Читать книгу How To Tempt A Duke - Madeline Martin - Страница 14

Charles had anticipated that he might see Lady Eleanor. It had been his sole reason for a promenade through Hyde Park.

She was a beautiful sight, in a white gown with a pale green ribbon tied under her bosom and matching green ribbons on her bonnet. The color made her eyes stand out like emeralds beneath the brim of her bonnet. She had been pretty by candlelight, but by the light of day she was even comelier.

Her expression, however, mirrored that of a person being sent to the gallows. After the exchange of introductions Charles had overheard, it was quite evident that Lady Eleanor Murray was not having a good day.

It might have been kind to allow her to continue by and let her lick her wounds. If he were a sensitive man he might have allowed it. But he was not, and she had the journals he needed.

He stepped in front of Lady Eleanor and bowed. “Do you mind if I join you?”

Lady Eleanor hesitated long enough to suggest she did. Yet when her maid whispered inaudibly to her Eleanor subtly shook her head, and the brown-haired lady’s maid stepped behind Lady Eleanor to make room for him.

“That would be lovely, Lord Charles.”

Lady Eleanor’s tone was flat and suggested it was anything but. Ever the charmer.

He ought to correct her, he knew—let her know he wasn’t merely Lord Charles, but the new Duke of Somersville. Perhaps had she not been looking so crossly at him he would have been more inclined. But he owed this woman nothing.

Later. Perhaps...

He straightened and held out his arm to her, as was polite. She threaded her slender arm through his and rested her gloved hand atop the cuff of his jacket. Her light jasmine scent whispered at his senses. Although this time, in the afternoon’s gilded light, with her dressed in delicate colors and gentle ribbons, the soft sweetness of her perfume seemed more fitting.

Lady Eleanor gave a little sigh. “I suppose you’re here to convince me to return to Lottie’s?”

“I thought I might give the idea a go,” Charles replied.

Tree canopies spread over the path like an awning and blotted out the heat from the sun, leaving the air cool and fresh. Charles took a deep breath and let the quiet crunch of dirt under their feet fill the silence. Lady Eleanor’s maid walked a few feet behind them, to grant privacy while still maintaining prudent proximity.

“Do you think you’ll have any success in convincing me to return?” Lady Eleanor asked after a moment.

So much for any hope that she might make this easy. He glanced back over his shoulder, to where the Earl of Ledsey and Lady Alice still conversed with the dark-haired Marquess.

“If I were a betting man, I’d wager on it.”

Eleanor’s arm stiffened against his. “You saw?”

“I overheard,” he said. “On my honor, it was quite by accident.”

“What a wild coincidence...” she said blandly.

Charles did not bother to apologize.

“May I be frank with you?” Lady Eleanor asked abruptly. “Or rather, ask you to be frank with me?”

He inclined his head. “I believe our history dictates a level of candor.”

Lady Eleanor glanced around them. The path had gone empty and they were all but alone. At least for a few moments. Or as alone as one might be with a chaperon in tow.

She stopped and stared up at him with her catlike green eyes. Perfectly sculpted red curls framed her porcelain forehead. In fact, everything about her was so carefully refined it made him long to see something skewed out of place.

“What is so unappealing about me?” she asked.

She asked it bluntly, almost casually, the way one might ask what would be served at supper that evening.

He hadn’t expected such a question and found himself quite without words. After all, she was Westix’s daughter, and certainly that brought her a plethora of ill traits.

“I truly wish to know so that I might see how to improve,” she said. “I am from excellent lineage, and my manners are impeccable. I move in all the right circles. I know I don’t have the kind of beauty Lady Alice possesses, and that my hair is...awful. But what else is it about me, about my person, which is so heartily distasteful?”

She turned her head away before he could see any kind of expression cross her smooth face or come to her eyes. She quickly began to walk once more, as if she regretted what she’d said. Her speech had been one of hurt, but her tone had been without feeling.

Perhaps there was more to his enemy’s daughter than Charles had wagered.

He resumed his stroll beside her at the slow pace she’d set. But, for all her steady pace and dispassionate voice, her hand trembled when it returned to his arm.

“You want my honesty?” he surmised.

“Yes.”

Charles hesitated. These words would be important, ultimately forming her decision to return to Lottie’s and setting the foundation for a friendship which might allow him access to those damned journals.

“May I begin first by saying that while Lady Alice is indeed lovely, so too are you.”

Lady Eleanor looked up at him sharply, her eyes wide and the fullness of her pink lips slightly parted. After all her careful hiding behind an emotionless mask, the shock on her face was a surprise.

“I do not find your hair ‘awful,’ as you say.”

In truth, its color was vibrant and beautiful. Any distaste stemmed from the reminder of her relationship to a man whom Charles so bitterly detested.

Lady Eleanor turned her head away and regarded the path once more. Several more people had filled the area around them, and he kept his voice intentionally lowered to ensure their privacy.

“It is your demeanor which is unwelcome.”

