To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke Book 8) (22 page)

Yes, he was, indeed, correct. She should bury all hint of discourse on the favor she’d put to him and yet could not quell the questions she’d had since in the gardens of Kensington. He’d so very willingly offered his assistance. “Why?” she blurted.

He brushed his knuckles along her jaw in the way he’d once done, forcing her gaze up to his. “Why what, Eleanor?” Fear battled with a soft wave of desire and she desperately clung to her body’s awareness of his tall, well-muscled frame, hungering for the uncomplicated joy she’d known in his arms. “Why have I agreed to help you?” The corded muscles of his arms tightened the sleeves of his jacket, a reminder of his power—and the danger he could pose. Arms that could overpower, subdue, silence.

A shuddery sigh escaped her and she managed a jerky nod. “You hate me.”

“Yes. I’ve hated you for a long time.”

His casually spoken words were a lash upon her heart.

“I hated you for leaving.” She’d left because she had no choice but escape. “I hated you for writing me a damned note, after all we’d shared.” After the attack, she’d been bruised and sore and battered. How could she have ever faced Marcus after she’d been so used by another? How, when she’d not even been able to stomach her own visage in a mirror? “And I hate you for having chosen another.”

She slid her gaze away from his. With her flight, she’d chosen only him. Chosen to save him from humiliation and shame. “It was for the best,” she whispered. For in the end, she’d allowed him the freedom to find a woman deserving of him.

He stilled that soft, gentle caress of her jawline. “Is that what you believe?”

“That is what I know.” Pieces of her story that would never be his to learn.

She braced for the stinging bite of mocking words she’d come to expect from him; words she’d also come to recognize as an attempt at self-preservation. Instead, his lips turned up in a sad smile. The roguish grin would have been easier, preferable to this achingly empty expression of mirth. “Do you want to know the truth?”

She told herself not to ask, and yet she could no sooner quell the words than she could slice off her own right hand. “What is the truth?”

“I do not hate you.” Her heart lifted and took flight. That admission was more poignant than any declaration of love he could give. “For everything that has come to pass, I care about you.” Not love. Her wildly beating heart sank. Still, caring for her was a good deal better than the dark feelings of hate. “I want to see you happy.” Marcus cupped her cheek and he lowered his lips close to hers, so close they nearly brushed. Close enough to remind her of how beautiful it had once been between them. “And God help me, I still want you.”

God help her, she wanted him, as well.

He claimed her mouth with his. For an infinitesimal moment, a spark of desire lit from the brush of his lips on hers and she turned herself over to the wonder of his embrace. Marcus groaned, and parting her lips, he slipped his tongue inside.

He tasted of brandy.

Eleanor gagged. She shoved away from him with a startled cry and punched him hard. Her fist connected solidly with his nose. The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh flooded her buzzing ears.

M
arcus had received all manner of interesting responses to his kisses through the years. Breathy pleas for more, desperate moans of approval. Not once, however, had he been punched for his efforts.

He touched his nose and winced. By God, too many counts in a ring against Gentleman Jackson himself and he’d never had a bloodied nose, but then with one dangerously wicked right jab, the lady had managed it. The warm trickle of blood penetrated his glove and Marcus yanked his kerchief from his pocket and pressed it to his nose, staring at Eleanor over the rapidly staining fabric. The lady continued retreating, her pallor white. “Bloody hell.” He flinched as pain radiated along his nose.

For all he
did
know about Eleanor Carlyle, now Collins, he’d never known she could plant a facer like Gentleman Jackson himself.

She backed into a rose-inlaid side table. The fragile piece of furniture shifted under the sudden movement and a porcelain shepherdess tumbled to the floor. It exploded in a spray of white and pink splintered glass.

“A simple no would have sufficed,” he said drolly and experimentally tested the soundness of the bridge of his nose. He winced. Yes, very possibly broken. By a slip of a lady. “I will say I’ve never quite received that—” His words trailed off. Eleanor’s chest heaved with the force of her rapidly drawn breaths. The pale white of her cheeks melded with the stark white of the plaster walls. By God, she was terrified. Granted, he was livid about the whole deuced painful nose business, but did she believe he’d harm her? Annoyance stirred in his belly. “Surely you don’t believe I’d hurt you.”

Her eyes stood out, vivid blue moons in her face; trapped within their depths was a gripping terror. She had the look of a woman battling tortured demons. A chill ran along his spine. Then, the fleeting moment passed. She blinked several times and then on a soft cry raced over. “My goodness, Marcus. I’ve hit you.”

“Yes,” he said with the first stirrings of amusement since that very violent rebuffing of his advances. Punched. Walloped him with a force Gentleman Jackson himself would have been hard-pressed to not admire. Marcus gave his head a wry shake.

