you didn’t date her just to keep her quiet,” Eleanor said then, scowling furiously—but not, for once, at him. “Just to make her stop.”
Hugo let out a low noise. “I thought about it, of course. But I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. And then, of course, came Geraldine.”
“None of this is her fault,” Eleanor said at once. Fiercely.
“Of course not,” Hugo said shortly. “I don’t bear the child any ill will.”
“But—”
“But I don’t mind if the world thinks I do,” he finished for her. He shook his head. “Before there was Geraldine, there was Isobel and her pregnancy. And believe me, she used it like a hammer.” He dropped that piece of Eleanor’s hair then, because his hands were curling into fists and he thought he’d better keep them to himself. “She told my father the child was mine.”
“She left you. She married your friend. How could it be yours?”
“She didn’t leave me.” Hugo realized he’d growled that out like a savage, and fought for calm. “We were never together. But she told my father that we had been. And then she told him that I refused to do my duty. That I told her to get rid of it. That I was, in short, every bit the callous and unfeeling character she’d painted me in the tabloids. And in those rumors.”
“You must have insisted on a blood test to prove that you’re not the father.”
“I did,” Hugo bit out. “But he died before I could show him that proof. He had heart failure and never recovered, and doctors can use any terms they wish to explain what happened. But I think the shock killed him.”
He’d forgotten that they were standing in the middle of the ballroom. Because all he could see was Eleanor, and that terrible look on her face. As if there was nothing in the world but the two of them and the way they stood so close together, as if what he was telling her here was far more important than a mere story. As if it was something infinitely more critical than the past he was still paying for.
It was, he understood. He was telling her the truth about the most hated man in England, and she believed him.
She believed him.
Eleanor moved then, tipping herself up on her toes and fitting her palms to his chest. One of them right there where his heart still hurt.
As if she knew.
“I’m so sorry, Hugo,” she whispered, her voice intense and low. “I’m ashamed to say I believed the stories, too.”
Hugo felt a kind of bitterness twist through him then, though there was a warmth in it this time, as if it was something a little more complicated. He reached up and covered the hand over his heart with his.
“Do you know,” he said quietly, “that you are the only person I have ever met who’s apologized? When you are the one who’s done the least damage.”
She bit her lip, and electricity pounded through him, reminding him of all the ways this woman got to him. All the ways she was clearly the death of him.
“I’ve spoken to you as if I knew you. As if the stories I read were the truth, when of course they couldn’t be. The truth is never so black and white, is it? No heroes, no villains, just people.”
“Perhaps. But there are also Isobels in this world. They prey on others because they can. It gives them pleasure. And Eleanor, your sister is one of them.”
She tried to pull her hand away, but Hugo held her fast.
“You don’t understand,” she said, her voice fierce again.
“But I do.” Hugo moved closer then, until there was only the scantest bit of air between the two of them. “Tonight you’re barefoot, your hair is down, every inch of you is feminine and soft.”
“I didn’t expect to run into anyone in what I wear to bed.”
He took his free hand and placed it over her lips. He smiled down into the crease between her eyes. He felt things he’d never thought were real, before tonight.
“Eleanor. Who told you feminine and soft is bad?”
“Not bad,” Eleanor said against his finger, sending delicious little licks of heat spiraling through him. “But not me.” Her frown intensified. “It’s cruel of you to pretend that you can’t see it, now that you’ve met Vivi. I’m not the pretty one. I never was.”
“Your sister is pretty, yes,” Hugo said, dismissively. “In a very particular way that would, I imagine, appeal to a very particular man. But you?” He shifted his hands, smoothing them over her cheeks and then down to curl into the nape of her neck. “Little one. How can you not realize that you are beautiful? Stunning? There is no comparison.”
Her marvelous eyes filled with emotion. Her perfect mouth trembled.
“You don’t have to lie to me, Your Grace,” she whispered.
And Hugo didn’t know what to do with a woman who’d believed that he was a better man than anyone had believed him to be in years—making everything inside him shift and change—but not that she was the most beautiful creature he thought he’d ever beheld.
So he did the only thing he could. He kissed her.
CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS LIKE DANCING.
