To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(16)

Aunt Dorothea leaned forward in her seat. By the light in her eyes, she was suddenly very eager for the telling of the story. “Oh?” She had, of course, long ago hoped for, even urged, a match between her niece from the country, a mere merchant’s daughter, and her godson, the Viscount Wessex.

Eleanor remained stoically silent.

“Yes.” Marcia nodded excitedly. “A Viscount Wessex. Though I greatly prefer the Marcus part to the Wessex part and he did say I was permitted to call him Marcus.” She beamed. “Because he and Mama were friends.”

Tamping down a sigh, Eleanor, to give her fingers something to do, grabbed a tart.

“Marcus?” her aunt asked.

“The same,” Eleanor managed.

A pleased smile formed on the woman’s lips. “He’s a good boy.”

“He’s no longer a boy,” she felt compelled to add. Just as she was no longer a girl. The stranger in the street a short while ago had been broader, taller even, than the lean youth of her past. She’d once believed there was no one more handsome than Marcus Gray. Seeing the broad-shouldered, thickly-muscled gentleman he’d become, proved she’d been wrong. With his unfashionably long blond hair and raw strength, he harkened to thoughts of warriors of old.

“He’s still not married, that one.” Her aunt waggled her eyebrows in a conspiratorial way. All relief at those words was fleeting when reminded of the man Marcus had become.

No, a gentleman the paper purported to carry on with scandalous widows and lightskirts likely wouldn’t be. Instead, he’d relish in his freedom. Pain lanced her heart. She was better off with the memories of the good boy her aunt spoke of than having remained in London to bear witness to the person Marcus, in fact, was.

Eleanor’s heart raced under the knowingness in the other woman’s expression. “Marcia,” the older woman said, not taking her gaze from Eleanor. “Will you fetch Satan? My pup deserves some of the morning breakfast.”

What could her aunt possibly wish to speak with her about? Under the shelter of the table, Eleanor balled her hands on her lap.

The little girl eagerly hopped to her feet. “Do you mean Satin? Of course. What of Devlin?”

Her aunt looked in her direction once more. “If you can get that stubborn dog to comply, then bring them both along.” She said nothing further until Marcia had gone.

With the little girl easily dispatched, her aunt pressed ahead. “Do you expect I shouldn’t have known you were more than half in love with my godson all those years ago?” At Eleanor’s muted silence, she waggled her eyebrows. “Hmm?”

All these years, Marcus had existed in her mind and memory as her secret alone. There had been something protective in that; something that made him real to only her, and as such, more dream than man. She gave her head a hopeless shake. “I don’t—”

The other woman scoffed. “I would have had to be a blind bat to fail to see the way you two smiled and winked at one another all those years ago.”

Eleanor curled her hands so tightly her nails dug painful crescents into her palms. “I don’t know what you are talking about,” she said with forced calm. Under the woman’s piercing scrutiny, she sat there, exposed in ways she’d never been. How casually her aunt ripped open those painful pieces of her past and spoke of them with the calm and ease she might discuss the morning weather or the daily fashion. Unnerved by her aunt’s faintly accusatory stare, Eleanor shifted. There was something wrong in lying to this woman who’d only shown her kindness through the years. At the very least, she was deserving of a kernel of truth. Eleanor wet her lips and spoke quietly. “I was young.” A child who thought all that mattered was love. “He was very young.” And not this hardened rogue the papers gossiped about; a nobleman who graced the beds of some of the most scandalous widows in London. “Time changes a person, Aunt Dorothea,” she said, the truest words she’d ever spoken. Life changed a person.

Her aunt eyed her for a long while. “He is a good man,” she said at last.

I would battle armies for you, Eleanor Elaine…

And I would never ask that of you…

The whispered words of long ago danced through her mind.

Yes, he had been, and she preferred, even in the pain of losing him, to have him forever frozen as that honestly smiling young man. Eleanor forced her fists open and smoothed her skirts. “It matters not. Time goes on. People change.”

“And my dear godson did, indeed, change,” her aunt said wryly. “A rogue he is, that one.”

Her heart tugged and Eleanor glanced down at her lap. At one time, she’d only seen him in her life. He had represented the dreams in her heart.

The duchess probed her with a stare, but did not press her. “And even rogues marry.”

The matter-of-factness of those words cleaved her heart. And yet, in a bid to stifle any further talks of Marcus and some proper, innocent miss, Eleanor gave a droll smile. “Do they?” The hard, commanding gentleman in the street struck her more as a man to seek out his clubs and his pleasures, without any intentions of tying himself to respectability.

A twinkle lit her aunt’s eyes. “Why, do not be silly, girl! Reformed rogues make the best husbands. Your uncle was proof of that.” Some of the woman’s earlier amusement died, misted over by a sheen of tears.