To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke Book 8) (5 page)

A protest sprung to Eleanor’s lips but then the servant wisely handed over the lead to the older, slower pug. Little snorting giggles escaped Marcia as she allowed herself to be led down the fashionable, blessedly quiet sidewalk. Mrs. Plunkett hurried after her charge.

As they made their way to the end of the street, Eleanor studied her daughter’s jaunty steps. Guilt pulled at her. The foundation of Marcia’s life was nothing more than a weakly constructed lie and the moment that unsteady base was kicked out from under her, Marcia’s fate would be cast into the same shadowy, murky haze of Eleanor’s herself. But perhaps the lie could persist. Her daughter could find and wed a polite, respectable gentleman of the gentry who might not care if he, nay,
when
he, discovered the truth of his wife’s legitimacy.

Eleanor’s heart wrenched. For that detail would matter. To any and all. It was why they belonged in the country, removed from polite Society where the people removed from the
ton
were less driven by cruel gossip and the woes of others.

A small cry split the quiet, cutting into Eleanor’s musings and her heart paused a beat. She found Marcia with her gaze. Devlin wrestled his freedom from Marcia’s small fingers. The miserable pup yapped and danced past Mrs. Plunkett’s reaching hands. Then he spun about. His little legs worked hard and fast as he raced in Eleanor’s direction.

She narrowed her eyes on him and, for a moment, he froze. “Oh no you don’t, you miserable bugger,” she declared. His pink tongue lolled out the side of his mouth from the exertions of his efforts, and then responding to the challenge there, he tore around her and raced onward, back down the route they’d previously traveled.

Eleanor started after him and stuck her booted foot out, effectively trapping his leash. “Ha!” she exclaimed, triumphant. Her daughter clapped excitedly, hoisting her clenched hands aloft and waving them in victory.

Despite herself, Eleanor laughed…and then registered the curious stares trained on her. She flitted her gaze about. A handful of lords and ladies on the street gawked in return. Eleanor swallowed hard, as all her dratted efforts to remain invisible were quashed—by a fawn pug that just then took advantage of her distraction and pulled free.

Bloody hell.

“No, Mama,” her daughter groaned, her expression crestfallen. The footman bounded after the blasted pup, sailing past Eleanor. Giving her head a shake, she set out in pursuit, gaze trained on the fawn ball of fur. For all her aunt had done for her and Marcia, she couldn’t very well go and lose the lady’s beloved dog.

A tall, broad-muscled gentleman stepped into Devlin’s path. The dog collided with a gleaming black Hessian and then staggered back, dazed when the stranger bent and scooped up the leash. Relief swept through Eleanor as she lengthened her strides. “Thank you so much, sir,” she panted, breathless, as she stopped before the gentleman and reached out to collect that leash. “I did not…” She glanced up and her heart tripled its beat.

The tall, golden-haired stranger turned a hard, unforgiving glare on her that froze her thoughts. It suspended movement and time, and held her trapped in this peculiar moment where the world carried on around her in a great whir of noise and motion. Her heart quickened. She’d, of course, known that there was a very strong likelihood that with her return to London in the role of companion to the Duchess of Devonshire, with the walls of his townhouse sharing her aunt’s, their paths would again cross. But the tales she’d read of him long ago in the papers had filled her with a false hope that he’d be so busy with his clubs and mistresses that they’d never again meet.

From where he stood on the London street, Marcus Gray, Viscount Wessex, looked at her through thick, long lashes that did little to conceal the fury snapping in his eyes. The seething recognition there sent her staggering back a step.

“Miss Carlyle,” he said with a hard edge of steel to his words.

Emotion stuck in her throat. Gone was the sweet, gentle, young man who’d teased her and clipped a lock of her hair to hold it forever close. In his place was this silent, terrifying, broad, powerful stranger. Then, a mask dropped in place, tamping out all previous fury so she was left to wonder if she’d merely imagined it. He tipped his lips up in a slow, wicked smile. An odd fluttering unfurled in her belly.

“We meet again.”

Marcus
.

O
f course Miss Eleanor Carlyle would not stay buried. Of course she’d reemerge when a young lady unlike her in every way, had garnered his notice. The irony of this moment could not have been penned better, even from Shakespeare himself.

The lady now wore spectacles and the pale blonde hair he long remembered was tugged back in a tight chignon. But the severe hairstyle and wire-rimmed frames could not detract from Eleanor Carlyle’s ethereal beauty.

A handful of gold curls popped free in protest of the hideous coiffure; those loose coils, the ones he remembered from his past. Marcus resisted the urge to jam the heels of his palm into his eyes and try to drive back the image, for he knew by the honeyed scent that clung to her skin, that she was, indeed, real. That tantalizing summer fragrance had haunted his waking and sleeping moments.

By God, the traitorous, deceitful minx had returned.

A hard, humorless laugh escaped him and her cheeks went waxen. After years of forgetting, or trying in vain to fully forget, and losing himself in empty entanglements with other, equally lonely women, Eleanor had returned.

