B00Y3771OO (R) (7 page)

Shame needled her that she’d not considered them before she’d entered these lonely walls. Lucien had driven her here. The men here, collectively, had brought her back. She kept her gaze trained on their faces and not those stark, white linens that danced around her memory.

She paused mid-stride as the flash of crisp linen from her past nearly blinded her, until all she saw was white. The white of Sara’s cheeks, drained of color from the doctor having bled her for too many days. The white of the linens as she’d lain motionless, empty-eyed, staring at the ceiling overhead. Eloise shot a hand out, seeking purchase and finding it on a convenient pillar.

“Are you all right?”’

She jerked and blinked several times as the concerned question pulled her to the moment. With sanity restored, she nodded slowly and looked about for the owner of those words.

A cheerful soldier with a wide-toothed smile met her eyes. The bright shock of his orange-red hair perfectly suited to one of his high spirits. “I’m…” Her words trailed off as she registered the absence of both limbs. She marveled at Lucien’s seeming ease in moving through life missing one of those much-needed arms. That this man should miss two…Sadness knifed through her.

His grin widened. “You’re afraid of hospitals.”

The momentary twinge of pity fled. “Beg your pardon?”

He jerked his chin about. “I’ve seen you now both times you’ve entered. You become all queer.”

Her lips twitched in an involuntary smile. “Queer?” she asked, appreciating his candor. Eloise wandered closer and edged forward to the lone chair.

“Ah, if I’d but known that such flowery speech could draw such a lovely lady close, I’d have long ago bandied about such compliments.”

She laughed, taking a seat beside him. “Indeed, such talk would be sure to turn any lady’s head.”

He inclined his head. “Lieutenant MacGregor.”

A lieutenant. The same distinct rank attained by Lucien, a position that signified wealth and status to grant such a position. “Lady Eloise, the Countess of Sherborne,” she said belatedly.

“I didn’t believe you’d return,” he said with surprising candidness.

“Oh?” She almost had not.

He lowered his voice and waggled fiery eyebrows. “Some of us even had wagers on it.”

She supposed she should be scandalized by such an admission but embraced the honesty. Her humor fled. “I almost didn’t,” she confessed, oddly freed by that truth. Perhaps it was his sudden, unexpected, stoic calm, or perhaps it was that he was a stranger who didn’t know of her past or even her present. “I have a fear of the color white.” Even as the words left her mouth, her cheeks blazed. “Not merely the color white, but nurses and doctors…” Though she’d not seen the stern-faced, somber doctors with their grim thoughts and dark pronouncements. “I imagine that seems wholly silly,” she said her words running together. “And quite irrational.” She allowed her gaze to wander to a point beyond his shoulder to the rows of beds.

“I’ve learned there is sometimes no accounting for some fears,” he said pulling her back. “But I’ve also learned, more often than not, there are reasons for those fears.” He paused. “We all have them, my lady.”

Eloise thought of the muscle jumping at the corner of Lucien’s eye. “Yes,” she agreed. “We do, don’t we?” She appreciated his admission when everyone else had only seen in her an unfortunate young widow, but not thought much beyond that loss to know all the collective losses she’d suffered, the ones that all together kept her awake.

“And for that fear, you came back.” He shifted his body, angling the empty place his arm used to be and she imagined if he’d still possessed his arms he would have held a hand up to her. Her heart wrenched unwittingly at his loss.

Yes, she had. For what would be the alternative? Dwelling in a lonely world with melancholy reminders of who they’d been before they’d matured into somber, altered people?

The door opened. She looked to the front of the room. Her breath caught at the cherished figure who strode through the doors, commanding in his black attire. With his long, graceful strides, this man bore every hint of the noble birthright he’d been born to.

“That is Lieutenant Jonas,” Lieutenant MacGregor said, noting her interest. “Though he prefers to be called Jones,” he added more as an afterthought to himself.

She said nothing, instead a voyeur as Lucien paused beside a bed to speak to one of the men.

