To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke Book 8) (17 page)

Determined to set her from his thoughts once and for all, he turned to leave—and registered her waxen skin. Gone was the pink blush of her youth. The pinched set to her mouth and the panicked gaze that flitted about hinted at a woman who despised the attention now shown her just as much as Marcus himself did, but for altogether different reasons.

Had her love of her husband been so very great that the focus she’d earned felt like a betrayal of sorts to the hero Marcia had briefly mentioned? A fop in purple satin breeches and a sapphire blue coat reached for her dance card. Eleanor jerked her arm close to her side and gave her head a terse shake. The young dandy, who by the look of him was not much older than Marcus had been when he’d made the mistake of trusting his heart to her, looked crestfallen. Until Eleanor said something. Lord Herington nodded like a chicken pecking at feed and then spun on his heel. He sprinted through the crowd and made for the refreshment table.

Ah, so the lady was not interested in the attention being shown her and she’d become very adept at rejecting unwanted advances. On the heel of that was the niggling wonder of all the gentlemen who might have pressed their attentions on her after the honorable Lieutenant Collins had died. Marcus wanted to take each of those faceless, nameless men apart with his bare hands.

Marcus should leave. And yet, he remained. Just then, Eleanor’s gaze collided with his once more. There was an almost pleading in her soft blue eyes that even across the room called out, beckoned him. She wanted him. Not in the ways that had anything to do with the flare of passion that had always existed between them, but rather in a way that drew on the friendship they’d once known.

If he were wise, he’d ignore that desperate look in her fathomless stare. But then, he’d never been wise where Eleanor was concerned. Silently cursing himself for his inherent weakness for her still, he strode across the ballroom, bypassing those who inclined their head in greeting, his gaze trained forward.

The faint stirrings of a waltz echoed around the ballroom. Did he imagine her shoulders sinking with relief as he cut a swath through the collection of gentlemen she’d amassed? “Mrs. Collins, I believe you promised the next set to me.”

S
urrounded by a sea of suitors, not a single one of the gentlemen could hold sway over Eleanor’s attentions or affections. They pressed in on her, like flies on a confectionary treat left in the summer sun, until she struggled to draw breath. As her aunt performed introduction after introduction, the names of the leering men blurred together, the woman’s words coming as though down a long hall.

Eleanor’s body trembled and she could not keep from searching the room for that monster.
Do not think of him.
Except, in her mind, she saw his mouth moving as he’d warned her away from Marcus. Those same lips that had crushed hers and cut off airflow.

She was going to faint.

“Lord Fitzroberts…”

Her aunt gave her a questioning look.

Eleanor nodded, forced a smile, and curtsied. As Lord Fitzroberts or Fitzherbert proceeded to speak with her aunt, Eleanor looked about for Marcus.

In all her most hellish days, the joyous memories of Marcus had sucked her back from the vortex of despair and fear.

Then she found the viscount with her eyes and her breath caught hard. Nay, Marcus. He would always be Marcus. The wry, cynical man he’d become had stood off to the side, boldly watching her. Had any other man studied her in that possessive, penetrating way, she’d have fled the hall in terror. For all that had come to pass, and the horror she’d known, her heart still thudded wildly with desire for him.

“Eleanor,” her aunt snapped her back to the moment. Brandishing her cane, the duchess motioned to a tall, lanky gentleman. “This pup is the Earl of Primly. A good fellow.” That earned a disapproving frown from the gentleman. Then, what gentleman would care to be so categorized by the eccentric duchess?

The lean gentleman flushed. “Th-thank you for the k-kind w—”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” she stated with a bluntness that only deepened the color upon the earl’s sharp cheeks. “I was merely stating fact. Not a thing wrong with Primly.” She shifted the tip of her cane to one of the gentleman ogling Eleanor’s décolletage. “You may continue on Westfield.” Cheeks flushed, the young gentleman with thick Byron curls slunk off. Aunt Dorothea thumped her cane three times. “Ask for her dance card, Primly.”

Obligingly, he reached for Eleanor’s card.

The earl froze, mid-movement, his hand outstretched; those long fingers he’d put upon her person. The young man was harmless, or appeared to be so, but then there had been another with an easy grin who’d ultimately stank of brandy and sin.
Oh, God.
She could not do this. “No.”

“Eleanor?” her aunt prodded.

Her feet twitched with the urge to shove past the lecherous lords and run as far and as fast as her legs could carry her and continue running all the way back to the far-flung corner of Cornwall. She searched about for escape when, through her crush of suitors, Eleanor’s gaze collided with Marcus’.

