To Trust a Rogue (The Heart of a Duke Book 8) (3 page)

“It is certainly gossip,” Marcus said with droll humor, taking another swallow. It just wasn’t necessarily
untrue
gossip.

Crawford reclined in his chair and continued to study Marcus in that assessing manner. Unable to meet his friend’s probing stare, he absently skimmed his gaze over the club. “Daisy wished me to inquire as to whether the gossip is true.” Ah, Daisy, the consummate romantic. Was every blasted body in the whole of England a romantic spirit? Even Crawford, now?

Marcus chuckled at the other man’s bluntness. Then, when one was a duke just a step shy of royalty, there really was no need to prevaricate. He gave his head a despairing shake. “I’ve no immediate plans.” He smiled wryly. “Despite my mother’s best machinations.” After all, with a lifelong friendship and a bond built on unimaginable tragedy—the murder of their best friend—he at least owed Crawford
that
truth.

Crawford studied him across the table in that very ducal manner so that all he was missing was the monocle, and then he gave a slow nod. “My wife wants your assurance that you’ll settle for nothing other than a love-match.

And Marcus, once more, promptly choked. By God, between his mother and his best friend’s words this day, they were going to drown him. He lifted his glass in salute. “Assure our girl of the flowers that I am grateful for her concern.” Marcus gave his shoulders a roll. “When I do wed, however, it will be for the same reason every young nobleman inevitably marries.”
Or will it be when I’ve finally let go of the past?
He gave his drink another slow swirl. “I’ll wed a proper lady,” like Lady Marianne. “And produce the requisite heir and a spare, and then the Wessex line is secure, while I’m free to carry on as all the other peers present.”

Silence met his response and he looked up to find Crawford’s pitying stare on him. Marcus’ neck heated and his fingers twitched with the urge to tug at his cravat. When Crawford at last spoke, he did so in hushed tones. “Surely you want more than that?”

“No,” he said with an automaticity born of truth. “I surely do not.” He flexed one of his hands. “I’m quite content just as I am.” Marcus downed the contents of his glass. No, he’d tried love once before and the experience was as palatable as a plate of rancid kippers. “Though I applaud you and Daisy for finding that very special sentiment.”

Alas, after Eleanor’s deception, he’d never been able to fully erase the bitter tinge in his words when speaking of love and romance, and any other foolish sentiment that schemer had ultimately killed.

Marcus skimmed his gaze over the crowd. Several affirmed bachelors tipped their heads in a conciliatory manner. No doubt, they saw another member of their respected club prepared to willingly fall. He sighed. Except after years of visiting scandalous clubs and carrying on with paramours, courtesans, and widows, he was quite…tired of it all. Oh, he’d never admit as much. To do so would hopelessly ruin his name as rogue. But it had begun to feel as if he moved through life with a dull tedium, with a restlessness that dogged him.

Not that he expected a wife to cure him of that boredom. But that woman would serve a perfunctory purpose that went with his title.

Crawford’s frown deepened and he shifted. No doubt his desire to make sense of Marcus’ reasoning was born of years and years of being a duke beholden to no one. His friend’s chair groaned in protest as he settled his arms on the table and leaned forward. “I do not doubt you will find a woman who will value you as you deserve.” A woman like Lady Marianne who
valued
his fortune and title. How very empty such an existence would be and yet far better than this hell Eleanor Carlyle had left him in. Crawford cleared his throat. “A woman who will also help you…forget…”
Forget
.

Crawford spoke of a world of hurts that existed beyond Eleanor. For not a soul
truly
knew of the two fleeting months of madness and his subsequent broken heart following the lady’s betrayal. Even his mother, who’d celebrated in their whirlwind courtship, didn’t know the extent of the hole left in his heart with Eleanor’s parting.

Unnerved by the fresh remembrance of Eleanor Carlyle, Marcus shoved lazily to his feet. “If you’ll excuse me? I have matters of business to see to.” It was quite enough having to deal with a mother spouting of love and dying devotion of a worthy lady, that he didn’t really require it from his closest friend, too.

“Oh?” Crawford drawled and in a manner befitting the once grinning, mischievous youth he’d been before life and loss had shaped him, he tipped back on the heels of his chair. “The whole wife-hunting business?”

He made a crude gesture that roused a chuckle from his friend. Marcus tempered that rudeness with a grin and then started back through the clubs with his patented smile firmly in place.

It would seem when a nobleman demonstrated interest in a lady, it signaled his intentions to wed, and there really was no escaping that news anywhere.

S
he’d vowed to never return.

Mrs. Eleanor Collins gazed out the carriage window at the passing streets. Her spectacles lay forgotten on her lap and she fiddled with the wire frames. The carriage hit another bump on the cobbled road and threw her against the side of the conveyance. The sudden movement sent her glasses tumbling to the floor. Eleanor quickly righted herself and, for now, left that small, but important-to-her disguise, piece forgotten at her feet.

