by Eloisa James
Eleanor managed a weak smile.
“She was Quaker. Did you know that?”
And, when Eleanor shook her head, “Her father permitted it. She was quite devout. I wasn’t…I’m Church of England, of course. But I liked her rector, Mr. Cumberwell. He buried her immediately at St. John’s in Westminster. Quakers have a very simple ceremony.”
Eleanor curled her fingers around his. “I’m glad that she found solace.”
“I told Cumberwell to take her portion and endow a chapel in her memory. He refused because he said she wouldn’t have liked that. So we’re giving the money to a Foundling Hospital instead. I don’t want it.”
“Ada loved children,” Eleanor said soothingly.
“I shouldn’t be here with you,” he said, “but I couldn’t stop myself.”
She resisted the impulse to shrink back on the sofa, to stop the conversation before it could start. There was something indecent about all the emotion in his eyes, as if she were seeing something she had no right to.
“I feel shame,” he said, hardly pausing for breath. “But shame is something a man can learn to live with. I felt shame years ago because of our love, because of the way we—we were together. The shame I feel now is nothing compared to that.”
Eleanor was starting to feel ill. In some remote part of her mind she wondered whether she could stage a faint, in order to force him into silence. He was still turning that sparkling thing, a ring of course, a diamond, in his fingers. They were long and too slim, she thought. Almost prehensile. Grasping.
And then she caught her own thought, as if someone else had said it, with an echo of shock. She was thinking about Gideon. Gideon. The man she loved. The most beautiful man in the world.
But when she looked at him now, she saw little to admire. The sharp planes of his cheekbones seemed too thin, almost hollowed. His chin didn’t have even the shadow of a beard; he hadn’t had facial hair at eighteen, and perhaps he simply never developed it.
Some part of her mind insistently compared that to the line of another jaw, another man’s jaw…
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said miserably, “but I had to come. Because of Villiers.”
Eleanor started. It was as if he had read her mind.
“You can’t marry Villiers; it’s absurd. It’s disgusting,” Gideon said. “I couldn’t allow such a thing to happen, couldn’t allow such an abomination, not when I knew you were really waiting for me. I felt as if I would be turning my back on God Himself if I did not save you from that marriage.”
Eleanor fruitlessly tried to think of a comment. Was she supposed to agree that she’d been waiting for him for years? She would sound like the worst sort of wet hen.
But Gideon didn’t seem to require an interlocutor anyway. “Ada died without pain,” he said.
“Wonderful,” Eleanor managed. Though that didn’t seem quite the right response either.
“She was walking across the floor of the library, they told me, and she started to cough. I know people thought she was malingering,” Gideon said, “but she wasn’t. A coughing attack was a terrible thing, once it started. She would bend over and hack so violently that I felt as if her lungs must be injured.”
“I saw it once,” Eleanor said, putting her hand over his again. The one that wasn’t holding the ring. “I was terrified for her.”
He shuddered. “You couldn’t not be. Sometimes I wouldn’t go home at night, simply because I couldn’t bear it. It looked so painful, though she said it wasn’t. She was appallingly brave.”
Eleanor murmured something.
“I used to wish that she would just scream at me, or at fate, or someone. But she never did.” His hands clenched and then he opened his right hand and looked down at the ring as if surprised to find it there.
“No,” Eleanor said quickly. “No.”
“It’s the only solution,” he said. “I love you, and you love me. I always loved you, even before you noticed me.”
“You did?”
“You can’t have been more than thirteen when I came home with your brother the first time. But you were already yourself.” He ran a finger along her eyebrow. “You were already laughing in that way you have.”
Eleanor couldn’t stop herself. “What do you mean?”
“Other women smile. Or when they laugh, it comes out a pinched sound. Your mouth is so wide.”
He fell silent, to Eleanor’s relief. She’d never thought of her mouth as wide, and it wasn’t an image she particularly cared to dwell on.
But then he started talking again. “I brought this ring with me because it’s the ring I should have given you years ago. It was my mother’s. I never gave it to Ada.”
“I don’t think we should have this conversation now,” Eleanor said.
His eyes were burning again. His skin seemed drawn too tightly over his bones, and yet he was still Gideon. The same dear Gideon whom she had watched so hungrily at fourteen, had smiled at shyly—and then not so shyly—at fifteen, the boy she had lured to kiss her at sixteen…
“You miss her,” she said.
“No!” he said, almost violently. “I hardly knew her. We lived in the house like a brother and sister.”
She touched him on the shoulder and it was the way it used to be, finally. She met his eyes and she knew what he was feeling, just the way she used to, when she thought they were two hearts beating as one. She held out her arms. “It’s all right to miss her,” she said.
He fell forward, head on her shoulder, still protesting that he didn’t miss his wife at all. That he hardly knew her.
Until he began weeping.
Chapter Twenty-one
Eleanor didn’t manage to escape to her bedchamber until very late that night. By then her nerves felt like the strings of a violin, pulled too tight and vibrating helplessly. She had a bath, dismissed Willa, put on her nightgown, and wrapped herself in a dressing gown.