By the manner in which she troubled her too-full lower lip, she was not happy about seeing him.
And why should she
? She’d pledged to meet him in Lady Wedermore’s gardens and instead of meeting him, he’d found empty grounds. And when he’d paid call on her the next morning, nothing remained but a note handed him by one of the duchess’ maids.

Eleanor was the first to break the silence. “My lord,” she greeted. Her voice was a barely there whisper. The frames slipped down the bridge of her nose and she promptly shoved them back into place.

Good, the lady should be fearful. He folded his arms about his chest and winged an eyebrow up. “Is that all you’ll say, Eleanor? After all these years.” He made a tsking sound and she flinched, the movement nearly imperceptible. “I should expect a far warmer reception.”

As bold as she’d been when they’d met, she a girl of just eighteen, she squared her small shoulders and tossed her head back. “My lord, thank you for rescuing my aunt’s dog.”

He bit back a curse. Of course. The eccentric, pug-loving Duchess of Devonshire would ultimately drag her niece from whatever country rock she’d disappeared under when she’d absconded with his heart and happiness. All the old fury, the hurt, and rage that he’d thought safely buried, rose to the surface, threatening to boil over and consume him in a flood of emotions he’d thought dead. He took a step toward her and she backed up. “Never tell me you fear me, Miss Carlyle?”

She gave her head a frantic shake but continued her retreat, proving her unspoken denial a lie and Marcus delighted in the lady’s trepidation, for it spoke to her guilt, indicated she knew she was culpable of all the charges he could heap on her lying head. Then she came to an abrupt stop, forcing him to cease his forward movement or bowl her over. He stopped so close, a mere hairsbreadth separated them. Marcus registered the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her slightly parted lips and, God forgive him, he wanted her still—

“Hullo.”

He blinked, searching about, and then dropped his gaze downward to the wide-eyed girl looking up at him. Seven or eight years of age, with a riot of golden curls, the child had cheeks a cherub would envy.

Something pulled in his heart and he knew, knew without any confirmation, knew by the kissed by sunshine hue of her tresses and freckles on her nose. In all his imaginings of where Eleanor had gone and who she’d become, he’d never, ever dared consider that in that time, she had become a mother. For that would have made the man she’d chosen real in ways where he’d only previously existed as a shapeless, shiftless imagining. A man whom she’d truly loved and not the mere flirtation that she’d practiced upon Marcus. “Hullo.” His voice emerged garbled.

The golden-curled girl spoke, jerking him to the present. “What is your name?”

“That is not polite,” Eleanor gently chided, settling an almost protective hand upon the child’s small shoulders.

“Marcus,” he said quietly, ignoring the reproach in Eleanor’s tone, and then he thought to add, “The Viscount Wessex.” He dimly registered the duchess’ footman reaching for the leash. With numb fingers, Marcus turned the dog over, his attention reserved for the little stranger. “And who are you?”

The miniature version of Eleanor dropped a perfect curtsy. “I am Marcia Collins.”

He paused, as a distant remembrance trickled in.
“Who needs a miserable son? I would have a daughter who looks like you…”
Eleanor’s laugh, even after all this time, trilled around his memory
. “And would you name her Marcia…?”

The little girl spoke, breaking into the memory from long ago. “Do you know my mama?” With those five words, he had confirmation of a question he’d already had an answer to and, yet, it still sucked the air from his lungs. The woman he’d given his heart to had fled and was even now wed to another. She was a mother to this small child while Marcus lived his own empty life, pursuing his own pleasures. God, how he despised her for that; despised her with the same hatred he’d managed to bury years ago. Only now to be proven a liar in the street before the lady herself.

“It is a pleasure to meet you,
Marcia
.” At the deliberate emphasis he placed on the child’s name, Eleanor tipped her chin up at a defiant angle, all but daring him with her eyes to mention the memory between them.

“The viscount’s mama is a friend of Aunt Dorothea,” Eleanor said quietly, her voice surprisingly devoid of emotion.

When had the young lady of his past become this stoic creature?

Marcia craned her neck back and unabashedly stared at him. “You know my Aunt Dorothea, then?”

“I do,” he said gruffly, schooling his tone around the child. After all, it wasn’t the girl’s fault that her mother had been a fickle, flighty creature.

Then those brown eyes went wide. “Did you know my papa, too?”

Jealousy, potent and fierce, filled him, threatening to consume him for the man who’d won Eleanor and given her a child. Then Marcia’s words registered.

“We should be going,” Eleanor said quickly, color rushing to her cheeks.

Did
you know my papa?

Not:
Do
you know my papa?

And all the resentment and anger he’d borne toward Eleanor and the fleeting hatred he’d felt moments ago for the nameless, faceless stranger who’d taken her to wife, left Marcus, leaving in its place an aching regret for her loss.

Eleanor reached for her daughter and Marcus dropped to a knee, intercepting her efforts to spirit the girl away. “I did not know your father,” he said quietly.

