To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(59)

“Mama, do you wish to tell Marcus?”

But this was Marcus and he’d never been like any other gentleman, nor would he ever be—even with this natural ease around children.

Marcus leveled a piercing stare on Eleanor, blue eyes seeing too much; more than could ever be safe.

“Mama?” Marcia pressed, her tone befuddled.

Eleanor managed a jerky nod.

“Come, Mrs. Collins, will you not tell me your stories?” She’d have to be deafer than a dowager with cotton in her ears to fail to detect the suggestive twist of his words that sought far more than stories of pretend and legend.

Eleanor opened her mouth to call Marcia to her side when, with her small hands, Marcia forced his head back around to face her. “I will tell you, Marcus.”

And Eleanor, whose heart had broken for the loss of him and the dream of them, now broke all over, for entirely different reasons. He was a father Marcia would have been deserving of. Her throat closed with an aching regret.

“Poor Sir Orfeo lost his wife.” As her daughter launched into tales of make believe, Eleanor darted her gaze about, searching for intervention from a bolt of lightning, the ground opening, Marcus’ sister and the lady who’d been making eyes at Marcus.

“Lost his wife, did he? How does one go about losing something as important as a wife?” he teased, tweaking Marcia’s pert nose.

Well, mayhap not the friend making eyes, but Eleanor would settle for any other of the small miracles or interruptions.

Marcia giggled, her hands falling to her sides. “Mama said it’s very easy to lose someone.”

Tension jerked Eleanor erect and this time, with all traces of amusement gone, Marcus met her stare again with questions. “Did she?” he questioned.

Eleanor held his gaze. All the while, her heart thumped a hard, fast rhythm. She must have more care what she said to Marcia in the future. It would appear nothing was safe or private.

“Yes.” Marcia tugged at his sleeve, forcing his attention back to her. “The horrible fairy king stole her away from under the cherry tree.” Large, brown eyes formed moons as she became absorbed in her telling. “He brought her to the Otherworld where she could no longer see her king and poor Orfeo wandered and wandered searching for her.”

“What happened to them?” At his quiet inquiry, Eleanor folded her arms close to her stomach and held tight. Did he see her own story in the legend? Unnerved by the sideways look he cast her way, she glanced about.

Marcia captured his face once again in her small palms. “Why, he finds her, of course, silly.” Because in tales of fairies and make believe, love never died and hope lived on.

Silence met the innocent recounting. Eleanor was the first to break into the tense quiet. She cleared her throat. “Now, we really must be going, Marcia. His Lordship has been good enough to stop and speak with us, but he must rejoin his sister.” And Eleanor desperately needed to place distance between her and Marcus. For with every sweet, gentle interaction with her daughter, he threw her world into greater tumult so that the offer she’d put to him proved just another dangerous folly made.

With a smooth grace, Marcus shoved himself to his feet and captured her gloved hand in his larger one. He brought her hand slowly to his mouth. Yesterday, before her aunt’s ball, she would have seen this innocent, yet wholly seductive, gesture as a means of taunting her. “Mrs. Collins.” That smooth, husky whisper washed over her. Some great shift had occurred between them and as he placed his lips along the fabric of her glove, her breath caught. Marcus reminded her that she was still a woman capable of desire; for a touch, a caress, a kiss—proof that for everything stolen by the nameless stranger long ago, he’d not completely robbed her of this innate part of her.

And there was something freeing in that truth, only just now realized.





Chapter 14


“The beginning is always today…”

The beginning is always today.

Seated on the nauseatingly pink sofa where she kept company with her Aunt Dorothea, Eleanor repeated those words in a quiet mantra, over and over. The black inked words of Mary Wollstonecraft stared up at her.

Following her meeting with Marcus yesterday afternoon, she’d arrived home and begged off attending the planned events for the evening. Instead, she’d reflected on this inherent weakness where Marcus, the Viscount Wessex, was concerned. Oh, she’d never ceased to love him. Not one day in eight years had passed where she’d not remembered at least one memory they’d shared.

However, the cool practicality of life had conditioned her to the cold, empty fact—there could never be anything between them. Not in the way she’d wished or dreamed of. That one night in Lady Wedermore’s gardens had shattered their present and any hope of a future. Such a fact had been an easy one to resolve herself to as the war widow, in the far-flung corners of Cornwall. Then, she’d accepted that their lives had continued and they’d been forced down two very divergent paths.

Only, seeing him with Marcia, waltzing with him, knowing the brush of his lips upon her palm, she wanted down the other path with an intensity that she’d crawl, kick, or beg for a right to travel once more.

The beginning is always today.

But that wasn’t always true. Not where Eleanor was concerned. Or could it be true? Could her life begin anew—?