When he returned he carried a wet cloth and gently cleaned her. Though the heat and pain of his initial intrusion had ebbed, the coolness of the cloth against her sensitive area was most welcome.
He regarded her tenderly. “Are you all right, love?”
Love. Her lips curled into a dreamy smile. “It was beyond words, Charles. Truly, in every brilliant way.”
Eleanor stretched back onto the bed and Charles pulled her into his arms.
She could lie there forever at his side, she thought. Listening to his heartbeat, wrapped in his embrace and trying not to fall in love.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The following day Eleanor found herself in the confines of a carriage once more—but this time she hardly minded. It was only for a short time, while they made their way to Comlongon Castle, and she was with her new husband. The one who had kept her up the better part of the night with another round of teasing and satiating and loving.
Her body hummed with the languid warmth still thrumming in the slight tenderness between her thighs.
As if he were considering similar thoughts to her own, a soft smile touched Charles’s lips where he sat across from her in the private carriage they’d taken. Once more they were blissfully alone, with Thomas and Lottie having remained to see to their effects at the inn so Eleanor and Charles could arrive at Comlongon together.
Charles’s brilliant blue eyes were fixed on Eleanor’s. It would be hard not to love a man who looked at her so, and yet she knew it best to guard her heart.
“You look radiant, my Duchess.” He settled back in his seat with a contented grin. “I am the luckiest man in all of Christendom.”
“To have had so fine a wedding?”
Together they laughed over the episode at Gretna Green. It was the kind of shared joke they would tell in the years to come.
The trees cleared away around them to reveal a large span of lush green grass with the powerful form of Comlongon Castle rising at its center. It wasn’t so much the sight of it that robbed Eleanor of her speech, but the memories which crashed into her with such alarming clarity it rendered her quite overwhelmed.
For many summers her mother had taken her and Evander to Scotland. To familiarize them with their roots, she’d said. To learn to be strong Murrays, her father had clarified.
Either way, when they’d been in Scotland, beyond the watchful gaze of their father, who’d used the time to travel abroad, her mother had released the control she’d held over her children.
Together, Eleanor and Evander had run free about the castle and its grounds. They had been two scamps, romping and playing like hellions every one of those summers, until Evander had been sent away to school. He didn’t return home often, and when he did, they both treated one another civilly, coolly, with all the love and laughter stripped out of them.
Pain squeezed at Eleanor’s heart. For she had been the cause of his abrupt departure. She had been too excitable, her father had said, too desperate for affection. It was lowborn and improper. When once she had tried to stop her father from leaving on yet another trip, and had dared to shed tears, the Earl had shown his disappointment with blows and with the most crushing punishment: sending Evander away.
While she’d never regarded her childhood after that with fondness, she had cherished the years before. She’d tucked them somewhere private within her, and locked away the pleasant memories of those summer days with Evander.
They rose up within her now, sharp as a familiar scent, and tore through her with bittersweet joy.
Evander had possessed a high-pitched laugh when he was a boy—an unfortunate attribute he’d luckily outgrown as an adult—and he’d been quite a sight as a youth, or “a lad,” as they’d called him in Scotland, with his shock of red hair and his silly laughter.
And, oh, they’d had such times for him to laugh. Such as the afternoon they’d set a frog loose in the kitchen and it had propped itself on Cook’s large rump for the better part of an hour before she’d even noticed. Or the summer they’d released all the foxes caught by the hunt to liberate them from their terrible fate. Or the time—
Charles sat forward. “Eleanor? Are you crying?”
Was she?
She touched her fingers to her cheek and pulled it away to see they were indeed wet. “It would appear I am.”
Concern showed in his eyes. “What is it?”
The carriage bounced along, carrying them past the woods Eleanor had run through with Evander, and past the lake where she’d swum on days when the weather had been warm enough to make the loch only slightly less than freezing.
“I came here with my brother when I was a girl.” She shook her head. “I haven’t thought of those memories in years. I haven’t thought of...him.”
“Loss is never easy.”
He shifted in his seat and she recalled his own father’s recent death.
“I’m very sorry you’ve had your own loss as well,” Eleanor said gently.
His gaze was fixed on the gray face of the castle, growing larger as they made their way closer.
“It doesn’t seem real, does it? As if by not acknowledging it, somehow that might result in it never having happened. Which is foolish.”
“No, it’s not.”
The closer they got, the more Eleanor’s heart ached. For the young brother she’d played with and loved, for the serious grown man he’d become and the cold rift set between them. For his absence without reconciliation.
“I believe my mother feels similarly,” Eleanor said. “She seldom discusses Evander. Though I think we both expect...” She shook her head. “I cannot even say it.”
The carriage drew to a stop before Comlongon Castle and a ball of dread tightened in Eleanor’s stomach at the thought of the ghosts which might linger in those ancient halls. Not of Murrays long dead, but of the Murray too long missing. Perhaps it had been a poor decision to suggest the castle.