He grinned. “Mrs. Collins, I believe you promised the next set to me.”

Her heart caught and she stared transfixed as the assembled gentlemen parted. Marcus came to a stop and eyed her through thick, hooded, golden lashes.

His words were a blatant lie, and a poor one at that. Every gentleman here knew Marcus, the Viscount Wessex, had not spoken to her until this moment. And yet, for his steady, reassuring presence and his innate ability to know when she needed him, Eleanor loved him all the more.

“There you have it,” her aunt said to the men lying in wait. “Mrs. Collins has pledged this set to Wessex.”

Some of the cloying panic in the attention being thrust upon her eased and Eleanor shot out a hand and placed her fingertips along his coat sleeve and allowed him to guide her away from the crush of gentlemen. With an ease that made her heart ache, Marcus tucked her fingers into the crook of his elbow and led her on to the dance floor for the waltz. “Marcus, I—”

“Come,” he said quietly as he moved her hand onto his shoulder and positioned his own at her waist. “You’ll not make me a liar before your rather impressive collection of suitors.”

She nodded. “Yes, I would.” Her hand fell to her side and he quickly moved it back into place.

“I daresay a waltz would be a very small thank you for having separated you from those swains.”

“It would.” The orchestra launched into the full hum of the haunting melody of the waltz and couples moved about them in the slow one-two-three step. “But I do not know the waltz.”

“You do not know how to waltz?” He gave his head a bemused shake. “I’d not considered the dance had not arrived from the Continent until you left.”

In the time she’d been gone the inane details of life—the dances deemed appropriate and practiced within the distinguished ballrooms of London, the cut of a gown, the style of a cravat—had all changed. How very insignificant when compared with how her life had been altered. She did another search of the room and a chill raked her spine. He was here. Watching. Her. Her exchange with Marcus.

“Trust me,” he said quietly, jerking her to the moment. She darted her gaze about. Lords and ladies twirled about them; trained rabidly curious stares on them. Yet as smoothly confident as he’d always been, unfazed by the
ton’s
interest, Marcus positioned her arms once again and then settled his hand at her waist. Through the fabric of her gown, her skin burned from the heat of his touch, momentarily robbing her of breath, in a response that had nothing to do with terror or remembrances of the past and everything to do with her body’s subtle awareness of him as a man.

“I do not know what I am doing, Marcus,” she whispered, jolting awkwardly through the dance.

He winked. “You can lurch to and fro and still evince a grace any lady would admire.” Those words were surely the same, effusive praise he reserved for all the ladies he took to his bed and yet a thrill went through her anyway.

Not wanting him to realize the hold he still held over her, she found her first real smile that evening. “And you’re the rogue the papers purport you to be.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Ah, you and those gossip columns, again. We need to find you new reading material.”

She silently cursed and immediately sidestepped that glaring admission. “There is a good deal to read about, Marcus, but I long ago stopped reading about your name.” Eleanor stumbled and trampled all over his toes. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I did warn you that you’d be better suited to find a different dance partner.” A woman of grace and his equal in every way. Eleanor loathed the unsullied lady with every fiber of her being.

“Why?”

“For stepping on your toes. I didn’t intentionally do so, though there have been times you’ve deserved it.”

Marcus shifted her in his arms and, drawing her closer, he helped lead her through the set. “Why did you read of the pursuits of a man you ceased to love?”

“Oh,” she blurted. Embarrassed heat singed her neck and warmed her cheeks. And when presented with his probing stare and a question she had no desire in answering for what it would reveal, Eleanor stumbled against him.

He repositioned her once more. “Eleanor?”

She sighed. He was as tenacious as he’d ever been. “I never stopped caring about you, Marcus.” Loving him. She’d never stopped loving him. Until she drew her last breath, her heart would forever beat for him and only him.

“Caring.” He spoke in a flat, emotionless tone that gave little indication of his thoughts. “Not loving.” A sad smile played on his lips, erasing all the cynical bitterness he’d evinced since her return. “Since you returned, and I learned you’d wed, I told myself that I didn’t care, Eleanor. A woman who left as you did, forsaking all we shared, and giving nothing more than a note was undeserving of my regard and assuredly undeserving of my love.” With each word, he twisted the knife of pain deeper in her already broken heart. “But it was not your fault, Eleanor. Was it? You loved another and it would be wrong to resent you for having wed that man, even as I wished it had been me.”

Tears popped up behind her lids and she blinked furiously in a desperate bid to keep them from falling down her cheeks, in crystalline trails of agony. For it had been her fault. Had she not gone to those empty gardens, her life would have moved in an altogether different direction. And with the cynicism burning from within his eyes, she needed Marcus to know that she’d not been false in the words she’d given him. “What if I told you I loved you, once? Would that matter?”

