To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke Book 8) (23 page)

Bloody hell. From over the top of her head, he caught Eleanor’s gaze. She gave him a slight nod and smile, and then turned her focus to something Lady Marianne said.

“…the opera. And it would be so splendid. Don’t you agree?”

He swung his attention back to Lizzie and blinked furiously. What was she on about?

Lizzie tapped a finger against his lapel. “The opera. I simply wish you to accompany me to the opera.”

He’d learned long ago to be wary of statements from Lizzie that began with “I simply wish…” Marcus folded his arms and winged an eyebrow up. “What else?”

She forced a smile. “You are always so suspicious, Marcus.” She trilled a laugh that made him wince. “That is all.” In a weak attempt at nonchalance, she patted her curls. He turned and started back for Eleanor when Lizzie called out. “Oh, and Marianne will be joining us.”

Marcus resisted the urge to drag his hands over his face. Who would have imagined his sister would have proven to be a more meddling matchmaker than his blasted mother?

“I do not like you, Mrs. Collins.”

Eleanor started. She opened her mouth, but no words came out for the flawlessly perfect, exotic beauty. In fact, she may as well have imagined the virulent statement from the young lady in her elegant, pale blue, satin skirts. Lady Marianne stood silently staring after brother and sister in the near distance. But all doubts over the realness of that admission were shattered as the young woman spoke once more.

“I haven’t liked you since you arrived in London and snared the viscount’s attentions and I’ve not liked you since you began inserting yourself into his life.”

Having battled countless sneers and unkind whispers when she’d made her Come Out years earlier, Eleanor could well handle a spiteful eighteen or nineteen-year-old brat. “You are nothing if not honest,” she said dryly. She cast a hopeful look in Marcus’ direction. Alas, salvation was not coming from that score. Marcus remained engrossed in discourse with his lively sister.

“Are you making light of me, Mrs. Collins?” the young lady hissed.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

At Eleanor’s attempt at droll humor, Lady Marianne Hamilton pursed her lips. She opened her mouth as though to launch a stinging attack on Eleanor, but then proved that years of lessons on decorum and propriety could not be easily forgotten—even in the face of spiteful hatred for an interloper like Eleanor. “He is a splendid gentleman, isn’t he?”

Eleanor choked. Surely, she’d heard the young lady wrong.

Lady Marianne Hamilton made a tsking sound. “Why, an experienced widow, you’ve no doubt appreciated His Lordship’s physique.”

Heat slapped Eleanor’s cheeks as she was reminded once more how hopelessly out of place she’d always been amongst the vipers of polite Society. “It is hardly appropriate to speak about—”

“Oh, come, a woman such as you? Why, the least shocking thing you’ve surely done is pant after the viscount.”

A woman such as her? A sudden cold stole through Eleanor and a panicky unease unfurled in her belly. She fought to calm her racing heart. There was no way this woman knew her past. No way…

Lady Marianne turned her lips up in a slow, knowing grin. “You see, Mrs. Collins, noblemen such as the viscount wed young ladies such as me. His sister even knows it, and it is why she’ll matchmake for me and interrupt whatever scandalous deeds you intend with Lord Wessex.” She flicked a glance up and down Eleanor’s frame and she drew her shoulders back under the insolence of that stare. The young lady peeled her lip back in a sneer. “The viscount will dally with a merchant’s daughter, but ultimately, he’ll wed a lady—” She preened. “Such as myself. So you may carry on with Lord Wessex, but I intend to wed him and his fifty thousand pounds.”

Eleanor saw, breathed, and tasted fury. His fifty thousand pounds? “Is that all he is to you? A fat purse to catch?” She would sooner slice off her own fingers, one at a time, than see him wed a creature such as this.

“That is not all he is. I will enjoy stealing off to the gardens with him…” Another icy shiver raced along Eleanor’s spine as the young woman flounced her dark curls. Lady Marianne leaned close, dropping her voice to a barely discernible whisper. “And you do know much about midnight meetings in the gardens, don’t you?”

The earth shifted under her feet. Eleanor clutched her hands to her throat at the ugly, horrifying truth.
She could not know. She could not.
The young woman smiled through Eleanor’s silent torment. “After all, you are a widow and widows do know of midnight meetings in gardens, do they not?”

Eleanor dropped her arms to her sides and blinked once, twice, and a third time. Of course, she could not know. How could she? She balled her hands at her sides, detesting Lady Marianne Hamilton with a seething hatred. These grasping, title-seeking women who knew nothing of love and warmth. Eleanor tipped her chin up a notch. “Some lofty noblemen you speak of will assuredly wed you. But that man will not be Lord Wessex. He is entirely too good and clever to wed a coldhearted creature such as you.” She prayed her words to be true. For even as Eleanor with her tattered past no longer deserved him, this woman deserved him even less.

