Seduced By a Lady's Heart (Lords of Honor #1)(10)

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.

“He was a patient at London Hospital,” Emmaline finally said.

She battled a momentary twinge of regret at the already known fact. Eloise cleared her throat and glanced guiltily over at the door, detesting gossip, but this was different. Wasn’t it? She turned her attention to the marchioness. “What was he like?” her voice emerged a hoarse croak. Please, say he was one of the charming, smiling sort like the soldier Emmaline had read to earlier yesterday afternoon.

A sad light lit the woman’s pretty, brown eyes and the knot in Eloise’s belly grew. “He was…serious. Quiet.”

Her heart spasmed. Of course he had been. He’d returned from war to discover his wife and his son, a child he’d never even met, dead and gone. Eloise clenched her eyes tightly. Would he blame her if he knew the truth? Would he see she’d failed Sara and Matthew and, in doing so, failed him? How could he not?

“I do not know if you are aware of the losses he suff—”

“I am aware,” she said, her voice rough with emotion. Eloise coughed into her hand. “Forgive me for interrupting.”

Emmaline cocked her head and studied her. At the marchioness’ scrutiny, Eloise shifted in her seat. Only as the long-case clock ticked away the passage of silent moments, the resolve that had driven her these past six months stirred to life with a renewed vigor. She’d known when she ultimately found Lucien and presented the truth of his father’s circumstances, he’d likely flatly reject her request to return to Kent, to his family’s fold. Yet, she’d believed with every fiber of her being she could ultimately convince Lucien to see his father and brothers and again know a semblance of the peace—a peace they’d had before life had shown them the cruelties of existence.

It was that resolve that allowed her to raise her head and meet Emmaline’s patient stare. “It is not my place to discuss the circumstances of Lucien…” She warmed. “Mr. Jona…Jones’, past. However, I have news of his family.” News he’d rather likely never care about hearing. “And I would not forgive myself if I somehow failed to bring him and his family together.” She knew that because she’d suffered too many losses where words had gone unfinished, pledges incomplete. Lucien might not believe he would ever move in a world with anything but anger and resentment for the father, who’d secured his commission, but the time would come…and he deserved that closure.

Emmaline touched her palm to her mouth. “Oh, my,” she said softly.