B00Y3771OO (R) (4 page)

Eloise. Lady Sherborne.

The Marchioness of Drake.

Refreshments.

Tea, yes, they required tea.

With wooden steps he strode through the house, focused on the task set out. Refreshments were easy. An ugly, mirthless chuckle worked its way up his throat. Mayhap not easy,
per se,
with one and a half arms, but something he now accomplished with enough ease to not rely on others for the simple chore.

He marched down the corridor to the kitchens. The kitchen staff looked to him. “Refreshments,” he barked, his voice still gruff from ill-use.

A handful of servants hurried to ready a tray for the marchioness and her guest. Guest. Aye, it was far easier to think of the lady with wounded eyes as a mere guest and not the girl who’d fished and swam alongside him and his brother, Richard, in the Kent countryside. To remember her as she’d been, forced him to think of the day he’d accepted that damned commission, capitulating to his father’s urgings, leaving his wife, and stepping into the European theatre masterminded by the power-hungry Boney.

A servant rushed toward the door with the tray.

“I’ll see to it myself,” he snapped.

The dozen or so of the kitchen staff stared at him, wide-eyed.

She hesitated and then handed it over.

They’d learned early on not to question his abilities or capabilities. He easily handled the silver tray in his steady, stable, strong, right arm and the partial left. With sure footsteps, he made his way to the door. A servant discreetly held it open and he exited the kitchens. With each step that carried him closer to Eloise, he steeled his heart, not allowing himself to think about what brought her here.

He remembered the troublesome minx she’d been as a child enough to know this was no serendipitous meeting with the marchioness. Instead, he chose to focus on this unfamiliar stranger who’d replaced the oft blushing, usually tongue-tied Eloise Gage.

She’d wed a nobleman. A Lord Sherborne. He hoped the blighter was possessed of a tolerant, patient spirit. The Eloise Lucien had long known had the frequent tendency to find herself in all manner of difficulties. He strode down the corridor. And by God he did not intend to allow himself to be her latest manner of difficulty.

He paused outside the open parlor door. A quiet, husky laugh, familiar and all the more aching for that familiarity, washed over him. He clenched his eyes tightly not wanting it to matter that Eloise laughed the way she had as girl and… His mind raced. She must be twenty-seven, nay. She had a birthday two months past, the twenty-fourth of January. She would be twenty-eight now.

And he hated that he remembered that piece of her because it meant he was not as indifferent to Eloise as he cared to believe.

“…I’m so sorry,” Lady Drake said softly.

His ears pricked up.

“It is…” The remainder of Eloise’s words escaped him.

God help him. If any of the staff spied the butler, the most distinguished member of the household staff, hovering at the door, eavesdropping like a chit just from the schoolroom, the marquess would likely sack him with good reason. But for that, he remained rooted to the spot.

“…I cannot imagine the loss…”

His gut clenched. What loss? And for the first time since he’d abandoned the more respectable, honored position as third son to a viscount, he damned the class division that obscured the truth and the remainder of that thought. What had happened to Eloise? After he’d returned and discovered the death of his wife, and a child he’d only learned of on the pages of letters handed him on the battlefield, he’d retreated to London, half-dead, emaciated like a stray dog in the streets, content to die. He’d not thought of Eloise. Or…

The tray rattled in his arm. He silently cursed as the silver clattered noisily. The ladies fell silent. A dull flush climbing up his neck, Lucien stepped inside the room. “My lady,” he said, his tone harsh.

Except, his employer, the benevolent Lady Emmaline Drake, had known him when he’d first found a place in London Hospital. She’d sat by his side reading to him, ignoring his surliness and had remained devoted. As a result, she gave no outward appearance of being bothered by his coarse tone and rough, soldier’s speech.

The marchioness smiled. “Thank you, Jones. If you’ll set it over here.”

“Jones?”

Lucien cursed and nearly upended the tray under Eloise’s perplexed question.

Lady Drake motioned in his general direction. “Jones, my…”

Eloise opened her mouth, likely to correct the marchioness’ error. He glowered her into silence and the words withered and died on her lips. She frowned, though the slight narrowing of her eyes indicated she had little intention of allowing the matter to rest.

