To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(60)

“What is it, gel?”

Eleanor glanced up suddenly at the old duchess, who wore a questioning frown on her face. “Do you disagree with Mrs. Wollstonecraft?” The stern set to her mouth indicated Eleanor would be wise to not question the esteemed philosopher so revered by Aunt Dorothea.

Dropping her attention to the handful of words that had frozen her, Eleanor traced the tip of her fingernail over each small letter. The writer, with her progressive, if scandalous, beliefs, spoke with an unerring accuracy on the injustices known by women and touted a world where women were not dependent upon men for their survival and happiness. Words that usually resonated, in this instance did not. “Today cannot undo yesterday.”

“Of course it can’t.”

Her aunt spoke with such a blunt matter-of-factness, a smile pulled at Eleanor’s lips. Shoving aside her distracted amusement, she sought to make sense of the writer’s words. “Yet, she speaks of each new day as a new beginning. By the sheer nature of yesterday, Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s words of today can never hold truth.” Even as Eleanor would have sold the only parts of her unsullied soul to make it so.

Aunt Dorothea leaned over and tapped Eleanor on the knee. “Those beliefs are not mutually exclusive, Eleanor. Yours and Mrs. Wollstonecraft’s. I believe the lady would not have spoken fanciful thoughts about erasing time and changing fate. Those are impossibilities.”

Eleanor knew that better than most. And yet… “But how can today represent a new beginning if yesterday—”

“It’s not a matter of changing the past, Eleanor. It is a matter of setting the past aside and seeing today as a new beginning.”

A knock sounded at the door and they looked up to where the butler, Thomas, stood at the entrance of the room.

The duchess spoke over him. “Never tell me it’s another of the scoundrels here to court my niece?” The older woman had become an almost vigilant protector of Eleanor, since gentleman after gentleman had come calling that afternoon.

“Er, no my lady.” The servant with his powdered hair scratched his brow. “Er, that is I don’t believe so.”

“Humph,” Aunt Dorothea groused. “I’ll decide if the bounder is worthy of Eleanor.”

At that maternal protectiveness in her aunt’s tone, some of the tension went out of Eleanor’s frame replaced instead with warmth. Her mother died when Eleanor had been just one. She’d known only a father’s unwavering love. Moved by her aunt’s parent-like devotion, she captured the older woman’s wrinkled hands and gave them a quick squeeze. “Thank you.”

“Come, enough of that,” the gruff woman patted her knee awkwardly in return. “Well,” she called out to the servant hovering in the doorway. “Who is here this time?”

“The Viscount Wessex has arrived for Mrs. Collins.” Eleanor scrambled forward on the edge of her seat, earning a sideways glance from the duchess. “I’ve taken the liberty of showing him to the drawing room, but I can very well explain Mrs. Collins is not receiving visitors.”

“No!” The exclamation burst from her. The embarrassingly loud and revealing denial bounced off the soaring ceilings. “That is,” she drew in a calming breath and resisted the urge to press her palms to her burning cheeks. Marcus’ visit was merely a product of the request she’d put to him; a pretend courtship to save her from unwanted advances and still, her heart thumped a too-fast beat as it always had when Marcus had been near. Aunt Dorothea pierced her in that assessing duchess-like manner that had terrified Eleanor when she’d first arrived in London all those years ago. “I will see His Lordship.” Eight years later it was no less terrifying.

The duchess said nothing for a moment and then she gave a slight nod. “You heard my niece, Thomas. That will be all.”

The servant sketched a bow and backed out of the room.

The usual frown adopted by her aunt turned up in an uncharacteristic, if rusty, smile. She picked up her cane and jammed the gold tip into Eleanor’s slippers.

Eleanor winced. “Ouch.”

“Run along, gel. The boy is waiting.” A wicked glimmer lit her eyes. “Not that I’m opposed to making a gentleman wait. But he’s a good boy, that one.”

He was. By station established at birth and then circumstances determined by a vile, black cad, Eleanor, however, had been placed firmly in an altogether different category than the one occupied by Marcus. She knew that. Eleanor pushed herself to her feet and silently handed the book over to her aunt. Forsaking gloves long ago as a sign of independence, she’d said, the older woman took the volume in her bent and wrinkled fingers. Eleanor started for the doorway. Aunt Dorothea had drawn the erroneous, but expected, conclusion about Marcus’ presence. Acknowledging for the first time since she’d enlisted Marcus’ support the deception she perpetuated against the woman who’d plucked her and Marcia from an uncertain fate, guilt sluiced through her.

“Eleanor?”

She paused at the front of the room and turned back around.

“Remember,” Aunt Dorothea held a finger up, “the beginning is always today.”

With those words echoing around her mind, Eleanor made her way through the long, narrow corridors of the lavish townhouse, onward to the drawing room. If she were still the hopeful sort who believed in the power of the fairytales that she now read to her daughter, perhaps she could allow herself the dream of Marcus. The woman she was now well knew that a powerful viscount with extensive landholdings, a man who was revered and admired, could never bind himself to a woman who’d been stripped of her virtue and left with a bastard child.