“I am so sorry.” She moved her hands up, as though to affirm a break but then she swiftly lowered her palms to her sides. His gaze fixed on the tremble to her long, graceful fingers. He frowned as the faintest warnings stirred at the back of his mind. Why would Eleanor react so? Her response, paired with her humbling request for his aid melded together and he curled his hand into a balled fist. “It is all right,” he assured her. “It is not broken.”

“I—you surprised me.”

Mere surprise? Is that all there was to account for her panicked reaction? A niggling of unease settled in his belly and he blotted his nose once more. Marcus touched his free hand to her jaw. “I came to escort you for a ride in my curricle.”

She captured her lower lip between her teeth. “We can’t. Not with your nose—”

“It has nearly stopped bleeding,” he interrupted, pressing the crimson-stained fabric to his injury.

Eleanor hesitated; indecision raging in her eyes. Then she gave a slight nod. He extended one elbow and she placed her fingertips along his sleeve, allowing him to lead her from the room. As they walked, he examined the top of her bent head. Her skin, still a grayish-white from when she’d walloped him, and the trembling fingers on his forearm hinted at her terror. What was the cause of that sentiment? Upset over hurting him? Or something more…?

The knot in his belly grew and he forcibly thrust it back.

They reached the foyer and servants rushed forward with their cloaks.

Eleanor removed her fingers from his person and with those quaking digits, she fiddled with the clasp, and then she accepted her bonnet; a straw piece with faded roses sewn along the brim.

A memory trickled in. Eleanor as she’d been, wearing the same bonnet, only the colors had been crisp and those blooms so very full they had appeared real. This was the life she’d lived. This was the state her husband had left her in; a woman required to fulfill those charges doled out by a late uncle, all so she could know security for her and their child.

“What is…?” Eleanor’s words trailed off as she noted the direction of his scrutiny. She yanked the frayed ribbons into a neat bow. “Shall we?”

The butler rushed forward and pulled the door open. Sunlight streamed through the entrance and splashed off the white, Italian marble floor. Stuffing the stained handkerchief into his front pocket, Marcus motioned Eleanor outside and followed behind her.

No words were exchanged until he set the curricle into motion. “Have there been gentlemen who have forced their advances on you?” he asked without preamble. Because if there had been, he’d tear the bastards apart with his bare hands and feed them their own limbs for their evening meal.

From the corner of his eye, he caught the almost imperceptible tightening at the corners of her lips. She hesitated. “I am a widow.”

I am a widow.
That was, at best, an unspoken affirmation of his question and, at worst, a deliberately vague response.

“A widow who does not wish to take a gentleman to her bed.” Unlike the countless widows he’d taken to his bed who’d relished the freedoms afforded them and more, the pleasure to be found in his arms. Pleasure he would show Eleanor, if she allowed it of him. Marcus shifted the reins to one hand and covered her fingers with his. The full, red flesh of her lips quivered under his ministrations, but she did not pull away and for that, he was encouraged. “You’d deny yourself the pleasures to be had in a man’s arms?” A fact for which he was grateful. The idea of her wrapped in another gentleman’s arms shattered him.

“How very arrogant you’ve become, Marcus. You
are
a rogue.” Yes, he’d fashioned himself into the indolent, charming rogue as a means of protecting himself from ever being hurt at the hands of a woman. He’d never been ashamed of who he’d become—until now, with the disappointment and sadness reflecting in the soulful depths of her eyes. “You expect I should take a gentleman to my bed because I am a widow? You’d have me sacrifice my self-respect and honor for what? A fleeting union of two people in a shameful act that should not exist beyond the bonds of marriage?”

A shameful act? “Is that how you view the act of making love, Eleanor?” Had her husband been one of those coolly detached sorts who snuffed the candle and came to her with coverlets drawn and her nightshift between them? What a bloody fool.

“I don’t view the act of making love in any way,” she said between gritted teeth. She darted her gaze about, as though seeking escape. The rapidity of her movement sent a golden curl tumbling from her chignon. She tucked the tress back inside her bonnet.

“That is a shame,” he murmured. “A lady such as you should think of it, Eleanor, and think of it often. You should celebrate the power of a man’s touch and dream of taking that man,” Preferably only him. “In your arms and—”

She yanked her hand free of his. “I do not want your empty words of passion and desire.” That was all he had to give anymore since she’d stolen off with his heart.

“Ah, yes. You want my friendship, for however many tasks you have left on your uncle’s list? And then what, Eleanor? Will you disappear and run off, leaving,”
me
, “London behind?”

Eleanor nodded and he started at that honest response. “I do not want Marcia to grow up in this world.”

“Where will you go?” he tossed back, desperately requiring that answer so this time, when she walked out of his life, he didn’t spend every day wondering where she’d gone to, was she happy, and worrying he’d never again see her. When she remained silent, annoyance stirred in his belly. “No response? Even now, you’d not tell me where you made your home? That isn’t a friend, Eleanor.” Suddenly, it was very important he know who she’d been, what she’d done, and where she’d gone in these eight years. At the very least, she owed him that much.

