To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(25)

Eleanor’s breath caught. “Are you attempting to seduce me?”

“Would you like that, Eleanor?” he asked softly. He brushed his hand over her fingers and she gasped. Her lids fluttered wildly and a surge of masculine triumph gripped him. She may have wed another, but she desired him, still. “I have missed your kiss, Eleanor.” He reveled in her flushed cheeks, her quickened breath and damned the audience that prevented him from taking her in his arms and showing her just how much. “And I would wager you’ve missed my kiss, as well.”

Her lids fluttered open and she passed stricken eyes over his face. Swiftly withdrawing her hand free of his sleeve, Eleanor stumbled away from him. Shocked hurt replaced her earlier desire and that hot emotion danced in the silver flecks of her blue eyes. “I have no interest in being seduced by you.” Was it anger or desire that caused her voice to quiver so? “And you, my lord, are in the market for a wife. Are you not?”

“Ah,” he discreetly captured the golden curl that had sprung loose of her chignon, relishing the satiny softness of that tress. He’d not tell her that supposition was based on gossip fueled by two nonconsecutive dances and his own mother’s machinations. “But I am not yet married and neither are you.” But she had been. The faceless paragon she’d wed danced around the edge of his musings and resentment trickled to the surface. He tamped it down, forcing his lips up in a half-grin and released the lock. “Never tell me you’re interested in that role this time?”

It was the absolute wrong thing to say. That is, as far as seductions went.

Eleanor stood there, her chest heaving. If looks could burn, she’d have reduced him to a charred pile of ash at her feet.

From across the room his sister concluded playing her piece.

“Eleanor, girl, come along and regale us with a song,” the duchess called out.

Eleanor jerked her head toward the ladies assembled at the opposite end of the parlor. She squared her shoulders. “If you will excuse me, Aunt Dorothea? I promised Marcia I would read to her.” She made her polite goodbyes to his family and before the duchess could respond, Eleanor dropped a stiff curtsy, snatched her skirts away from Marcus, and fled. She paused in the doorway and cast a befuddled glance in his direction.

He winged an eyebrow upward and that slight movement propelled her forward.

The lady gone, Marcus gave his head a wry shake. These were sorry days indeed, when a young woman reacted so to his attempts at seduction. His smile slowly widened. Except, the blush on her cheeks and rapid breaths bespoke her desire. He was not through with his seduction of Eleanor Collins.

No, he’d only just begun.





Chapter 7


That night, with quiet echoing through the duchess’ townhouse, Eleanor sat perched on the edge of her bed. The moon’s glow penetrated the break in the curtains and cast a silvery white light upon the hardwood floor.

He attempted to seduce me.

Well, not quite, as they’d been in the presence of company. But Marcus’ husky words and thickly veiled eyes had spoken to his intentions for her. With a sigh, she withdrew her unneeded spectacles and tossed them onto the nearby night table. By the pages she’d read of him in the gossip columns—sought after, whispered about rogue—it should really come as no surprise.

And yet, for all her indignation and shock, standing with their bodies nearly flush, his breath tickling her skin, there had been something else…something more…

A gentle spiraling heat began in her belly that harkened back to the times she’d spent in Marcus’ arms. After years loathing the thought of any man’s touch, with but the brush of Marcus’ hand and nearness of his body, he’d awakened her to the truth—she still felt. For him. It had only ever been him. As she’d stood there in her aunt’s parlor, with the haunting strains of Dibdin echoing throughout the room, her heart had tripped a beat with the desire to know the promise of passion; when she’d long ago given up any thought of ever knowing, ever wanting to know anything in a man’s arms. How could she when the nightmares still came and her flesh still burned from the shame of the attack?

She slid her eyes closed a moment. For in this instant, she did not think of her attacker or the terror in being used for a man’s pleasure. She thought of the tantalizing promise Marcus had dangled that had not elicited fear or shame. There had been something so very heady, something invigorating in wanting to know the promises Marcus hinted at.

He would be a gentle lover. For the passion in his fathomless blue eyes, she’d no doubt that he would stroke her with the same tenderness he’d once shown.

Eleanor jumped up and the cool of the hardwood floor penetrated her feet. She began to pace. When she’d received her aunt’s summons, calling her and Marcia to London, she’d wanted to ball it up and burn it. For London represented nothing more than the pain of loss: of a once pure love, a shattered innocence, and all the dreams she’d carried that would never come to be. When desperation drove Eleanor to accept the post of companion, she’d deliberately not allowed herself to think of Marcus.

After all, lords like Marcus did not pine for young ladies of their youth. No, those bored noblemen who took their pleasures where they would, lived for their own enjoyment. That wasn’t the man he’d been, but by the gossip columns she’d carefully snipped from copies of The Times, it was the man he’d become.