“We will heal with time, my dear Eleanor,” said Charles, and exited the carriage and waited to help her down.
Eleanor stepped down onto the familiar crunch of gravel. Her heart pounded in her throat and there was a headiness inside her which made her feel quite faint.
She hadn’t been honest when she’d told Charles she hadn’t ever had a confidant. When she was a girl, it had been Evander. And, although the years and their father’s demands had spread a gap of silence and maturity between them, Evander had gone off to reclaim the family fortune, to save her and her mother from ruin, and it had most likely cost him his life.
Eleanor clasped her hand tightly on Charles’s arm to keep her trembling legs from pitching her to the ground.
Charles knocked on the door and waited.
A butler appeared and lifted his bushy gray brows. “May I help you?”
“I am the Duke of Somersville and this is my new bride, formerly Lady Eleanor Murray.” Charles smiled down at her before continuing to address the butler. “We are here to spend several days in Scotland and to celebrate our marriage prior to returning to London.”
The butler bowed. “A moment, if you please, Your Grace. I must notify the Earl.”
The Earl? Eleanor’s mouth fell open in outrage as he showed them inside, where they were left momentarily blinded by the absence of sunlight behind the block of thick castle walls.
The butler disappeared before she could offer protest.
“Charles, someone is masquerading as Evander!” she hissed.
“I’ll see to this. Don’t concern yourself.”
The butler appeared once more. “If you’ll follow me, the Earl of Westix will see you now.”
Eleanor had to force her steps to the pace of a well-bred lady, for all she wanted to do was run to the room at the end of the hall, push her way through the doors and demand to know what scoundrel would dare impersonate her lost brother fo
r his own personal gain.
She would let Charles kill him in a duel and not lose a wink of sleep. No, she would kill him herself. With her very own hands. Her body blazed with the fire of her rage and her jaw ached from clenching it so ferociously.
The butler opened the door and saw them in. Eleanor looked at the tall figure standing beside the fireplace and only just managed to smother her cry behind the press of her fingertips.
For there, looking as handsomely young and strong as he had when he’d left for his expedition, was her long-missing brother: Evander Murray, the rightful Earl of Westix.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Eleanor couldn’t take her eyes off her brother, standing so casually before her. As if he hadn’t been missing for years. As if they hadn’t all assumed him to be dead. And then he smiled. Smiled!
Eleanor’s hand was pressed to her mouth and her eyes filled with tears. “Evander...” She pulled free from Charles and staggered toward her brother. “Is it truly you?”
“Eleanor.” He strode to her. “My butler has informed me you are a new bride. Felicitations on your marriage.” His gaze slid toward Charles, all emotion masked.
“We thought you were dead!” She fell then, pitching toward the ground.
Evander caught her and gently held her upright. “Why ever would you think that?”
The weakness in Eleanor’s legs strengthened with the force of her ire. “Why would we think that?” she demanded. “Because you have been missing all these years without any word of where you were or when you would be home or even—” Her voice broke. “Or even if you were alive.”
He frowned. “I confess I did not write as often as I should have, but there have been at least two letters sent.”
“Two?” she gasped. “In four years?”
“I gather they did not make it to you.”
Evander had the good sense to cast his eyes downward at her admonishment.
“Have you been here in Comlongon the entire time?” Eleanor drew herself away from him, fully able to stand on her own once more. “While we have feared the worst?”
Evander shook his head. “No.”
It was then that she finally noticed the room, crowded with many items—relics and tomes and crates. In truth, it was cluttered with such mess it looked not at all like a proper receiving room, but rather one meant for storage.
“I do not wish to betray our family troubles to you, sister.”
He cast a glance toward Charles. Which meant he did not wish to discuss such matters in front of Charles. She looked between the two. Did they recognize one another? Did they know each other to be the son of their father’s enemy?
Neither one’s expression gave any indication.
“You mean our dire financial situation?” Eleanor pressed. “It was the reason you left.”
While Charles hadn’t been offered the details, it was apparent that he had already worked out the finer points on his own—or at least was playing the part of knowing admirably.
Evander narrowed his eyes at Charles with a flash of distrust. Maybe they were acquainted after all.
“Yes, well...what I anticipated only taking several months took several years.” He gave a mirthless chuckle. “It would appear that our fathers told rather grandiose tales of their travels without recounting the liberties they took when obtaining their treasures.”
Charles lifted a brow.
“What do you mean?” Eleanor asked.
“They were not moral,” Evander scoffed. “Were I as unscrupulous, my task would have been over in six months’ time and I would have been home with those I love.”
He nodded to Eleanor before claiming a glass of amber liquid from a nearby table.
Eleanor shook her head, not comprehending. “But if you were here—” Her throat tightened around her words and cut them off.