Lady Marianne gasped and Eleanor took advantage of the lady’s momentary shock. She turned on her heel and marched away, back to the curricle. Fury burned in her veins and fueled her movements. Surely Marcus would never fall prey to that viper’s charms? Surely he—She gasped as someone took her at her elbow. Drawing her arm back, she swung about, but Marcus easily clasped her wrist, catching the blow.

“Never tell me you intend to blacken my eye now?” Droll humor laced his question.

The tension drained to her feet and Eleanor loosened her arm. “Marcus,” she said flatly. “I did not hear you approach.”

“Because you were sprinting away.” He peered at her. “Did Lady Marianne say something to upset you?”

“No.” Yes. Nothing that wasn’t the truth, however. “We’ve accomplished the item on the list, Marcus. There is no longer a need for us to be here.”

A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. “Of course,” he said tersely. He lifted her up and easily handed her into the seat. “Let us return, then, and cross this item from your list. I have issued an invitation for you and your aunt to join my family at the theatre later this week.” He tightened his mouth. “Another item to strike from your list.”

As the curricle lurched forward, Eleanor bit her lower lip to keep from giving in to tears. She stared blankly out at the merry couples; unfettered in their happiness. Her gaze snagged upon a young blonde woman seated beside a golden-haired gentleman. Their eyes and faces demonstrated none of the mistrust that time had wrought upon Eleanor and Marcus. In fact, she might be looking at the couple, as they would have been if life had carried along its safer, happier trajectory.

But it hadn’t. Life had intruded and they could never, ever be that couple. Even if he offered for her and she wanted to accept, which she did, she could never give him the heir and spare he required as viscount. For the passion he’d roused with his kisses, her panicked reaction that morning was proof that no matter how much she wished it or willed it to be different, her mind and body were equally broken.

Her heart spasmed and she rubbed her palm over her chest to dull the ache. Her efforts proved futile. That organ had been broken long ago and could never be healed. How was she going to survive the rest of the Season, loving him more and more each day, while the chasm between them grew wide?

She looked up at him; silent and stoic when he was only ever grinning and laughing. Mayhap Marcus would not hate her so. Mayhap he would understand if she let him into her world in ways she’d never let anyone other than her father in; and he’d taken the truths and secrets to his grave. The risks of confiding anything in anyone had been too great; for her, for Marcia, for their collective future. The world was unkind to unwed mothers. It was even more so to the bastard children of those shameful mothers. As much as Marcus despised her for shattering his heart, he would never jeopardize Marcia’s safety or security. His gentleness with Marcia, his willingness to help Eleanor accomplish the tasks set out for her by her uncle, were proof that he was the same man he’d always been.

Yes, Marcus might be the affable, charming rogue to Society, but he was still the fiercely loyal, considerate gentleman who’d first and forevermore captured her heart. He was unlike any other man.

And that was why he was deserving of the truth. So he could be free to make the match required of him as a viscount and not be burdened with the tasks Eleanor had been assigned by the late duke.

“Meet me in the gardens at quarter past the hour.”

For a long moment she suspected he’d not heard that barely there whisper, but then, with his gaze forward on the lines of curricles before them, he gave a tight nod.

H
e was late. And Eleanor only knew he was late because she herself had not exited her chambers until quarter past the hour. Seated on the wrought iron bench, amidst the roses and gardenias, she scanned the garden wall separating their homes for sign of him.

A night breeze stirred the bushes and the cool air penetrated the fabric of her modest gray muslin dress. Her spectacles slipped down her nose and she removed the unnecessary pair. For eight years she’d almost never been without the lenses. Since she’d arrived in London, they’d been more of an afterthought. An afterthought when of all places,
this
is where she needed them most. She dropped her gaze to the rims. She’d used them as a means of protection. There had been something falsely reassuring about the spectacles. They were a kind of mask she’d put on to be what she wished the world to see because…what if they saw the truth? What if they saw the woman who was used and dirty and who still bore the traces of ugliness on her body and soul? More, what if Marcus saw her in all those worst possible ways? Tears flooded her eyes and she blinked back the useless drops. One squeezed past her lid and slid down her cheek, followed by another and another.

Footsteps sounded on the other side of the garden wall and she hopped to her feet. Heart pounding hard, she quickly dashed her hands over her cheeks.

Marcus shoved his form to the top ledge of the wall and her heart caught painfully as he turned that charming grin on her. “My la…” His flirtatious greeting ended as his gaze snagged on her cheeks and that smile dipped.