For a long while, she said nothing, and he thought she intended to remain silent. “The north coast of Cornwall,” she said, her faint voice so soft he thought he might have imagined it. But then she cleared her throat. “A small village called St. Just.”

Cornwall. A bitter laugh escaped him. She’d traveled to the opposite end of England. The emotional and physical gulf between them had been equally great. “Did your husband hail from there?”

She gave her head a slight shake. The muscles of her throat moved and she directed her attention to her tightly clasped hands.

Then, he asked the most important question he’d had all these years, the answer mattering as much now as when she’d been a young lady of eighteen. “Were you happy?” For the hole she’d ripped in his heart with her leaving, he’d never wanted to imagine a world in which she’d not been the smiling, laughing girl she’d been.

“I had Marcia.” She paused. “Of course, I should be happy.”

How neatly she sidestepped his question; her evasion more telling than affirmation or denial. “Ah, but it’s not a matter of should you have been or should you not have been, but rather, were you?” Marcus shifted the reins to his opposite hand, and caught one of her tensely held ones. He slid his fingers into hers, interlocking the digits. He studied them. How very effortlessly they fit together.

“I was,” she said softly, her eyes on their joined hands.

Marcus braced for more words from her on the paragon who’d held her heart, but she remained stoically silent. How was it possible to feel both this lightened relief, melded with jealousy for what they had known together? He removed his hand from Eleanor’s and once again shifted the reins so he might more easily guide the curricle through the gates of Hyde Park, down the path clogged with carriages. Eleanor loosened the strings of her bonnet and pulled the piece free. She set it down on the bench beside her and closing her eyes, she turned her face up to the sun.

A vise squeezed off all hint of airflow as he worshiped the sight of Eleanor bathed in the warm rays of the springtime sun. It kissed the honeyed blonde of her curls, casting an otherworldly glow upon her. She was perfection. She was unfettered and untainted in her beauty; pure, while the women about those polished beauties of Society were as false as their smiles.

Eleanor opened her eyes and their gazes collided. “What is it?” she asked, touching her hand to her mouth.

He shook his head. “It is…” Everything. “Nothing.” Marcus guided them off the well-traveled path, away from the crowds of lords and ladies out for their excursions. He leapt from the curricle and motioned forward a boy hovering about. Marcus withdrew a sack of coins and tossed it to the child who easily caught it. “Care for my mount and there will be more.” Gripping Eleanor at her narrow waist, he helped her to the ground. She looked at him askance. “Your uncle did not know you well enough to know you never enjoyed a curricle ride.” She’d once likened rides in Hyde Park to being a creature on display at a museum for all to gawk and gape at.

Eleanor started. “You remember that?”

Marcus remembered all about Eleanor Elaine Carlyle. He winked. “The duke failed to stipulate a length or duration to that carriage ride, so I daresay this shall suffice?”

The muscles of Eleanor’s throat moved and a sheen of tears dusted her eyes. She blinked them back and then allowed him to lead her down the walking trail.

He opened his mouth to speak, when his sister’s voice slashed into their exchange. “Marcus!”

Their gazes swung as one to Lizzie who wound her way determinedly through lords and ladies. At her side, marched a very determined, and a boldly staring, Lady Marianne Hamilton. The duo came to a stop before him and Eleanor and he damned the unwanted intrusion.

“Mrs. Collins, Marcus, what a surprise it is to see you here,” Lizzie said, breathless from her near sprint to reach them. She brushed a damp, loose curl behind her ear. “Then it is really no surprise. You do so love rides in Hyde Park, just as Marianne does. Don’t you, Marianne?” Lizzie turned her attention on the lady at her side.

“I do love to ride, my lord.” Lady Marianne peered at him through thick, smoky lashes. “Perhaps we might one day have the pleasure of riding…together.”

He choked, but by his sister’s wide, innocent smile, she’d failed to note the young woman’s veiled innuendo. By the tense set to Eleanor’s shoulders, however, the more experienced widow detected the other lady’s interest—and if the fury spitting in her eyes was any indication, she was anything but pleased with the woman’s attentions.

Why would Eleanor be jealous? Why, unless she still felt something for him? A lightness filled his chest at the evidence of Eleanor’s interest.

“Do you enjoy riding, Mrs. Collins?” Lady Marianne asked Eleanor.

She smoothed her palms over the front of her skirts. “I…” She was afraid of horses. Another piece that made Eleanor Elaine the woman she was. “Do not…” she finished.

Lizzie slipped her arm in Marcus’. “I would speak to you a moment, brother. There is a favor I would put to you.”

He swallowed a curse as his sister steered him away. “Can it not wait, Lizzie?”

She planted her hands on her hips. “You’ve been unpardonably rude.”

Marcus cocked his head.

Lizzie pointed her eyes at the sky. “To Mar…” At his narrowed eyes, his sister coughed into her hand. “That is, to
myself
.”