Authors: Christi Caldwell
Lucien folded him in his embrace. This man who’d put him astride his first mount and sacked the first and last tutor to ever lay a hand upon him. “Don’t, please don’t,” he said, his words a hoarse entreaty. How many years had he lay blame at his father’s feet? Upon his return, he’d taken an unholy delight in holding him responsible for everything Lucien had lost. “It was not your fault.” Only now, Lucien could not, with his sire at the end of his life, leave him with the weight of that guilt.
“I-it was. A-all of it.” He dissolved into a fit of coughing and Lucien held him close, fearing the older man would break under the weight of his arm. “I at least owed you a letter informing you of Sara’s and M-Matthew’s deaths. I’d thought…” A spasm of agony ravaged his father’s face. “I thought to protect you from that truth.”
Lucien waited for the bitterness at that great irony: the man who’d sent his son off to fight a bloody war had sought to protect him from the contents of a missive about his family. Only, the flood of resentment did not come. “It is done,” he said softly, the words spoken more to himself.
“W-what a waste.” His father’s words, the faintest whisper, reached Lucien’s ears.
“Indeed it was.” He stared over the top of his father’s head at the soft blue, plaster walls. How very close he’d been to never again seeing one of the parents who’d given him life. And he wouldn’t have. If it hadn’t been for Eloise. “I almost didn’t come,” he said quietly.
His father sucked in several long, shallow breaths and Lucien thought he slept. “Richard believed Eloise would find you. He said the Devil himself couldn’t bring you here.” A softness lit his eyes and dimmed the agony of dying reflected within their depths. “But that Eloise could.”
Lucien glanced across the room at the closed door, feeling her presence even through the thick, wood panel, reassured in just knowing she was there.
“That girl has loved you as long as she’s known you,” his father said with all the sage wisdom of a man who saw and knew all. “Come, nothing to say?” For a moment, he spoke with the same bold strength that Lucien long remembered and he allowed himself the all too brief moment of believing that they two were the same men they’d been before a madman had ravaged the Continent and ultimately destroyed their family.
His father waggled a brow.
Lucien cleared his throat. “I know.”
His father coughed into his hand. Lucien leapt to his feet to get the half-filled glass but his father waved him off. “I always imagined you’d wed Ellie,” his father said softly, more to himself. A pained smile wreathed his gaunt cheeks. “Then, perhaps that was just my own wishful musings for the both of you.”
Lucien stared down at his lone hand, the callused pads of his fingers, the scars marring his flesh from the spray of shrapnel at the Battle of Fuentes de Onoro.
“She’s always been loyal to you,” his father continued.
He may as well have had a dog then…
Yes, she had been steadfast in her devotion since the moment he’d instructed her on how to plant someone a facer, but his love for her went beyond those mere sentiments of loyalty. He loved her for her resilience, her courage, her—
“I don’t know another lady who would have stayed to care for an ailing woman and child the way she did for Sara and Matthew.” The raspy words cut into his thoughts.
He blinked and picked his head up. “What?”
The viscount closed his eyes. His chest contracted with each struggled breath he drew. “You didn’t know that?” he asked. His lids fluttered open. A ghost of a smile hovered on his gaunt cheeks. “Of course, you didn’t. Ellie would never be one to extol her own deeds.” A spasm of pain wracked his face. “The doctor, useless man,” he mumbled, “claimed nothing could be done to save them.”
The pain of that loss would always, always be with him and yet, at his father’s words, the familiar jagged agony that could cut a man to the core—did not come. At some point, Eloise had breathed life into a body he’d thought long dead. Then, the slow-turning wheels of his mind processed his father’s words. “She was here?” Eloise would have been recently married.
“Eloise and her husband were visiting,” his father said, confirming his supposition. He flexed his wrist in a feeble attempt to wave his hand about. “She did that, you know. Most ladies would forget about their father’s friends. Godfather or not.” The viscount closed his eyes again.
He should halt the flow of his father’s words, preserve his energy but, bastard that he was, Lucien needed to hear the remainder of this story he didn’t know and likely never would have…if he hadn’t come home.