Some of the excitement dimmed from the girl’s eyes. “Oh,” she said, scuffing the cobbled road with the tip of her boot. “My papa was a hero.” She raised her gaze to his. “He was a soldier.”

“Was he?” his voice came as though down a long corridor, a terse utterance belonging to another. In this moment, Eleanor’s hasty flight, at last, made sense. In the note she’d left for him, but a handful of sentences long, she’d spoken of her heart belonging to another. She’d, however, failed to mention the name of the man whose heart she’d missed with such intensity, she’d fled in the dark of night. Now with Marcia’s revealing words, he knew Eleanor had wed a man in the King’s Army. That important piece somehow made his dead rival all the more real.

“Oh, yes,” Marcia said with a solemn nod. “He was very brave and I miss him greatly.” She wrinkled her brow. “Even though we never—”

“Come, Marcia,” her mother said sharply.

The little girl sighed and then sidled over to her mother. “Well, it was very nice meeting you, sir.”

“My lord,” her mother whispered. “He is a viscount.”

“Marcus will suffice,” he insisted, not taking his gaze from the small child who by rights should be his, and was near enough in age that she could have been his, if life had played out differently and Eleanor had not chosen another.

“That wouldn’t be proper,” Eleanor said, with a slight frown on her lips.

Once again, he wondered at what had turned the giggling, bright-eyed girl of his youth into this guarded, hesitant woman before him now. “I insist,” he said, looking pointedly at Eleanor. “After all, your mother and I were once friends.”

Eleanor’s body jerked erect as though he’d struck her. Good, she should feel something, even if it was guilt for not having had, at the very least, the courage to confront him in more than a letter and admit her defection. She’d owed him that.

The little girl alternated her stare between them. “You were, Mama? So it would be fine to call him by his name, then, wouldn’t it?” Marcia continued on over her mother’s quick protest. “I do like your name.” She captured her chin between her thumb and forefinger and eyed him contemplatively. “Not the Wessex part.” His lips twitched with his first amusement since their entire exchange. “But the Marcus part.” A wide smile wreathed her plump cheeks. “It reminds me of my name. Do you like my name?” Each question and admission from the child’s lips jolted him, throwing his once well-ordered world into greater tumult. “I was named after a powerful, mythical queen who ruled Britain long ago.”

He forcibly reined in his emotions and offered a bow. “I think it is a splendid name, Miss Collins,” he said, spreading his arms wide in a way that made her giggle. Marcus returned his attention to an unmoving Eleanor. Tension poured off her slender frame in waves and he welcomed the further crack in the lady’s veneer. “In fact,” he confirmed, deliberately needling, “I once said if I were to have a daughter, I would name her Marcia.”

The little girl’s eyes went wide and she yanked at Eleanor’s hand. “Did you hear that, Mama?” She raised wide, innocent eyes to his. “My mama told me the same thing. She said she’d always known she would have a little girl named Marcia.”

The muscles of Eleanor’s throat moved, the first crack in her otherwise remarkable composure. And suddenly with Marcia’s innocent admissions, his deliberate attempt to rile Eleanor only jabbed at his own heart with regrets for the way her life had turned out and the way his had not.

A small yap jerked him to the moment. The duchess’ liveried footman adjusted the leads in his hand. Marcus cleared his throat. “I will leave you ladies to your afternoon.” He sketched another bow. “Miss Carl—” He cut his words short. For she was no longer Miss Carlyle and yet, that is who she would forever be.

“My lord,” her whispery soft voice was nearly lost to the carriages rumbling by.

With that empty parting, Eleanor turned on her heel with her daughter’s hand tucked in her own, and her small contingent of servants, and did what she did best—left.

“I liked him, Mama.”

Eleanor pretended not to hear her daughter’s insistent words. To acknowledge them only opened the gates for regrets she’d rather not let in.

“Mama,” Marcia sighed, tugging at her hand. “Did you hear me? I liked the viscount.”

Everyone had always adored Marcus Gray, Viscount Wessex. He possessed an inordinate amount of charm that was safe to no lady, young or old; her own daughter, included. “You do not even know him,” Eleanor said, her gaze trained forward on the pink façade of her aunt’s townhouse, her feet desperately aching to take flight. She concentrated on each carefully taken step.

“Do
you
not like him?” Confusion underscored her daughter’s relentless interrogation. “He said you were friends.”

Emotion clogged Eleanor’s throat and a sheen of useless tears coated her vision. No, she did not like him. She loved him. Eleanor drew to a stop and, despite herself and good sense which she’d demonstrated a remarkable lack of for the better part of her life, she glanced back to the him in question. Alas, he was gone.
Did you expect him to be standing there staring after you like a lovelorn youth?
“I like the viscount just fine, love. He—” Is a good man, honorable, charming. Or he had been. A shiver raced along her spine. The man she’d loved was no more. Instead, he’d been replaced with a cold, emotionless stranger she no longer recognized. Which was for the best. In that way, she could keep Marcus properly buried with her broken heart and hopes she could have for them.

“He is what?” Marcia asked impatiently.

“He is perfectly acceptable company,” she settled for.