Marcus considered her a long while. “At one time, yes.” He gave his head a sad, slow shake. “No longer, Eleanor. I’ve since moved on from the pain I knew after your betrayal.”

She snagged her lip between her teeth and bit down hard. Why did it matter that he’d abandoned the dream of them? Eleanor missed a step and Marcus righted her.

“It is a one-two-three count,” he whispered close to her ear.

How could he be so casual and unaffected when his blunt admission had slit open the still unhealed wounds of losing him? “It is scandalous,” she said in search of any words to give him.

Then, employing the skills he’d likely practiced as a careless rogue, he lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “You used to enjoy the time spent in my arms.”

Hating that other woman before this moment and women after, who would be the recipient of his seductive charm, Eleanor stitched her golden eyebrows into a single line. “I’m not one of your lightskirts, Marcus. Do not employ your charms on me. I would have you as a friend and nothing more.” She glanced to the gentlemen at the edge of the ballroom floor looking for the face of the demon, and unease tightened her belly. He stood on the fringe of the ballroom sipping from his champagne flute, intently studying her. At the chilling amusement in that cold-eyed stare, Eleanor stumbled. She wrenched her eyes to the front of Marcus’ snowy cravat. Panic lapped at the corner of her senses, threatening to pull her under.
Think of skating on a frozen pond. Think of Marcia, laughing as you tickle her under her chin.

As the numbing terror abated, she fixed on the tasks doled out by her uncle. She’d but six acts, really just four remaining, that her uncle demanded of her, and then she could be forever free; free of Marcus’ resentment, free of her own useless wishing, and free from the real and imagined threats posed by that grinning lord in the corner of her aunt’s ballroom.

Marcus applied a gentle pressure to her waist and snapped her attention back to him.

“What is it?”

Had he been coolly distant, she’d have said nothing that mattered to him. Had he been the slightly angry, bitter gentleman who’d splayed her heart open just moments ago, she’d have managed a smile and a noncommittal reply. Except, gruff concern coated his inquiry and he was restored to the man she’d known as a friend.

Before her courage deserted her, she blurted. “I would speak with you on a matter of privacy.” Intrigue flared in his eyes, and by the interest she detected in the silver flecks of his gaze, she gathered the direct path his thoughts wandered. “Not that.”

His lips twitched. “Not what, Eleanor?”

She removed her hand from his sleeve and fanned her flaming cheeks, and then promptly stumbled. With a chuckle, he caught her. “But you did think about it.”

“I do not know what ‘it’ you refer to.” Eleanor ground the heel of her slipper into his instep, this time with a deliberateness that had him wincing. “Do pay attention.” As Marcus guided her in a smooth circle, she sought another glimpse of her attacker. He stood in the same spot, looking boldly back, still taunting her with his presence. Eleanor swallowed hard. She didn’t have much time before the set concluded and he returned her to the beast prowling on the sidelines. “Will you meet me?”
Haven’t you learned the folly in sneaking off before?
Dark, wicked deeds transpire when one danced on the edge of respectability.

She braced for his roguish rejoinder.

Instead, Marcus passed a searching look over her face and then gave a terse nod. “Where?”

He capitulated so easily. “My aunt’s library, following the next set.” No doubt, he still believed theirs to be a meeting between two lovers. Her insides twisted. How many women had he coordinated meaningless assignations with in the homes of London’s lords? And how many of those meetings had he failed to honor…?
Or was it only me who was abandoned by him that night?

The music drew to a halt and they stopped. Unease, an eerie sense of familiarity to another night, stirred within, made all the more real by that nameless nobleman who’d cornered her. “You will come, then?” Couples politely clapped for the orchestra’s efforts about them. “You’ll not promise to meet and then never show?”

Marcus raised her fingertips to his lips and placed his lips along the top of her hand. “In all our stolen exchanges, Eleanor, not once did I ever fail to meet you.”

As he ushered her from the dance floor, she bit down on the inside of her cheek, hard enough to draw blood. She cast a look back for the man who’d fathered her child. How could Marcus be so wrong about the one night that had irrevocably changed them?

She looked toward the gentlemen who waited, hovering like bothersome gnats, awaiting her company, and drew to an abrupt stop. There was nothing polite or proper in their hot, lascivious stares. They eyed her no differently than they might study a lightskirt; a woman to be plucked, there to bring them pleasure. And for the folly in requesting a meeting with Marcus, away from the safe eyes of the crowded ballroom, Eleanor recognized she’d little choice.