He continued to glare at her. He had little intention of allowing the stubborn young lady an opportunity to ask her questions, in front of his employer no less. “Is there anything else I may get you, my lady?”

His mistress inclined her head. “No, that will be all.”

With a grateful silent exhalation of air, he started for the door, when Eloise’s words to Lady Drake froze him mid-step.

“I do not suppose
Jones,”
Lucien growled, his unblinking gaze on the bloody wall in the hall.
Do not say it,
“mentioned we were acquainted as children.” Of course, he should have known Eloise enough to know she’d never be reticent merely because he willed it. He shot a glance over his shoulder. Eloise angled her chin up. Her words were directed to the marchioness, her stare trained on him. “We were quite the best of friends.”

They had been. In this, the lady spoke the truth. As a young boy he’d not really seen the usefulness in girls. Father had demanded he and Richard entertain his friend’s lonely daughter, Eloise. Belligerent as any lad of seven would have been with those directives, it had taken little time for Lucien to find she was unlike any girl he’d ever known. She’d loved to spit, fish, and bait her own hooks. She’d been bloody perfect to a lad of seven.

Lady Drake looked wide-eyed between them. “Indeed?” A pleased smile lit her brown eyes. She motioned him forward. “Jones, you mustn’t rush off! However did you not mention such a thing?”

“Oh, I’m sure because he is so very dedicated to his services that he’d never do something as improper as to rekindle an old friendship if it were to in anyway compromise his obligations to your household, my lady.” He’d have to be as deaf as a dowager to fail to hear the stinging rebuke in her words.

He hesitated, eyeing the door with the same longing a man with an addiction to drink surely felt for a tumbler of whiskey.

“Don’t you dare leave,” Lady Drake admonished, a smile in her gentle command.

Lucien turned fully around. He fixed a black scowl on Eloise with a look that would have withered much taller, stronger men. She angled her chin up another notch.

“It has been so long, Emmaline.” She lowered her voice to an almost conspiratorial whisper. “Do you know, I believe for a moment Mr. Jonas…
Jones
didn’t remember me?” A forced laugh bubbled past her lips.

He frowned. When had Eloise learned the art of false laughter and brittle smiles? As much as he detested her reappearance in his life, he hated even more that innocent, grinning Eloise with that intriguing birthmark at the corner of her lip had been hardened by life. “I should return to my obligations, my lady,” he said. He’d never been one to plead. But from the time the surgeon had made the decision to chop off the lower portion of his left arm, he’d not begged anyone for anything. Mayhap if he’d begged his father, begged for that position with the church instead of a damned commission, Sara would now live. In this moment he wanted to beg off, leave the two ladies here.

“Oh, you simply mustn’t, Jones!” The faintest command underlined the marchioness’ words and he silently cursed, knowing all hope of escape had been effectively ended by the bits of his past Eloise had dangled before his employer.

Eloise averted her eyes, unwilling to meet his gaze. Good, the lady should be bloody terrified. She didn’t play with the same lad who’d raced across the hills of Kent. No, Eloise didn’t know the man he’d become. She only remembered the man she thought she knew. The one who’d laughed and smiled and loved.

He shifted on his feet, too aware of the station difference between him and these ladies. And he hated that Eloise had reminded him he’d not always been a servant. For there was nothing disrespectful in honest, hard work. Of course, the viscount would never see it that way. He smiled. Oh, that would be the ultimate revenge upon his vile sire. “I have household business to attend to, my lady,” he tried again. It was the closest he’d come to begging.

Something reflected in Lady Drake’s eyes. Possessed of a kinder heart than most of the empty-headed, vain members of the
ton
, she saw more. She must have seen something in his expression for she inclined her head and the laughter dimmed in her eyes. “Of course, Jones.”

He sketched a bow and, without a backward glance for Eloise, all but sprinted from the room, feeling the same freeing sense of relief he’d felt when he’d fled Kent after learning of Sara’s death.

Chapter 4

E
loise tried to smile. She tried to drum up suitable repartee and dialogue for the kind, warmhearted marchioness who’d been so gracious to invite her to visit when no one in Society really invited Eloise anywhere.

She tried. She really did. But failed miserably. Quite miserably. Eloise accepted the proffered cup of tea, grateful for something to hold in her slightly trembling fingers. She raised the glass of tepid brew to her lips and sipped, all the while aware of the marchioness’ curious stare trained upon her. She took another sip.