She’d vowed she would die before setting foot in the cruel, cold, and hateful world of London. Nor had those words been the overdramatic ones of a young, naïve miss. It had been a pledge she’d
taken
as a young, naïve miss who’d seen the malevolent side of that town and knew there was nothing worth reentering that darkness for. Not when the risk was having the remainder of her soul consumed by ugly memories.

Until life had ultimately shown her that there, indeed, was something worth braving anything and everything for.

“Mama, your glasses.”

Eleanor turned her attention to the small, golden-curled girl who held her spectacles in her small, delicate fingers. At just seven, Marcia was that something. That person she’d sacrifice anything and everything for. Including her sanity. Managing her first real smile that day, Eleanor accepted the wire-rims and placed them on her face. “Why, thank you.”

“Are we almost there?” Excitement tinged her daughter’s words.

She’d once shared this same eagerness to leave the countryside and enter the glittering metropolis. What a naïve fool she’d been. Her smile fell. “We are, love.”
Unfortunately
. “Almost, there,” she murmured, throwing her arm around her daughter’s small shoulders and bringing the girl close to her side. Eleanor dug deep for strength.

“Ouch, you are squishing me.”

Tamping down the nervousness churning in her belly, Eleanor forced herself to lighten her grip. “It’s because you’re so very squishable.”

Marcia giggled. “Is it because you are excited?”

The familiar stone in her belly, formed somewhere between her father’s death, her aunt’s missive, and the arrival of the Duchess of Devonshire’s carriage, tightened. “Oh, indeed,” she managed at last.

A spirited glimmer lit Marcia’s eyes. “I am ever so excited, too, Mama.”

Regret tightened in her chest. “Did you not wish to remain in Cornwall?” Hadn’t Eleanor, with her late father’s guidance, carved a life that her daughter found joy in?

Marcia pumped her little legs back and forth. “Not forever, silly.”

With a sigh, she absently stroked the top of her daughter’s soft crown of curls. Yes, there had been a time when the thrill of the unknown had taken hold of her. She’d been full of fairy tales and dreams of magic and mystery and intrigue. Her heart tightened. And for a brief, very brief, moment, she’d known the joy that came from that grand adventure. His grinning visage flashed to her mind’s eye, as it sometimes did. Eleanor pressed her eyes closed and did not thrust the memory of him away, as she often did. This time, she accepted the memory of Marcus, the Viscount Wessex, and let it wash over her with a familiarity born of yesterday, even with the passage of time.

He’d been her dream. He’d been the joy and the excitement. And in one shattered evening, nothing more of him remained…but the memory. Unease churned in her belly. By the very nature of his family’s connection to her aunt and his residence alone, the risk of meeting was great. As such, the reality of that brought thoughts of him back with a shocking frequency…and when the first missive had come from her aunt, Eleanor had allowed herself an infinitesimal moment of hope—the hope of seeing him.

Her gaze trained unseeingly upon the carriage bench opposite her, she let open the gates she’d constructed to keep him out. Since their parting, she’d become a woman who confronted life with frankness. So it was the honesty she insisted upon that she acknowledged the truth—she missed him. And she always would. Nor was it just the memory of innocence she’d known in their time together. She missed what could have been. His smile. His laugh. Who they’d been when in each other’s company.

Marcia tugged at her fingers and she glanced down distractedly. “What is it, dear?”

“Are you thinking of Grandfather?” Wide brown eyes stared back at Eleanor.

Sadness stuck her hard for altogether different reasons. “I always think of Grandfather,” she murmured noncommittally, and it was true. Gone just six months now, there was no better father, nor could there ever have been a better man than he was while living.

“Someday you’ll meet again,” Marcia said with entirely too much maturity for a child of seven. “He promised we would and he would never, ever lie, Mama. So don’t be sad.” She laid her head against Eleanor’s arm. “And remember what he said. ‘Goodbyes are not forever.’”

They are just temporary partings
.

Marcus’ visage flashed behind her eyes. Once more. Perhaps it was her return to London, a land they’d lived in together, back when she’d been innocent and smiling and he’d needed laughter, but she could not extricate the thoughts of him from her now. Nor had that goodbye been temporary. The day she’d boarded her aunt’s carriage and made her return to Kent, unchaperoned, alone, and broken, she’d known with an absolute certainty, for all her father’s beliefs on goodbyes, the final one between her and Marcus had, indeed, been a forever goodbye.

And she wagered for the love she carried of him still in her heart, he would feel no such fondness for the woman who’d broken his heart.

“We’re here.”

“Hmm?” She blinked and then glanced about before her daughter’s words truly registered. Her heart dipped somewhere to her toes and she plastered a smile onto her face, fearing the forced grin would shatter and reveal her a charlatan once more.

Married war widow. Grand lie.

Smiling, oft-happy mother. Sometimes a lie.

Thrilled to return to London. Absolute lie.

Seeming unaware of the tumult raging through Eleanor, Marcia bounced up and down on her seat, clapping her hands together excitedly. “Oh, Mama, it is to be the grandest of adventures.”