“…He comes every Sunday,” MacGregor was saying.

“Does he?” she asked. Hope slipped into her heart. This was the man he had been. Not cold, not unfeeling, but one who’d been a boy of twelve and shrugged out of his jacket to give it to a girl who’d been pushed into the lake by his older brother.

“I imagine it is his day off. I understand he is a butler to the Marquess of Drake.”

Lucien stood conversing with a balding gentleman leaning on crutches. He nodded at something the soldier said, that increasingly familiar hard set to his unsmiling mouth held her transfixed. What would it be like to teach those lips to curve up in that teasing half-grin as they once had? The same muscles, the same lips, and yet, a gesture seeming so impossible with the hardened stranger he’d become.

Even with the space between them she detected his whipcord muscles go taut with awareness, noting her scrutiny and she jerked her attention away from him, back to Lieutenant MacGregor…

Whose gaze was now fixed elsewhere. The young gentleman angled his head in greeting. “Hello,” he called out.

She swallowed hard, having little doubt who that greeting was intended for.

Bloody hell.

Bloody hell!
What was she doing here?

Lucien moved with determined steps along the white walls he’d called home for too many years. First, she’d infiltrated the Marquess of Drake’s townhouse, his place of employment. Now, she’d wheedled her way into this place he visited on the lone day he called his own. He stopped before MacGregor, a debt-ridden baronet’s second son, who’d fought alongside him in the Thirty-first Regiment. “MacGregor,” he drawled, deliberately fixing his gaze beyond the crown of riotous blonde curls.

“Jones,” the man called out with his usual, unexplainable cheer. He’d never understood how the man could smile after all he’d seen and all he’d lost.

“It is good to see you,” he said, very deliberately ignoring Eloise, though attuned to the nuances of her body’s every movement.

“I must warn you, if you’ve come to fleece me today in a game of faro, I’ve lovely company instead.”

A becoming blush stained Eloise’s cheeks.

“I see that,” he said, reveling in the pale pink that flared to a crimson hue. “My lady,” he murmured.

Eloise sprang to her feet. Her skirts snapped noisily about her feet. “Luci…” She cast a sideways glance at a curious MacGregor. Her blush deepened. In all the years he’d known her, she’d never been one of those blushing, fainting ladies. She’d possessed an indomitable spirit and boldness. Had the unknown Lord Sherborne wrought that affect? He found he rather hated the dead man for that crime.

Then, he was guilty of far greater crimes than hating a dead man.

MacGregor looked back and forth between them, interest piqued. “You know each other,” he said as though he’d solved the mystery of life.

“No.”

“Yes.”

He arched an eyebrow.

Eloise clasped her hands in front of her. “That is, what I meant to say…” The two men looked at her expectantly. “Is yes,” she finished lamely.

The lieutenant sat back in his bed. “Well,” he said, with no small trace amount of shock. “I’ll leave you to your visit.”

This time they spoke in unison. “No!”

Lucien tugged at his lapel disliking the unease she roused in him. He preferred his life well-ordered, rigid, devoid of emotion. Not this uncertain, volatile pull between them whenever they came together. “Uh…”

“I should be going,” Eloise said quietly. She dropped a curtsy. “Lieutenant MacGregor.” Then, she met Lucien’s eyes with the directness he remembered of her. “I wouldn’t dare interfere with your visit. Forgive me.” Her meaning clear; as a servant he had but one day granted his own. She, an elevated lady—a countess—was permitted those small, but valuable luxuries when she desired.

Wordlessly, he stepped aside so she could skirt by him without brushing. He stared after her as she marched with small, precise steps, with the same proud set to her shoulders as evinced by Joan of Arc, herself.

“You’re a bloody fool, Jones,” MacGregor snorted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he muttered, gaze trained on Eloise. One of the soldiers, missing his lower two extremities, said something that called her to a stop. Most ladies would have been horrified to visit this place. Not Eloise. An unwitting smile turned his lips with the memory of the day she’d pointed her eyes to the sky and baited a squeamish Richard’s hook.