“I have only recently returned, Eleanor. I confess that I was so focused on selling the goods I had accumulated to rebuild our wealth that I did not wish interruption. And I did not send correspondence until I had reestablished our wealth. I assumed the letters I sent were enough to allay your concerns. I realize now how very wrong I was.”
Confusion and anger and...yes, hurt—mostly hurt—blazed like a glowing coal in her chest. “Why did you not come to London to sell the items?”
Evander took a sip of his drink. “We all know how gossip spreads through London like fire. As no one visits Comlongon anymore I expected it to be safe to come here without rattling hope and inciting rumor. I did this to protect you and Mother.” He lifted his glass to Charles. “Would you like one?”
“Dear God, yes,” Charles replied promptly.
Eleanor followed her brother to the small table of cut-crystal decanters. “I think I would like one as well.”
She wrestled with the power of her emotions as he poured two glasses, handing one first to Eleanor and then to Charles.
Eleanor cradled the cool glass against her palms and took a shuddering breath. “Evander, we thought...” Her throat clenched tight around the words. “We thought you were dead. Do you think we value fortune over love?”
“Everyone values fortune over love,” Evander said simply.
Was that what he thought? That she and her mother were so keen on an abundant fortune that they would rather wealth than him?
“That isn’t true,” she protested. “We would rather have had you with us in London. Mother is overwrought at your loss, and I...” Tears blurred the room and a sob choked from her throat. “I tried to push aside my memories of you, but when we arrived here, when I recalled all those summers when we played together—Evander, you have broken my heart.”
And it was true. He had indeed left her heart broken.
“Eleanor...”
There was a catch to Evander’s voice, and it snagged at a deep, wounded part of her. Without saying more he rushed to her, his arms open, and pulled her into a solid embrace. It was the way he’d done when they were children and she was upset. Before he’d gone to school—before the emotion had been strapped out of them all.
She curled into the embrace and let the truth of it all wash over her. Evander was alive. He had tried to let them know he was safe. He had tried and he had done all this for them. The tears came in a flood: relief that he was alive, happiness to be having this incredible reunion, and sorrow for the years they had lost.
“I only wanted to help...” Evander’s voice rumbled around her. “I never expected it to be like this.”
Eleanor took a shuddering breath. Evander smelled different. When he was a boy, he had smelled of wet grass and sweat—now, as an adult, he smelled of shaving soap and Scotch.
“Will you forgive me, Eleanor?” he asked softly.
She looked up, gazing into a face she had often thought never to see again. How could she not, after all he had done for her and Mother?
“Yes, of course,” Eleanor replied, and tightened her grip on him, never wanting to let him go again.
* * *
Charles had slipped from the room to give Eleanor and the Earl of Westix privacy in order to discuss whatever it was siblings discussed after a reunion in which one had been presumed dead. He didn’t imagine it would be an easy conversation to have, let alone in the presence of one’s enemy.
Except he did not consider the new Earl of Westix an enemy—not in the way he once would have. If Charles had had a sister, wouldn’t he have done something similar to see her well cared-for?
He took a long draught of Scotch. It was good-quality, and the burn in his stomach was smooth and pleasant.
Westix being alive added complications—and Charles could not help but consider the impact of such a change.
He now understood that Eleanor’s reason for offering her original request had been financial necessity. Now, with Westix returned, with their fortune restor
ed, she had no need of this marriage.
Except it had already been consummated. There could be no annulment.
Then there were the journals. They were no longer Eleanor’s to give, and Charles doubted Westix would willingly offer them to his enemy.
He regretted not having brought the key with him to Scotland. He’d left it behind for two reasons. The first being to prove to Eleanor and to Lottie that this marriage meant something to him. The second because he had been worried that if he did find the answer he sought with the key he would be chomping at the bit to leave immediately. He knew several day’s difference would not matter on his departure to find the stone, but that these few days at Comlongon would matter to his new wife.
If he’d had it with him now, however, he and Eleanor could have searched for the journals and used the key without Evander being the wiser. Damn.
The butler strode down the hall, cast him a curious look, then pushed through the door of the room where Westix and Eleanor were.
“Forgive the interruption, My Lord, but it appears there are two more in their party who have only just arrived.”
“Show them in,” the Earl replied.
That must mean that Lottie and Thomas had arrived. Charles waited for the butler to bring them in and then followed them into the room.
Eleanor’s eyes were red-rimmed but dry, her tears having ceased. She removed herself from her brother’s side and approached Charles. For one tense moment he did not know how she would react to him now that she truly did not need him any longer.
He put his arm around her shoulder and was awash with relief when she melted against him.
“This is charming,” Lottie said in the affected manner she’d always possessed.
She looked around at the stacks of wooden crates and ancient artifacts before her eyes fell on the new Earl of Westix. The smile drained from her lips, along with all the color from her face.
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