Regret pulled at her heart. For Marcia, it should be a magical experience. Yet, the sad truth was mother and daughter’s presence here was no mere familial visit. Though Eleanor had exchanged nothing more than letters with Aunt Dorothea over the years, the woman had proven herself the same benevolent relative who’d taken Eleanor in for a London Season. Now, however, Eleanor would come to her as a poor relation, in desperate need of salvation.

The carriage door opened and one of the woman’s liveried servants held a hand inside. He helped Marcia down; all the while a budding panic filled Eleanor, tightening her throat, and threatened to choke her. She could not stay here. Even with Father’s passing and her aging aunt’s need of her, this place was not for Eleanor. The secret scandal left in Eleanor’s wake had confirmed with the absoluteness of death itself that there could never be anything for her here in London.

“Mrs. Collins?”

She started and stared blankly at the white-gloved fingertips. For anything and everything that could or would ever be said about her, no one could dare utter the word coward of her. Eleanor slipped her hand into the footman’s and allowed him to hand her down. The spring breeze pulled at her modest brown cloak and she tilted her head back staring at the front, pink stucco façade of a home she’d never thought to see again—a home she’d never wanted to see again.

Drawing in a steadying breath, she slipped her hand into Marcia’s and gripped those fingers hard, drawing strength from the only person left in her life who truly mattered.

“Mama?” the little girl’s whisper was nearly swallowed by the busy street sounds of passing carriage wheels rattling by.

Eleanor dropped to a knee beside her daughter and settled her hands upon the girl’s shoulders. “What is it, love?” she brushed an errant golden curl that tumbled low over Marcia’s eye.

“It is so very beautiful.” Awe coated the little girl’s words.

Raising her head, Eleanor looked up at the front of the townhouse seeing it now through a woman’s eyes. There had been a time when she’d been so very captivated by the mere impressive sight of the pink stucco finish townhouse; far grander than the modest cottage she’d lived in with her father. She’d brimmed with excitement.

“Ouch,” Marcia flinched. “You are squishing me again, Mama.”

She dropped a kiss atop Marcia’s brow, and shoved to her feet. “Sorry, poppet. Come along.” Stealing another peek at Aunt Dorothea’s home, Eleanor drew in a steadying breath. The wildly animated woman with her two beloved dogs that Eleanor remembered was kind. “Shall we go see your aunt?” But would that still be the case after Eleanor had stolen from her home, without a goodbye, and a subsequent hasty marriage in the country?

“Oh, yes.” With an excited giggle, Marcia slipped her small hand, warm, slight, and yet strongly reassuring, into Eleanor’s. Her daughter tugged Eleanor toward the handful of stairs leading up to their new home—a home where they’d be poor relations, taken in and saved by Aunt Dorothea. All it would require was Eleanor to set aside the horrors of her past, remain hidden from the present, and accept the uncertainty of her future. She raised her hand and rapped once. How very difficult could all those feats be?

Her skin pricked with the sensation of being studied and she stiffened, but remained with her gaze trained on the door. It had been eight years since she’d made her hasty flight from London. No one would recall anything of the eccentric Duchess of Devonshire’s niece who’d come to London, a girl of eighteen, and left but two months later.

Marcia shifted back and forth on her feet. “Why isn’t the door opening? Did Aunt Dorothea change her mind? Do we have the wrong townhouse?”

Choosing the safest question to respond to, Eleanor said, “No, we do not have the wrong townhouse.” She’d forever recall the extravagant home in the most respectable part of Mayfair. This was the very street where they’d met—

Emotion lodged in her throat and she rapped the door once more. Why wasn’t the servant opening the door? Why was she here, on display for bored lords and ladies passing, while she wondered after
him
? In the earlier days, when her world had crumpled beneath her, she’d read the scandal pages, by then weeks old when they’d made their way to the quiet removed countryside of her home. She knew the day he’d become viscount. Knew when he’d become a rogue, gossiped about for his scandalous escapades with unhappy widows.

It had been the day she’d balled the papers up, put them under her bed and accepted that they’d both changed. She drew in a slow, calming breath and raised her hand to knock once more—when the door was blessedly thrown open. Her shoulders sagged with the weight of her relief as a different butler from the older man she remembered stood there. He eyed her a moment, this young man of indeterminate years, with a bewigged head and powdered face. He stepped back and then allowed her entry. To the man’s credit, he gave no outward reaction to the coarse cloak worn by the duchess’ poor relation.

Eleanor shrugged out of the garment and it was passed off to a waiting footman, leaving her horribly exposed in her old, brown skirts.

“Ohhhhhhhh,” her daughter’s irreverent whisper carried through the high-ceilinged marble foyer.

Pinpricks of regret stuck her heart once again, as she was confronted with a world her daughter would never, nay, could never, belong to. There would be no lavish life or soaring ceilings. A young maid rushed over with a wide smile on her plump cheeks. “May I escort you to your rooms, Mrs. Collins?”

Swallowing back the trepidation threatening to choke her, with Marcia’s hand held in her firm grip, she silently followed the young woman up the stairs.

She’d broken a vow she’d taken almost eight years to the day—she’d returned.