But she couldn’t settle down. She tried lying on the bed. She tried sitting before the fire. She tried writing a letter to a friend, and tore up three different drafts.
Finally she remembered that there were armchairs on the balcony. Villiers wouldn’t be there, waiting to see if he had a companion in stargazing. He had hardly met her eyes all day, just smiled at her coolly and offered his felicitations. She had done the same, of course.
Lisette had swanned around the house talking about her marriage to dearest Leopold. He was probably in his betrothed’s bedchamber that very moment. God knows, Lisette wouldn’t bar the door.
She pushed open the tall doors and walked into the velvety darkness. The chairs were positioned on Villiers’s side of the balcony, so she walked forward until she bumped into one. Then she rounded the arm and dropped straight down.
Only to land on a pair of muscular legs.
“Oof,” said a male voice. “You look like a featherweight, but you’re not.”
“I should bounce on you for that,” she snapped.
There was a moment of silence while they both contemplated the possibilities that comment brought to mind.
“Don’t let me stop you,” he said finally.
She rose as he spoke. “I shall leave you to the stars, Your Grace.”
“You—”
Eleanor waited, though she knew she shouldn’t.
“You turn me into a lecher,” he stated.
She smiled, although she knew he couldn’t see her expression. “I feel quite certain that I’m not the first woman to have succeeded in that respect.”
“Oddly enough, I think that you are.”
“Says the father of six children.”
“Oh, I have felt lust. And I’ve indulged lust. But no other woman has turned me into another person. It’s unreasonable.”
She kept her voice light. “I thought that men enjoyed lechery.”
With one swift, savage moment he stood before her. “Enjoyment has little to do with the way I feel about you.” His voice was low and dark. “I cou
ld—I could eat you, drink you. I want to lick you, suck you, own you.”
For a moment she sank into the mesmerizing sound of his voice, and then she shook free. “You can’t own me, Leopold. You are marrying Lisette.”
“And you—”
“Gideon came back for me, after all.”
“Very romantic,” Villiers said flatly.
She heard a faint sound from her bedchamber.
“Someone is knocking on your door,” Villiers said. “I suspect it is not your maid.”
She looked up at him in the dim light, a well of desperation in her heart. “Leopold—”
“You’ll have to go,” he said, composed as ever. “Obviously I am not the only man turned lecher by your beauty, Eleanor.”
“I’m not beautiful,” she whispered.
He said something but she couldn’t hear it. The knocking sounded again.
“What did you say?” she asked.
His lips slid down her forehead, her nose, and he said it against her mouth. “Only the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
Chapter Twenty-two
“Gideon,” Eleanor said, opening the door.
He wasn’t so young anymore. His eyes were tired and little lines flared from the corners. And yet he had the same bone-deep beauty he’d had as a boy. “I had to apologize for my behavior this afternoon.”
“You need not excuse yourself,” she said, holding out her hand. The day had passed in such a fury of emotion that she hadn’t taken a breath, hadn’t thought. Everything that she’d ever dreamed of—no, not Ada’s death, but the rest—had come true in one moment.
Gideon walked in, and they sat by the fireplace as if they’d been married for over a decade, as if young love had faded and turned to something stronger.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said after a moment.
“In my bedchamber, or in Kent?” She smiled, trying to ease the tension in his face.
“In Kent,” he said, not smiling. “I must leave at dawn tomorrow; all my people think I merely stopped here on the way to visit Ada’s great-aunt. She had no other relatives.”
The ton would certainly discover where he was, given the kiss with which he’d greeted her. But she didn’t say anything. She kept searching his face, looking for that indescribable thing that had made him the man she loved above everyone and everything else.
“There will be gossip,” he added. His mouth tightened. He was acquiring little marks by the edges of his mouth, likely from making that silent rebuke. Making it over and over.
“I expect that’s the case,” she said, realizing that the room had fallen silent again.
“I don’t care.”
Eleanor blinked. “You don’t?”
“I have cared too much what other people thought. You never really understood why I married Ada, did you?”
“Likely not.”
“But you must have suspected that I could have ignored or overturned my father’s will.”
Eleanor took a deep breath. It was absurd to think that she wasn’t interested in hearing his reasoning. Of course she was interested. She loved Gideon. He was her true passion. “I thought perhaps…” But she stopped. He wasn’t the sort of man with whom one could talk about lechery.
He was waiting, so she tried again. “We abandoned propriety…”
“It wasn’t that, though I acted like a rakeshame when I took your virginity,” he said, leaning forward. His eyes were the blue of the Aegean Sea. “And even worse, when I turned my back on you. I know you must have considered taking your own life, Eleanor.”
Eleanor coughed. “Well, I—”
“It took me a year, even longer, to realize that a love like ours comes once in a lifetime. Only once, and never again.”
“You didn’t seem to feel as passionately as I did,” Eleanor said bluntly. “If I felt we shared the love of a lifetime, you did not agree.”
“That’s because I was a fool.” He captured her hand and wove his fingers through hers. “I had no idea what it meant—how much it meant—to have a woman’s desire. To know that I mattered to you.”