Eleanor quickly angled herself away and brushed her palms over her cheeks. “My lord, I thought you’d not come,” she managed to infuse a steadiness and cheer to those handful of words.

Marcus hung by his hands over the wall and dropped to the earth. He landed with a soft thump in the earth below and paused. His gaze lingered on her eyes. She braced for a rash of probing questions.

Slipping his hands into his pockets, he strolled toward her. There was something so very sweet and endearing about the languidness of those movements. He evinced the same cocksure strength he had as a young man meeting the girl she’d been.

Eleanor reflexively tightened her hold on the wire rims, the useless, flimsy disguise she’d donned through the years. The rims snapped and the crack of metal echoed in the quiet. Startled, she looked down at the two pieces in her hand. Her heart caught. “My spectacles,” she whispered.

“Come, Eleanor, you never truly needed them.”

She lifted her unblinking gaze to Marcus, unable to sort out whether those words belonged to him or her. Wordlessly, she held them out and he collected the broken rims and tucked them into his front pocket.

…I shall hold it close to my heart, so a piece of you is always with me…

Eleanor captured her quivering lower lip hard between her teeth. He palmed her cheek and she leaned into his silken soft caress. Closing her eyes, she took in every delicate touch, every pure moment between them, because the moment she breathed the truth into the night air, she would forever shatter the sincerity in Marcus’ words for her. Eleanor drew in a steadying breath and opening her eyes. She stepped back.

“What is it?”

Gone would be that enticing, subtly seductive baritone. She lifted her arms. “My waltz at midnight.”

He froze. “Of course, your li—”

Eleanor pressed her fingertips to his lips, silencing the words there. “It is not about the list.” She smiled softly up at him. “This is for me, Marcus. I would take this dance, in your arms, not because someone demanded it or requested it. I would take it because, in this moment, at quarter past the midnight hour, I would claim that time that once belonged to us.”

Desire sparked within the depths of his eyes and threatened to burn her and, God help her, his was a conflagration she’d gladly turn herself over to; to know a touch born of love and tenderness and passion. Marcus swept his golden lashes down. Without a word, he settled his heavy palm at her waist and guided hers atop his shoulder, and then with their fingers joined as one, amidst the fragrant, springtime blooms, he waltzed her barefoot about the gardens.

Their breaths mingled and melded, and with the stars glittering overhead and the moon setting the ground aglow, they danced. She closed her eyes and turned herself over to the beauty of being in his arms. How many years had she ached for this stolen moment at midnight, with the darkness of demons slayed, so all they knew was joy?

“We are missing music, Eleanor,” he murmured and she opened her eyes, locking her gaze on the harshly beautiful angular planes of his face; the noble Roman nose, the hard, square jaw softened by the faintest cleft.

“We do not need music, Marcus.” They never had. Their bodies had long moved in a synchronistic harmony.

He curved his palm about her waist and she reveled in the thrill of his touch. “Ah, yes, but what waltz is complete without music?” Then, his breath tickling her skin, he began to sing.

“…Oft in the stilly night

Ere Slumber’s chain has bound me,

Fond memory brings the light

Of other days around me…”

As his husky baritone filtered about them, in a slightly off-key, discordant tune, tears welled in her eyes and slid unchecked down her cheeks.

“The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood’s years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimm’d and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken

Fond Memory brings the light

Of other days around me…”

Her breath caught on a sob and she dug her heels into the earth, bringing their dance to a jarring, painful halt. But then, ultimately, all beautiful moments died.

“Eleanor?”

The aching gentleness of Marcus’ tone gutted her and she hugged her arms at her waist. Why could he not be the coolly mocking cynic who’d come to hate her? Why must he now be this soft, tender man who sang songs of lost love?

Eleanor rubbed her arms in a bid to bring warmth into her trembling limbs. Unable to meet the intensity of his eyes, she wandered over to the cherry tree and ran her hand down the firm, broad trunk. The wind stirred and the pink-white blooms danced over her head, wafting the purity of their fragrant scent about her. She searched her raging mind for the truth he deserved. Odd, how the single most defining moment of her life had gripped her and consumed her for eight years and, yet, she stood before him silent and unknowing of where and how to begin her story. His feet ground up gravel as he strode down the path toward the shelter of the tree. Eleanor turned to face him and lifted a hand. The only place to begin was at the beginning “I was there.”

Marcus stopped so abruptly his feet churned up dirt and pebbles. A golden curl fell over his eye giving him an endearing, boyish look. “I don’t—?”