Eleanor wasn’t sure she should let herself fall into something that felt a little too much like a fairy tale here in the middle of a ballroom, but his mouth was on hers again and she couldn’t seem to think of anything else. Or she didn’t want to think about anything else.
She didn’t want to think about how little she’d cared for her sister tonight, which made her feel small. Petty. Selfish beyond measure.
But not enough to stop.
She didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d left her room after tossing and turning for hours, and despite what she might have let Hugo think, she knew that she hadn’t been dressed like a governess should have been. Or even as a guest should have been when she’d eased her door open and crept down the hall. She been filled with a kind of despairing recklessness, a restless need that had urged her to do something with all the pent-up hurt and betrayal she’d felt after dinner. She’d convinced herself that it was an excellent idea to wander the halls of Groves House half-dressed. Hair down. Bare feet.
Had she wanted this all along?
But she didn’t really care if she had, because it felt like dancing.
Hugo kissed her and he kissed her. His hands moved from the nape of her neck, smoothing their way down the line of her back, and fastened thrillingly at her hips, drawing her against him.
He kissed her as if there was nothing else but that. Nothing in all the world but the slide of his mouth on hers.
“I can’t get enough of you,” Hugo muttered against her lips, as if it hurt him to say that. “I can’t get enough.”
And when he bent, then lifted her into his arms, Eleanor knew she should have protested. Nothing had made this any less wrong than it had been yesterday. Or a week ago. Or ever. She was still his employee.
But he was Hugo Grovesmoor. And Vivi was right here, in this house, but he hadn’t chosen her.
He’d chosen Eleanor. He’d called her beautiful and he’d kissed her, after meeting Vivi. After Vivi had launched a full-scale offensive, in fact, and gotten nowhere.
For the first time in her life, someone had chosen Eleanor.
She didn’t have it in her to pull away.
Hugo carried her through the house. Eleanor had no concept of what time it was, only that the last time she’d heard the clocks chime, it had been after midnight. But as far she was concerned, the night could last forever. She hoped it would.
She rested her head against Hugo’s wide shoulder, and let the house drift past her as he carried her. Through the halls and up the stairs that led to his private wing. And this time, he did not take her to his library, or to that dining room of his where she’d spent all evening feeling as if she didn’t exist, but further on. Down to the end of that same hall, and into the rooms that waited there.
She had a dreamy sort of impression of magnificence. Bold, masculine furnishings, dark woods and impressively large paintings and rugs so lavish it seemed a shame to walk on them.
A massive stone fireplace that made her think of medieval castles, and that was only the living room.
But Hugo kept going. And with every step he took toward what had to be his bedroom, Eleanor’s heart kicked at her. Harder and harder.
And then they were there, standing by the side of a massive bed that would have dwarfed a room any smaller than this one, and Hugo was shifting her. Placing her down on the edge of his mattress as if she was infinitely precious to him.
And Eleanor felt shivery. Fragile all the way through.
Because she couldn’t think of another time in her life that anyone had treated her like that, as if she mattered. Oh, she assumed her parents had. But the truth was that she couldn’t remember any longer. What she remembered was taking care of others.
She tilted her face up, so she could study Hugo’s gorgeously male expression—hungry and intense—as he gazed back at her. He made her feel like she was dancing even when she was still. He made her feel small in all the best ways.
The truth was that he made her feel like the kind of girl she’d never been. Light, airy. Charming beyond measure.
He made her feel the way she’d always imagined it felt to be Vivi.
Eleanor still couldn’t believe that she was the one sitting here, on the edge of the Duke’s bed. That he hadn’t picked Vivi when he’d had the chance.
But she had no intention of throwing this away. This was her chance at last. To experience everything she never had before. To be that girl some part of her had always dreamed she could have been, maybe, if things had been different.
“I would tell you I don’t bite, little one,” Hugo said in that smokily amused way of his. It reverberated up and down her spine, then pooled somewhere low in her belly, where it began to pulse. “But that would be a lie.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she managed to say.
Hugo looked amused. Something like delighted.
“No, you are not. And it is one among many reasons you are under my skin.” He studied her. “But still, you’re still looking at me as if you expect me to eat you alive.”
Undone by the Billionaire Duke Page 11