He stopped, so Eleanor said, almost reluctantly, “You were everything to me, Gideon.” And he had been. That fact didn’t explain why her heart didn’t catch now with that familiar agony, the joy of seeing him. She thought love like hers would last forever.
Of course it would. Shakespeare said that love didn’t alter with days or weeks. And she truly loved Gideon. Then.
He didn’t seem to catch the silent but that followed her You were everything to me. His grip tightened on her hand and he leaned forward again. “That’s why I breached every rule of society in order to come to your side, if only for a night. I can’t see you again for a year, of course. I must honor Ada and mourn her properly. But I can’t let you marry Villiers. Not with the way you feel about me!”
“What about the way you feel about me?” Eleanor asked, pulling her fingers free. She was conscious of a strangely bleak feeling around her heart.
“I feel just the same way,” he said without hesitation. “I survived my marriage, after the first year or so, by remembering how you—how you trembled when I kissed you, Eleanor. How you used to ask me for another kiss, and another. How you…how you invited me to…”
“I understand.” She folded her hands in her lap.
“I shouldn’t even voice such emotions,” he said, looking at her earnestly. “Not a word shall pass my lips until my mourning period is over. Servants may gossip, but there will be no consequences.”
He rose to his feet and held out his hand for her.
Her fingers didn’t burn at his touch. Her heart didn’t flutter in her chest.
She felt as if a shadow Eleanor were in the room with them, the Eleanor of old, who would have been laughing, and crying, and throwing herself onto Gideon’s chest. Who would have been unable to stop kissing him, her hands flying about his shoulders, touching him as he so clearly longed for her to do.
“Do you understand now why I left you for Ada?” he said, scooping up her hands and putting the palms against his mouth.
“No,” Eleanor said. “No.”
The shadow Eleanor would have kissed his palm. She might even have done something mad, like pull off his neck scarf, laughing at his protests, her fingers trailing over the strong column of his throat.
The real Eleanor just closed her lips tightly.
“I didn’t understand that you were like food and drink. I never imagined that the attentions I—I silently chided you for would become the only thing I longed for. That without your desire I would shrivel into a man I scarcely recognize, a man without blood.”
“You never revealed anything to me,” she whispered. “Nothing. I saw you so many times after you married.”
“Ada knew.”
“I thought—I feared—”
“She understood. I used to talk of you sometimes.”
“You didn’t!”
“She had no interest in marital relations,” he said. “None. If I was trapped by my father’s will, she was equally trapped.”
“You never made love?”
“A few times, in the first year. It made her cough. It made her uncomfortable and unhappy. She didn’t enjoy it in the least.” His hands tightened convulsively on hers. “After a while all I could think about was you, and the way you welcomed me, desired me. Of you, and what I threw away.”
Eleanor took a deep breath. “I’m honored by your feelings—”
“There aren’t many women like you,” he interrupted. “Do you know that, Eleanor? Do you understand how life-giving, how important, you are to a man? I would kiss you now,” he said, his eyes fierce, intent. “I would sweep you into my arms and carry you to that bed, if it were honorable, Eleanor. You know that, don’t you?”
“Well—” she said, startled.
“In fact, the more I look at you, the more I feel my grip on honor slipping from my grasp,” he said hoarsely. “Ada knew, after all. What
’s a scandal between you and me? We—”
“No,” she said firmly. “Gideon, you have to leave at dawn and continue your journey to Ada’s great-aunt.”
“But I’ll return to you,” he said, his voice full of longing. “You can’t stay here, with Villiers.”
“I’m visiting Lisette, not the duke.”
“I saw the way he looked at you.”
“Villiers is marrying Lisette.”
Gideon snorted.
Eleanor blinked. “Did you say something?”
“The Duke of Villiers has finally found the one woman he can’t have.” There was something bold and prideful in his voice that froze the words in her mouth. “He will have to live without you.”
“As I said, he plans to marry Lisette,” she said, moving toward the door. “Now I really must go to sleep, Gideon. It’s been a long day.”
“I would kiss you,” he said, moving after her. “But I wouldn’t be able to stop. And I know you couldn’t. So I’m being good for both of us.”
Eleanor swallowed. “I’m glad,” she said faintly, opening the door.
It was all she’d dreamed of for years. He leaned toward her, his beautifully-shaped mouth hovering near hers. “Ask me, Eleanor,” he whispered. “Beg me to stay. I can’t say no to you. I never could say no to you.”
The shadow Eleanor would have pleaded with him to stay. She would be a flame by now, intent on driving him to the same luxurious agony.
The real Eleanor felt strangely calm. Gideon seemed too beautiful, and too passive. Why did he want her to do all the kissing? Why did she have to—
She cleared her throat. “Not tonight,” she said. “You’re right. It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
She had the door almost closed when it opened again under the pressure of his hand. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you here with Villiers and those bastards of his.”
“I’m visiting Lisette,” she said patiently.
“How long?”
“How long what?”
“How long will your visit be?”
“Oh, a few more days,” she said, not having given it much thought.
“I’ll come back,” he said. “I’ll escort you and your mother back to London.”