“Eloise went to your home.” Odd to think of that modest dwelling upon the viscount’s property as home. He and Sara had lived there but a handful of months before he marched off to face Boney’s men. “She remained there when the doctor said it was futile. Cared for them until the end.”
His father’s words sucked the air from his lungs. “She never said anything,” he whispered. Why? He shot a glance over to the door separating them. Why would she keep that from him? He fumbled about for an explanation but came up empty.
“Fell quite ill herself,” his father murmured. “The doctor thought she would not make it.” He smiled and the muscles ticking in the corner of his lips indicated the effort that happy gesture cost him. “Eloise has more strength than most grown men I know.” He grimaced at the exertion of speaking those handful of meaningful words.
Lucien sank back in his seat in silent shock. In spite of her elevated status as countess, Eloise had gone to his wife’s side. She had nursed Sara and his son and nearly paid with the price of her life for that great sacrifice. Agony twisted in his belly. He cupped his hand over his mouth. In all his miserable years, there had been but one thing he was right about—he didn’t deserve her.
“Lucien?” His father sucked air noisily through his lips.
He rested his hand on his father’s. “Rest,” he entreated, willing him to a peaceful silence.
Then with a shocking display of strength, he chuckled. “I’ve the whole of eternity to rest.” His father gave him a stern look that melted away the years of difference between them and Lucien was son, and the viscount was father. “Send in Eloise.”
Chapter 20
E
loise stared at the closed panel door with a blend of grief and panicked trepidation. All the old memories rushed to the surface and she closed her eyes to ebb their rapid flow. Her efforts proved ineffectual. The stench of bodies fevered in their sweat permeated her senses, the biting scent pungent even after all these years. Her mouth went dry. She could not enter the viscount’s chambers. Even as he’d been like another father to her through the years, she could not step through that door and bear the sight of more death, more suffering…
Richard took her hand and gave it a firm, reassuring squeeze that drew her from the edge of the nightmares. “Eloise, how can I ever repay you?”
She returned her focus to the door and instead of the scent of death and sickness, she focused on the reunion between father and son that now occurred on the other side of the panel. Surely theirs was not a contentious meeting. It couldn’t be at this final moment. “I haven’t done anything.” Richard and Palmer hadn’t seen Lucien in years. They’d been spared proof of the hardened man he’d become.
Richard captured her hands in his, giving a faint squeeze. “Surely you know none of this would have happened if it hadn’t been for you.” A spasm of pain contorted his face. “My father would have died and both he and Lucien would have lost that much needed peace they both deserve.” A peace they all deserved. “How did you convince him to come?”
She sighed. “In a way I’m not at all proud of.”
He opened his mouth to say something on it, but the door opened. They swung their gazes to the door. Lucien stood framed in the entrance, his narrow-eyed stare on Eloise’s hands clasped in Richard’s. She released them suddenly.
“He’s asked for Eloise,” Lucien said, his tone gave little indication to his thoughts.
Her mouth went dry with fear and she inched away. “I…” Can’t. She could not step foot into another room of death. Eloise pressed her eyes closed and then opened them. She might not want to enter that room but she
could
do this. For the man who’d been like another father to her. For her father who’d had no better friend in all his life. And for Lucien and, of course, his brothers. She could do this for them.
With head held high, she started for the door. Lucien remained rooted to his spot, blocking her entrance. He took in her face and then looked over her person as though verifying that she was, in fact, all right. Which was quite preposterous. He didn’t know of the terror she still carried in her heart or the irrational guilt for her inability to help his wife and son.
Wordlessly, he stepped aside.
Eloise curled her hands so tight, her nails left indents upon the soft skin of her palms, biting into the flesh hard enough to draw blood. The need for his support in this perhaps last and final visit with the viscount was a physical hungering. She took a step forward and he shot his hand out, taking her fingers in his. She glanced down at their interlocked fingers and then raised her gaze to his. Something charged and volatile passed between them. And then, he released her.
She entered the room, the lingering scent of death hung on the air. She pressed her eyes closed as the deaths of her father, Sara, and Matthew crept around her mind.
“Eloise?”
