To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke #8)(84)

“Oh, dear, you are very angry,” Marcia whispered, pulling him back from the harrowing thoughts of the not-so-distant future when some undeserving rogue or rake was making a nuisance of himself around the girl.

“I was merely thinking,” he substituted.

“What is that?” She motioned to the official page in his hands and he followed her stare.

“It is a surprise for your mama.” He tweaked her nose.

She brightened. “Splendid.” Then her smile dipped and she scuffed the tip of her slipper on the marble floor. “My mama is angry and I worried for a moment that you were both angry.” She paused and probed him with her older-than-her-years eyes. “With one another. You are not angry with each other, then, are you?”

“Never,” he said so quickly, her little shoulders sagged.

“Thank goodness.” A beleaguered sigh left the little girl’s lips. “It must be just me that Mama is cross with and she is never cross with me.”

Marcus shifted and settled onto the marble stair beside Eleanor’s daughter. “I daresay your mama could never be cross with you.”

“She was today,” she replied automatically. Marcia stole a glance around and then scooted closer to him on the step. “She squeezed my shoulders and then yelled at me.”

He puzzled his brow. That did not sound at all like the manner of mother he’d come to know Eleanor as. She’d demonstrated patience and love toward this child who’d also ensnared Marcus’ heart. Only concern or some shockingly disobedient act on the little girl’s part could result in a crack in Eleanor’s composure. “Did she?” he asked deliberately.

“Well, not yelled at me,” Marcia mumbled and dropped her eyes to the marble floor. She swung her gaze swiftly back to his. “But she was angry and she would not allow me to meet her friend.”

Those last two words gave him pause. Marcus knew everything from the smell of Eleanor’s skin to her unease in polite Society. Not once had she mentioned, however, a friend. “Her friend?” he urged.

Not taking her chin from her hands, her daughter gave an awkward nod. “He was very nice and he said he was a very good friend of Mama’s.” He. Unease churned in his gut. “But Mama was not at all nice to him,” she went on. “Not the way she is nice to you.”

“What was his name?” he asked, infusing a calm into those four words when inside the disquiet redoubled in his chest.

“The Marquess of Atbrooke.” She tapped the tip of her finger against her lip contemplatively. “Though he did not allow me to use his first name the way you do.”

“Atbrooke,” he repeated, dazed from that unwitting revelation. Surely not. Horror unfurled slowly inside him. It lapped at his consciousness and robbed him of thought. Surely it hadn’t been Lady Marianne’s brother who’d raped Eleanor and gotten a child on her. This child.

Marcia lifted an excited gaze to his. “And he even had a birthmark on his wrist, like mine.” She turned her hand up for his perusal.

Oh, God. Marcus’ eyes went to that crescent moon-shaped brown mark at the inset of her wrist. All the while, a dull humming filled his ears.

“Lord Wessex.”

The pair on the steps looked up as one. Thomas stood there. “Mrs. Collins will see you.”

Marriage license in hand, he shoved to his feet, and then held his other hand out to Marcia, who trustingly placed her fingers in his. “You should return to your lessons,” he said softly.

She sighed. “Yes. Mrs. Plunkett will be looking for me.”

Marcus watched as the girl made the slow climb abovestairs and then fell into step behind the butler. With each step, Marcus struggled to rein in the volatile rage coursing through him. He wanted to toss his head back and rail like a beast. He wanted to stalk from the townhouse, hunt down Atbrooke and shred him to pieces so that no remnants remained of the bastard who’d pinned Eleanor to the ground and taken the gift of her innocence.

Thomas stopped outside the White Parlor and announced him. “The Viscount Wessex.”

Eleanor stood at the empty hearth, staring down into the metal grate. At the introduction, she turned slowly to face him. “Marcus,” she said softly, pulling the brown leather book in her arms close.

He took in the ashen hue of her skin, the tight lines drawn at the corner of her mouth, and he knew. A heavy weight settled on his chest, like a boulder cutting off his airflow and slowly destroying him. She did not intend to wed him. He saw it in her empty eyes and the trembling fingers now plucking at her skirts. “Eleanor,” he murmured and closed the door behind them.

She stared at him with sad, guarded eyes, but said nothing.

He strode toward her, when she spoke without preamble. “I cannot marry you.”

Marcus staggered to a halt. “Why?” he braced for the same veiled, vague lies she’d fed him in the form of a handwritten note years earlier.

Her soft, shuddery breath filled the tense quiet. “Because I was foolish to believe my past did not matter. I deluded myself into believing I might never again see him and that Marcia would be safe.” She dropped her gaze to the book in her hands. “Of course it matters. It always will.”

Like navigating on a pit of quicksand, where one wrong move would mean ruin, he picked carefully about his thoughts. “It matters,” he said at last and that brought Eleanor’s head snapping up.