MacGregor noted his continued scrutiny. “Then you’re an even bigger fool than I imagined.”

He yanked his attention away from Eloise and frowned. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I might not have the use of my arms, but I have perfect use of my eyes and I saw the way that lady studied you.”

Lady. And with the great class divide between them, now as unattainable as the Queen of England. “She’s a bloody countess,” he added. Not that he had any interest of the romantic sort with Eloise Gage, now the Countess of Sherborne. His heart was dead.

So why did the hint of warmth stir the damned organ at the smile on her full lips?

“And you’re a nobleman’s younger son playing at servant.” The man’s rejoinder contained a stunning seriousness that stiffened Lucien’s spine.

“I know her,” he conceded at last.

The lieutenant scoffed. “Impossible,” he said, that one word utterance laced heavily with sarcasm.

A mottled flush heated his neck and he resisted the urge to loosen his cravat. “We were friends as children.” He shifted under the man’s scrutiny, not understanding this compulsion to explain away his relationship with Eloise.

An appreciative glimmer flicked to life in MacGregor’s eyes as he looked down the rows of beds to where she still stood talking to the same man. “That woman is a child no more.”

Something tightened in his gut at the primitive interest in the other man’s eyes. And it was wholly foolish to feel this masculine possessiveness for Eloise. But Goddamn it. “Close your damned mouth,” he snapped, knowing he was being a surly bastard. “You’re drooling like a stray pup over the lady.”

Instead of taking offense, his words restored the man’s usual merriment. He tossed his head back and laughed. “And you are not a man who still sees a child in her,” he said.

He glanced about to see how far those too-loudly spoken words had traveled. Eloise remained fully engrossed in conversation with the man at her side. Lucien stared unashamedly at the two of them. She needn’t remain by the man’s side for…he yanked the timepiece given him as a youth by his father many years earlier and consulted it…well, however many minutes. It must have been a good ten or so. Entirely too long and…

She nodded and then continued on her way and walked through those double doors.

He rocked on his heels. Good. She’d taken her leave.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d suggest you go after the lady and spare the rest of us your miserable company and brilliant skillset at faro and whist.”

He made a crude gesture that redoubled the man’s laughter. “I…”

“Go,” MacGregor prodded and kicked him in the leg, nudging him ahead.

Lucien frowned, hesitating.

MacGregor gave him another kick. “Go,” he said again, annoyance and amusement underscoring that one word command.

And then, as if of their own volition, his legs began to move and he walked briskly through the room he’d recently entered. He shoved the doors open and stared down the long corridor. He lengthened his strides. She’d always moved quickly for one so small. Then, a child, who’d found friendship in he and Richard, two slightly older, always taller boys she’d been forced to do so in order to keep up.

Eloise turned the corner and made for the foyer.

“Eloise.”

She stumbled and spun around, a hand to the modest décolletage of her sea foam dress. “You startled me.” Again. The luxuriant fabric drew out the piercing blue-green of her eyes, momentarily holding him spellbound. The beauty of those eyes reached into his soul and robbed him of breath. She tipped her head. “Lucien?”

He heard the question there and continued forward.

He expected her to retreat, but she remained rooted to the spot. “What do you—?”

“Why are you here?”

Four little lines of consternation appeared as Eloise furrowed her brow. “You stopped me,” she said slowly as though speaking to a lackwit.

He cursed. “Not
here
, Eloise. In London Hospital, in the marchioness’ parlor.”

“I’m not in the marchioness’ parlor, silly. I can’t be two places at—”

“Eloise,” he said in a harsh, impatient tone that killed the teasing edge to her words. In that moment he hated himself more than he ever had before, which was saying a good deal considering the crimes he was guilty of. But he’d never been a bully…until she’d reappeared, making him hate himself for altogether new and different reasons. “Forgive me.”