“I hope you know,” the marchioness began and Eloise froze, the rim of her delicate, porcelain glass pressed to her lips. “I would never dare press you for details that I don’t have a right to.”

The muscles of her throat worked spasmodically. She managed a nod but feared if she spoke her gratitude the other woman would detect the tremor in her words.

Emmaline held up the tray of pastries. “I have a shameful weakness for cherry tarts.”

Eloise clung to the offered change of discourse and set her teacup down. “Then who doesn’t?” She plucked one of the confectionary treats from the tray and the other woman laid the small platter upon the marble top table.

They shared a smile and sat in companionable silence for a long while, nibbling at their respective pastries.

The marchioness was the first to break the silence. “Ours was not necessarily a chance meeting, was it?” There was no rebuke, no outraged shock in that question, sentiments the woman was entitled to.

The dessert crumbled to ash in Eloise’s suddenly too-dry mouth. She choked around the bite and picked up her cup once more. She took a sip.

Emmaline waited patiently. Then, according to what she’d learned of the woman who’d been betrothed as a child and waited nearly twenty years for her intended, the returned war hero Lord Drake, to come up to scratch—she was quite adept at waiting.

Eloise sighed, humbled not for the first time. “No,” she admitted, shamed by the woman’s discovery. “I’m sorry.” How very inadequate that apology was for this woman who’d been nothing but kind, when most members of the
ton
were usually nothing but coolly polite to Eloise. She flicked her gaze over to the entrance of the room, but, of course, he would not be there. Lucien had responsibilities, of which she’d never been one. At the pain of that, she tightened her fingers around her glass.

As though sensing her disquiet, Emmaline laid her fingers upon Eloise’s hand and she lightened her hold upon the fragile cup. “You needn’t apologize,” she assured her. “Truly.” She winked. “I imagine you’ve not coordinated a meeting with me based on nefarious purposes.”

“Oh, no, indeed not. I….oh…” Heat splashed her cheeks at the teasing glimmer in Emmaline’s eyes. “You are teasing.”

“Yes.” The other woman sat back in her seat. “As you’re likely aware, there are not enough opportunities for a good teasing.”

“Oh, I’m aware,” she muttered under her breath. The moment she’d entered the glittering world of polite Society, she’d come to appreciate how staid, stiff, and generally unpleasant members of the peerage were, and most especially to young women like Eloise, who did not boast the most distinguished of familial connections.

“Forgive me,” the marchioness murmured. “I’d pledged to not press you for answers and yet, here I am doing that very thing.”

Eloise shook her head. “No, you aren’t.” She wrinkled her nose. Or perhaps the woman had inadvertently sought answers to questions of the man named Lucien Jonas, or as she knew him, Jones. “I didn’t feel you were,” she added, reassuringly.

All the while she wondered with a dry humor what the pompous, always proper Viscount Hereford would say to the knowledge his son had altered his surname. That would likely be the final nail in the failing viscount’s steady decline.

Which only reminded Eloise of the desperate search she’d launched for Lucien and the discovery that had led her to London Hospital. She stared down at her palms, transfixed by the crescent scar on the inner portion of the wrist, remembering the day she’d received that particular mark. Reluctantly, she raised her head. “You are correct. I…” Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “I sought you out under information I’d gleaned from a servant in your employ.” She winced. Proud, powerful, noble Lucien had forsaken the life of comfort he’d known and, by the fury in his eyes at her reentry into his life, embraced this new life.

Emmaline held a hand up. “You needn’t say anything more,” she said quietly.

She braced for the stiff disapproval…that did not come.

The marchioness trailed a distracted finger halfway around the rim of her cup and then back again. She repeated the movement several times, her gaze directed inward. Then she paused, her index finger on the center of the rim. “Do you know how I met Mr. Jones?”

Her heart stuttered. “I do not,” she said between tense lips, both craving a piece of the missing years of his young life and fearing the words the woman might impart. The crisp, clean, yet lonely, London Hospital flashed behind her eyes. The broken, sorrowful men in their beds. The muscles in her stomach tightened with thoughts of Lucien as alone and somber as the Lieutenant-Captain.