To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(68)

Marcus stopped so abruptly his feet churned up dirt and pebbles. A golden curl fell over his eye giving him an endearing, boyish look. “I don’t—?”

“You believe I did not show, but I was there, in Lady Wedermore’s gardens,” she clarified. And then a healing calm stole over Eleanor, driving back all the fear and reservations and horror of speaking of that night. There was freedom in it that lifted a weight from her burdened shoulders. “I was there.” She raised regretful eyes to his. “You were not.”



Marcus stared at Eleanor.

At last they would speak of it; the one night between them which had built an eight-year chasm. “Is that what you believed,” he asked slowly. “That I would not come?” Surely in all they’d shared, she would have known he would always come to her. “Surely that is not what would drive you into the arms of another.”

The full moon cast its pale white light through the branches of the cherry tree and the glow kissed Eleanor’s pale cheeks so that her teardrop glistened like sad diamonds.

At her stricken silence, he said gruffly, “I was there.”

“You came too late.”

Her agonized whisper ran through him. “I…” He took in the tense white lines at the corners of her mouth, the suffering that now bled from her eyes, and distant warning bells went off. Marcus dug his fingertips against his temple and rubbed, trying to make sense, trying, and failing…

It is because I do not wish to make sense…

He dropped his arm to his side with alacrity and when he spoke, there was a peculiar flatness to his tone. “What does that mean I came too late?”

“Someone else arrived first.” Eleanor curled her hands at her sides. “A…man.”

A man—? A thousand questions boiled to the surface, and with them, the pebble of unease in his belly grew to the size of a boulder. Her words led him down a path he did not wish to travel. “Did he threaten you with ruin?” he asked slowly, silently pleading with the fates.

A strangled laugh burst from her lips and she buried it in her fingers.

His mouth went dry and his gaze caught on the white-knuckled fist pressed against her mouth. An icy chill raked his spine and ran a quick course through him, freezing him from the inside out and yet perspiration beaded his brow as he considered the new Eleanor who’d returned to London. A woman fearful of men; who’d punched him…

The earth tipped, swayed, and dipped. “Oh, God,” the agonized whisper came from the place where horror and fear dwelt. Marcus concentrated on breathing. No. The imagination was an active, dangerous beast. As long as she did not utter the words, they remained untrue fabrications of an irrational thought based on a handful of incidences.

She pressed her palms to the uneven bark of the cherry tree, as though seeking support. “He didn’t threaten me with ruin.” Eleanor lifted her ravaged eyes to his and spoke in curiously deadened tones that sent a chill skittering around his insides. “He did ruin me.”

His heart ceased to beat and he tried to make out Eleanor’s raspy words as they ran together.

“He said no proper lady would be out meeting a lord in the gardens. He said as a poor merchant’s daughter, I-I was begging for any man between my legs.”

Insidious thoughts slipped into his consciousness of Eleanor on her back with the monster who’d stolen her innocence rutting between her thighs.

His stomach heaved and he closed his eyes a moment to keep from casting up the contents at her feet. With her strength and courage, she deserved more from Marcus than his frail weakness.

“I fought him,” she said, staring at a point beyond his shoulder, to the demons of her past and with those three words, she invited him into the world where she’d scratched, kicked, and clawed.

To no avail.

“Who was he?” The strangled plea tore from his throat. Who, so Marcus could end him with his bare hands.

“I did not know.” She avoided his gaze and a flash of terror lit her eyes, and then was gone so quickly he might have merely imagined it. “I knew nothing but his face and that he stank of brandy.”

The gardens echoed with the memory of imagined cries and pleas of some faceless, nameless stranger. Insanity licked at Marcus’ thoughts and cast a thick, dark curtain over his vision, as he imagined a hell in which the man who’d raped her was a gentleman he took drinks with or spoke to at Social events. Marcus tortured himself, imagining that bastard yanking her skirts up, shoving a knee between her legs, and—His breath came hard and fast in his ears, deafening. Oh, God.

“At first, when he came upon me,” she said more to herself, yanking him back from the precipice of madness. “I continued looking at the door, silently begging you to come. And then, I lay through his attack, silently pleading with you to not come. Because I could not bear it if you saw me that w-way.” The faint tremor to that word had the same effect as a blade being thrust into his belly and twisted.

His heart lurched. Where had he been? Whatever waylaid him that night, whoever it had been, was so very insignificant that he could not recall the name or reason for his delay. And yet, that trivial meeting had upended her world, shattered their happiness. He wanted to toss his head back and rail at fate. “Oh, Eleanor,” he whispered, and he, who’d charmed countless ladies in her absence, was so wholly useless in this moment. There were no pretty endearments or perfect words that could take away any of her suffering.