To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(17)

Emotion wadded in Eleanor’s throat and she leaned over and covered Aunt Dorothea’s hand with her own. “Oh, Aunt Dorothea.”

The duchess cleared her throat. “None of that.” She drew her hand back and dashed it discreetly over her cheeks. “And we were discussing my rapscallion godson. The boy will wed.” She wrinkled her nose. “Now it is just a matter of determining who he’ll wed.” Muttering under her breath, she leaned over and rustled through the stack of gossip pages on the table before her. She shoved aside her barely touched plate that rested atop the cluttered collection.

Eleanor quickly shot her hands out and steadied the porcelain dish, preventing the buttered bread and sausage from toppling to the floor.

“Ah.” She removed a particular sheet. “See,” she said, tossing the copy to Eleanor who automatically caught it. “Read there,” her aunt jabbed a finger at the page.

The Viscountess W shared with Lady J that a certain Viscount W, notorious rogue, has settled his sights upon the Incomparable Lady MH…

A vise tightened about her lungs squeezing off airflow. He’d found a lady. A lady no doubt deserving of him. Seeing those words written added a permanency of truth; a reminder that time had continued on and for the changes between them. Of course Marcus would wed and, by that accounting, it would be one day soon. He’d wed a woman who was proper and polite and innocent, and all things a nobleman required in a wife. The agony of that gutted her in ways she’d thought herself long past caring.

“Well, anything to say, gel?”

What was there to say? Eleanor picked her head up from the page. By the look in her aunt’s clever eyes, she expected…hoped? That Eleanor would be that woman? Only Eleanor never could be that young lady. Marcus, as she remembered him, deserved more in his viscountess than a tarnished, dowerless merchant’s daughter. With steady hands, she set the page on the table before them. “I am here as a companion to accompany you to ton events. Who,” Marcus, “the Viscount Wessex courts is not my concern.”

Her aunt gave her an assessing look. “Will you still feel that way when he attends my ball this week and you watch him dance attendance on those simpering, colorless debutantes?”

Oh, God. Agonizing pain lanced Eleanor’s chest and made it impossible to draw breath. To read the reports of Marcus and all the scandalous ladies he’d been tied to through the years had been a special kind of torture. But she’d not had to witness him charm and woo the lady reported on those pages. In coming to London, she’d thought there could be nothing more horrid than attending the ton events with her aunt. So many of her worst nightmares harkened back to one of those proper, well-attended balls.

But to bear witness as Marcus courted his perfectly pure, proper miss would crush those foolish pieces of her soul that clung to the dream of what they’d shared. Aware of her aunt’s probing gaze on her face, Eleanor dug around for a response. Any response.

And came up empty.

“I thought so,” her aunt said with a pleased nod. The duchess, however, was not through with her daily torture. “I’ve the boy’s mother coming over for dinner tonight. With the sister.” Lizzie. When Eleanor had last seen Marcus, the plump, dark-haired girl was just ten. She’d be a woman now. Eighteen. The same age Eleanor had been when she’d had her world torn asunder.

Then her aunt’s words registered. Her heart sped up. “Do you?” those two words emerged choked to her own ears.

Aunt Dorothea nodded once. “Yes.”

Marcus would come here. She would be seated across a dining table from him.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, followed by the clip-clop of sharp nails on the hardwood floor, and Eleanor was promptly saved from formulating any further response.

Her daughter reentered the room with a wide smile and a snorting, heavily breathing pug in tow. “Who is coming to dinner?” With eager eyes, she looked back and forth between the two women seated at the table.

Eleanor winced. “Marcia,” she chided. They’d resided in the quiet of the Cornwall countryside so long, there had been little need or time to practice her daughter’s social graces. Now, Eleanor regretted the failure of not imparting those necessary lessons. “It is not polite to—”

Her aunt banged the table with a fist. “Ignore your mother’s scolding. I like a young lady with spirit and boldness.”

A warm blush heated Eleanor’s cheeks at the pointed look the duchess shot her way. Yes, one time Eleanor had, indeed, been lively and spirited—and careless—and it had cost her nearly everything, including her sanity.

“My friend, Lady Isabelle.”

“May I come?” Marcia piped in. She swiped a piece of bread from the sideboard and offered it to Satin.

“Sweet, it isn’t done,” Eleanor said regretfully, wishing there was a similar rule for children and companions.

“Of course you will attend,” her aunt said with a glower for Eleanor. Her daughter brightened under the older woman’s defense. “Don’t allow your mother to make you conform and do everything and anything Society wants. You hear?”

Eleanor winced as her daughter gave a firm nod. Eleanor had spent the better part of eight years seeing that she and Marcia blended as much as possible with ordinary Society. She’d gone out of her way to avoid notice and focus, content to be the quiet war widow who’d loved and lost and now lived with her father.