“You believe I did not show, but I was there, in Lady Wedermore’s gardens,” she clarified. And then a healing calm stole over Eleanor, driving back all the fear and reservations and horror of speaking of that night. There was freedom in it that lifted a weight from her burdened shoulders. “I was there.” She raised regretful eyes to his. “
You
were not.”

Marcus stared at Eleanor.

At last they would speak of it; the one night between them which had built an eight-year chasm. “Is that what you believed,” he asked slowly. “That I would not come?” Surely in all they’d shared, she would have known he would always come to her. “Surely that is not what would drive you into the arms of another.”

The full moon cast its pale white light through the branches of the cherry tree and the glow kissed Eleanor’s pale cheeks so that her teardrop glistened like sad diamonds.

At her stricken silence, he said gruffly, “I was there.”

“You came too late.”

Her agonized whisper ran through him. “I…” He took in the tense white lines at the corners of her mouth, the suffering that now bled from her eyes, and distant warning bells went off. Marcus dug his fingertips against his temple and rubbed, trying to make sense, trying, and failing…

It is because I do not wish to make sense…

He dropped his arm to his side with alacrity and when he spoke, there was a peculiar flatness to his tone. “What does that mean I came too late?”

“Someone else arrived first.” Eleanor curled her hands at her sides. “A…man.”

A man—? A thousand questions boiled to the surface, and with them, the pebble of unease in his belly grew to the size of a boulder. Her words led him down a path he did not wish to travel. “Did he threaten you with ruin?” he asked slowly, silently pleading with the fates.

A strangled laugh burst from her lips and she buried it in her fingers.

His mouth went dry and his gaze caught on the white-knuckled fist pressed against her mouth. An icy chill raked his spine and ran a quick course through him, freezing him from the inside out and yet perspiration beaded his brow as he considered the new Eleanor who’d returned to London. A woman fearful of men; who’d punched him…

The earth tipped, swayed, and dipped. “Oh, God,” the agonized whisper came from the place where horror and fear dwelt. Marcus concentrated on breathing. No. The imagination was an active, dangerous beast. As long as she did not utter the words, they remained untrue fabrications of an irrational thought based on a handful of incidences.

She pressed her palms to the uneven bark of the cherry tree, as though seeking support. “He didn’t threaten me with ruin.” Eleanor lifted her ravaged eyes to his and spoke in curiously deadened tones that sent a chill skittering around his insides. “He
did
ruin me.”

His heart ceased to beat and he tried to make out Eleanor’s raspy words as they ran together.

“He said no proper lady would be out meeting a lord in the gardens. He said as a poor merchant’s daughter, I-I was begging for any man between my legs.”

Insidious thoughts slipped into his consciousness of Eleanor on her back with the monster who’d stolen her innocence rutting between her thighs.

His stomach heaved and he closed his eyes a moment to keep from casting up the contents at her feet. With her strength and courage, she deserved more from Marcus than his frail weakness.

“I fought him,” she said, staring at a point beyond his shoulder, to the demons of her past and with those three words, she invited him into the world where she’d scratched, kicked, and clawed.

To no avail.

“Who was he?” The strangled plea tore from his throat. Who, so Marcus could end him with his bare hands.

“I did not know.” She avoided his gaze and a flash of terror lit her eyes, and then was gone so quickly he might have merely imagined it. “I knew nothing but his face and that he stank of brandy.”

The gardens echoed with the memory of imagined cries and pleas of some faceless, nameless stranger. Insanity licked at Marcus’ thoughts and cast a thick, dark curtain over his vision, as he imagined a hell in which the man who’d raped her was a gentleman he took drinks with or spoke to at Social events. Marcus tortured himself, imagining that bastard yanking her skirts up, shoving a knee between her legs, and—His breath came hard and fast in his ears, deafening.
Oh, God.

“At first, when he came upon me,” she said more to herself, yanking him back from the precipice of madness. “I continued looking at the door, silently begging you to come. And then, I lay through his attack, silently pleading with you to not come. Because I could not bear it if you saw me that w-way.” The faint tremor to that word had the same effect as a blade being thrust into his belly and twisted.

His heart lurched. Where had he been? Whatever waylaid him that night, whoever it had been, was so very insignificant that he could not recall the name or reason for his delay. And yet, that trivial meeting had upended her world, shattered their happiness. He wanted to toss his head back and rail at fate. “Oh, Eleanor,” he whispered, and he, who’d charmed countless ladies in her absence, was so wholly useless in this moment. There were no pretty endearments or perfect words that could take away any of her suffering.

She hugged herself tight and he wanted to be the one to hold her in his arms, to take the nightmares and demons she battled and own them, so they belonged to him alone. But that could never be. This horrible thing had happened to her, and no matter how strong, powerful, or wealthy he was, it was an act that he could not undo.