To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(46)

Then she found the viscount with her eyes and her breath caught hard. Nay, Marcus. He would always be Marcus. The wry, cynical man he’d become had stood off to the side, boldly watching her. Had any other man studied her in that possessive, penetrating way, she’d have fled the hall in terror. For all that had come to pass, and the horror she’d known, her heart still thudded wildly with desire for him.

“Eleanor,” her aunt snapped her back to the moment. Brandishing her cane, the duchess motioned to a tall, lanky gentleman. “This pup is the Earl of Primly. A good fellow.” That earned a disapproving frown from the gentleman. Then, what gentleman would care to be so categorized by the eccentric duchess?

The lean gentleman flushed. “Th-thank you for the k-kind w—”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” she stated with a bluntness that only deepened the color upon the earl’s sharp cheeks. “I was merely stating fact. Not a thing wrong with Primly.” She shifted the tip of her cane to one of the gentleman ogling Eleanor’s décolletage. “You may continue on Westfield.” Cheeks flushed, the young gentleman with thick Byron curls slunk off. Aunt Dorothea thumped her cane three times. “Ask for her dance card, Primly.”

Obligingly, he reached for Eleanor’s card.

The earl froze, mid-movement, his hand outstretched; those long fingers he’d put upon her person. The young man was harmless, or appeared to be so, but then there had been another with an easy grin who’d ultimately stank of brandy and sin. Oh, God. She could not do this. “No.”

“Eleanor?” her aunt prodded.

Her feet twitched with the urge to shove past the lecherous lords and run as far and as fast as her legs could carry her and continue running all the way back to the far-flung corner of Cornwall. She searched about for escape when, through her crush of suitors, Eleanor’s gaze collided with Marcus’.

He grinned. “Mrs. Collins, I believe you promised the next set to me.”

Her heart caught and she stared transfixed as the assembled gentlemen parted. Marcus came to a stop and eyed her through thick, hooded, golden lashes.

His words were a blatant lie, and a poor one at that. Every gentleman here knew Marcus, the Viscount Wessex, had not spoken to her until this moment. And yet, for his steady, reassuring presence and his innate ability to know when she needed him, Eleanor loved him all the more.

“There you have it,” her aunt said to the men lying in wait. “Mrs. Collins has pledged this set to Wessex.”

Some of the cloying panic in the attention being thrust upon her eased and Eleanor shot out a hand and placed her fingertips along his coat sleeve and allowed him to guide her away from the crush of gentlemen. With an ease that made her heart ache, Marcus tucked her fingers into the crook of his elbow and led her on to the dance floor for the waltz. “Marcus, I—”

“Come,” he said quietly as he moved her hand onto his shoulder and positioned his own at her waist. “You’ll not make me a liar before your rather impressive collection of suitors.”

She nodded. “Yes, I would.” Her hand fell to her side and he quickly moved it back into place.

“I daresay a waltz would be a very small thank you for having separated you from those swains.”

“It would.” The orchestra launched into the full hum of the haunting melody of the waltz and couples moved about them in the slow one-two-three step. “But I do not know the waltz.”

“You do not know how to waltz?” He gave his head a bemused shake. “I’d not considered the dance had not arrived from the Continent until you left.”

In the time she’d been gone the inane details of life—the dances deemed appropriate and practiced within the distinguished ballrooms of London, the cut of a gown, the style of a cravat—had all changed. How very insignificant when compared with how her life had been altered. She did another search of the room and a chill raked her spine. He was here. Watching. Her. Her exchange with Marcus.

“Trust me,” he said quietly, jerking her to the moment. She darted her gaze about. Lords and ladies twirled about them; trained rabidly curious stares on them. Yet as smoothly confident as he’d always been, unfazed by the ton’s interest, Marcus positioned her arms once again and then settled his hand at her waist. Through the fabric of her gown, her skin burned from the heat of his touch, momentarily robbing her of breath, in a response that had nothing to do with terror or remembrances of the past and everything to do with her body’s subtle awareness of him as a man.

“I do not know what I am doing, Marcus,” she whispered, jolting awkwardly through the dance.

He winked. “You can lurch to and fro and still evince a grace any lady would admire.” Those words were surely the same, effusive praise he reserved for all the ladies he took to his bed and yet a thrill went through her anyway.

Not wanting him to realize the hold he still held over her, she found her first real smile that evening. “And you’re the rogue the papers purport you to be.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Ah, you and those gossip columns, again. We need to find you new reading material.”

She silently cursed and immediately sidestepped that glaring admission. “There is a good deal to read about, Marcus, but I long ago stopped reading about your name.” Eleanor stumbled and trampled all over his toes. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I did warn you that you’d be better suited to find a different dance partner.” A woman of grace and his equal in every way. Eleanor loathed the unsullied lady with every fiber of her being.