Eloise hovered at the doorway and tried to set aside memories of past loss. “Yes, Lord Hereford.” She closed the door partway and cautiously made her way over to the bed.
The viscount, once bold and proud, struggled to push himself up onto his elbows. Reservations aside, she raced over. “Please, don’t,” she said. “Rest.”
He coughed noisily and gestured to the vacant seat. She sat. Perched on the edge of her chair she took his frail hand in hers. The ghost of a smile played about his lips. “Do you know,” he began so faintly she struggled to hear. “I always wanted a daughter.”
“You and Papa were always a wonderful match.” She gave his hands a gentle squeeze. “He always wanted a son.”
“Ah, but there you are wrong.” He shook his head. “He always needed a son…but he always wanted a daughter.” A gleam twinkled in his pained eyes. “As did I.” His gaze skittered off to the door. “Don’t tell my sons,” he said with traces of the humor he’d shown through the years that made her forget a moment that she sat here now paying her last respects to this loyal friend of her late father’s.
Eloise leaned over and whispered close to his ear, “Your secret is safe with me.”
They shared another smile.
“Oh, Eloise, I am so very grateful to you.” The hollow lines of his throat moved with his audible swallow. “You brought my son back to me.”
“I didn’t do that,” she said softly. “He was ready to come home.” He’d just required a gentle reminder.
“Do you know, the greatest regret of my life was buying that commission for him?”
Eloise said nothing, all the while wishing she could draw forth the comforting words he deserved at the end of his life. She set the viscount’s hand down upon the crisp, white linen. Yet, she shared that very same regret. She wished Lucien had never left his wife and son. Then mayhap he’d not have been consumed by so many bitter resentments.
“Do you know my second great regret?”
“What is that?” she murmured.
“That not one of my boys was wise enough to wed you.” He dissolved into another fit of coughing.
Eloise hopped to her feet and picked up the nearby pitcher from the side table. She filled his glass then set the porcelain jug down. “Here,” she said. She reclaimed her seat and held the glass up to his lips.
He took slow, laborious sips. “Think to distract me do you?” He waggled an eyebrow.
Her lips twitched. “Did it work?”
“Not at all.” He held up a bent finger and waved it about “We were talking about my foolish sons.”
“They’re not foolish,” she said loyally. As much as she’d longed for Lucien, time had forced her to confront the truth—he loved another. And she’d loved him enough to let go of the dream of him as anything more…but that friend from long ago.
“I always imagined you would marry Lucien.” He spoke more to himself. “In my life, I never saw such a bond between a man and woman the way you two shared. Even as children…” He coughed once again. “Even as children,” he repeated. “You had a friendship unlike I’ve ever known.”
“Most boys would detest a young girl who made a nuisance of herself, the way I did.” And at first, Lucien the boy had chafed at her bothersome presence.
The viscount’s words cut into her musings. “He loves you.”
She didn’t doubt Lucien did, and always had, loved her as a friend. “I know,” she assured him. She’d merely ached for more.
He shook his head. “He
loves
you,” he said, a meaningful look in his blue eyes.
Eloise warmed at the significance of his supposition. “Oh, no,” she said hurriedly. She looked to the door and then back to the viscount. “Never as he loved Sara. Perhaps as a dear sister.” Except the memory of his kiss still burned like an indelible imprint upon her lips. His was the kiss a man gave to a lover.
He rested his hand upon hers and she started. “He does,” he said, his voice weakening.
Suddenly discomfited by the personal direction of Lord Hereford’s words, she stood. “You must rest, my lord.”
He managed a nod. “Mark my words, Eloise. He’ll find the courage to profess his love and I’ll be smiling all the way to the hereafter.”
The viscount stilled and for one horrific, endless span of a heartbeat she believed he’d died. But then the faint, almost imperceptible inhalation as he drew breath indicated he still lived. Eloise padded quietly across the room. She slipped outside into the hall.
Richard and Lucien stood, in like positions—feet braced apart, somber sets to the harsh, angular planes of their faces. But for Lucien’s missing limb, with their dark hair and storm gray eyes, they may as well have been mirror images of one another.
They looked expectantly at her. “He is sleeping.”