To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(6)

Marcus chuckled at the other man’s bluntness. Then, when one was a duke just a step shy of royalty, there really was no need to prevaricate. He gave his head a despairing shake. “I’ve no immediate plans.” He smiled wryly. “Despite my mother’s best machinations.” After all, with a lifelong friendship and a bond built on unimaginable tragedy—the murder of their best friend—he at least owed Crawford that truth.

Crawford studied him across the table in that very ducal manner so that all he was missing was the monocle, and then he gave a slow nod. “My wife wants your assurance that you’ll settle for nothing other than a love-match.

And Marcus, once more, promptly choked. By God, between his mother and his best friend’s words this day, they were going to drown him. He lifted his glass in salute. “Assure our girl of the flowers that I am grateful for her concern.” Marcus gave his shoulders a roll. “When I do wed, however, it will be for the same reason every young nobleman inevitably marries.” Or will it be when I’ve finally let go of the past? He gave his drink another slow swirl. “I’ll wed a proper lady,” like Lady Marianne. “And produce the requisite heir and a spare, and then the Wessex line is secure, while I’m free to carry on as all the other peers present.”

Silence met his response and he looked up to find Crawford’s pitying stare on him. Marcus’ neck heated and his fingers twitched with the urge to tug at his cravat. When Crawford at last spoke, he did so in hushed tones. “Surely you want more than that?”

“No,” he said with an automaticity born of truth. “I surely do not.” He flexed one of his hands. “I’m quite content just as I am.” Marcus downed the contents of his glass. No, he’d tried love once before and the experience was as palatable as a plate of rancid kippers. “Though I applaud you and Daisy for finding that very special sentiment.”

Alas, after Eleanor’s deception, he’d never been able to fully erase the bitter tinge in his words when speaking of love and romance, and any other foolish sentiment that schemer had ultimately killed.

Marcus skimmed his gaze over the crowd. Several affirmed bachelors tipped their heads in a conciliatory manner. No doubt, they saw another member of their respected club prepared to willingly fall. He sighed. Except after years of visiting scandalous clubs and carrying on with paramours, courtesans, and widows, he was quite…tired of it all. Oh, he’d never admit as much. To do so would hopelessly ruin his name as rogue. But it had begun to feel as if he moved through life with a dull tedium, with a restlessness that dogged him.

Not that he expected a wife to cure him of that boredom. But that woman would serve a perfunctory purpose that went with his title.

Crawford’s frown deepened and he shifted. No doubt his desire to make sense of Marcus’ reasoning was born of years and years of being a duke beholden to no one. His friend’s chair groaned in protest as he settled his arms on the table and leaned forward. “I do not doubt you will find a woman who will value you as you deserve.” A woman like Lady Marianne who valued his fortune and title. How very empty such an existence would be and yet far better than this hell Eleanor Carlyle had left him in. Crawford cleared his throat. “A woman who will also help you…forget…” Forget.

Crawford spoke of a world of hurts that existed beyond Eleanor. For not a soul truly knew of the two fleeting months of madness and his subsequent broken heart following the lady’s betrayal. Even his mother, who’d celebrated in their whirlwind courtship, didn’t know the extent of the hole left in his heart with Eleanor’s parting.

Unnerved by the fresh remembrance of Eleanor Carlyle, Marcus shoved lazily to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me? I have matters of business to see to.” It was quite enough having to deal with a mother spouting of love and dying devotion of a worthy lady, that he didn’t really require it from his closest friend, too.

“Oh?” Crawford drawled and in a manner befitting the once grinning, mischievous youth he’d been before life and loss had shaped him, he tipped back on the heels of his chair. “The whole wife-hunting business?”

He made a crude gesture that roused a chuckle from his friend. Marcus tempered that rudeness with a grin and then started back through the clubs with his patented smile firmly in place.

It would seem when a nobleman demonstrated interest in a lady, it signaled his intentions to wed, and there really was no escaping that news anywhere.





Chapter 2


She’d vowed to never return.

Mrs. Eleanor Collins gazed out the carriage window at the passing streets. Her spectacles lay forgotten on her lap and she fiddled with the wire frames. The carriage hit another bump on the cobbled road and threw her against the side of the conveyance. The sudden movement sent her glasses tumbling to the floor. Eleanor quickly righted herself and, for now, left that small, but important-to-her disguise, piece forgotten at her feet.

She’d vowed she would die before setting foot in the cruel, cold, and hateful world of London. Nor had those words been the overdramatic ones of a young, na?ve miss. It had been a pledge she’d taken as a young, na?ve miss who’d seen the malevolent side of that town and knew there was nothing worth reentering that darkness for. Not when the risk was having the remainder of her soul consumed by ugly memories.

Until life had ultimately shown her that there, indeed, was something worth braving anything and everything for.