Lady Eleanor did not react.

“Are you sure you wish me to continue?” he asked.

She exhaled and nodded. “Yes. I believe I need you to.”

And in truth she was right. She did need to hear what he had to say. For her own good, and to increase her desire to return to Lottie’s for lessons.

He went on as bade. “You are cold, as they say. Polite? Yes. But you have no joie de vivre...your delivery is without feeling. You have no...passion.”

“Passion is vulgar.”

“Passion is necessary,” he countered. “It’s what colors our world, what provides change and excitement. A woman like you, so without passion, is like a painting without depth. You will go through life in an endless routine of changing gowns and attending luncheons and soirees until they all blur together. You will meet every encounter with bored uninterest, to the point of teetering on disdain, as if nothing will ever be enough to please you. And one day, when death comes knocking at your door, you will look back on the nothing of your existence and realize that you never once lived a day in your life.”

It wasn’t until the entire, ugly and honest truth was out that he realized the depth of the cut in his words.

Lady Eleanor had stopped. The shade of trees had thinned out and her bonnet was dappled with splashes of gold. She turned toward him, pulled her arm from his, and slowly lifted her face. Her eyes gleamed in the light, glowing like gemstones with the gloss of what appeared to be carefully restrained tears.

The realization struck Charles in the chest.

He had gone too far.

He opened his mouth to apologize, but Lady Eleanor spoke first.

“My mother and her friends are waiting for me.”

She nodded to the women on the riverbank. The entire group looked their way—and immediately snapped their heads in the opposite direction once they realized they’d been caught.

Lady Eleanor gently cleared her throat. “Thank you for your candor. Good day, Lord Charles.”

She ducked her head down, hiding her face with the rim of her bonnet, and slipped away. Her gait was stiff, her back ramrod-straight and her shoulders squared. The maid hurried along after her.

Charles watched Lady Eleanor walk away, feeling very much the cad. He’d assumed such a speech would render him victorious, and yet his joy had been marred by something rather unexpected—the stab of guilt.

Later that evening Charles sat among a collection of his father’s greatest acquisitions. If Charles hadn’t thought it possible to feel any lower than he had after his honest assessment of Lady Eleanor, he’d underestimated what coming home to Somersville House would do. Especially as he surveyed the unboxed treasures.

There was a sarcophagus containing an intact mummy, found in a sealed-off tomb in the Valley of the Kings. The paint stood vivid blue against un-flecked gold, as if it had been created only weeks ago rather than centuries before. Its discovery had earned his father a private audience with the King. Then there was a gold scarab encrusted with priceless jewels, of which the ton had talked for three months.

Charles hefted an ancient tome into his grasp. The pages within the leather binding were unevenly cut and yellow with age. They crackled when handled. But the drawings and words within were still dark with ink. The discovery of this particular book had left scholars in a state of frenzy.

Every item found by his father in a foreign world and brought to London had been met with praise and acclaim. And Charles had been witness to it all his life—first as a young boy, peering from the stairs, later from the corner where his governess had grudgingly allowed him to sit, and later by his father’s side, as an honored son. That was, until the Duke had begun to suffer from gout and declared himself too old for travel.

Charles set the tome down gently on the desk and regarded the key, studying its flat, cool metal surface.

It had indeed been a sad day when the Duke of Somersville had had to put away the old floppy hat he’d worn during his Adventure Club days.

At the time of its dissolution, the club had still been obsessed with locating the Coeur de Feu. Each man had gone about his own adventure, following leads on its location and documenting his journey. It had been when they returned home that everything had dissolved around them, their trust ripped apart by perfidy and speculation.

The Duke and the Earl of Westix had been the wealthiest of the men in the club, but they had not been the brightest. Only one man, whose name was never mentioned, had been cleverer than the rest, and had put his findings in code. And, while the previous Duke of Somersville had somehow obtained the key, and had known of its purpose, he had not known which of the journals was needed.

Charles had already been through all the journals at Somersville House, of course. He’d found nothing but descriptions of places the members of the club had gone, and accounts of treasures acquired. Until his father’s effects were returned from their country estate there was nothing more to look through.

Regardless, Charles was certain the one he needed lay in the Earl of Westix’s home.

He let the key slip from his grip and the metal sheet fell silently against the thick Turkish carpet. There was a story behind that carpet as well, only he couldn’t recall it at the moment.

Every item in the house had a story—had come from a different homeland, after a new adventure. He put his face in his hands and let the coolness of his fingers press into the heat of his skin. They all had far better stories than his own—the son who had watched with adoration the father whose magnificence he would never measure up to...the sole heir who had cast aside his promises in search of his own adventures.

His father had been larger than life, experiencing every day to the fullest. Charles couldn’t believe he was gone, leaving him with no more chances to fulfill his promise and finally gain what he had always wanted—his father’s respect and pride in his accomplishments rather than always standing in his father’s shadow.

A knot formed stubbornly in Charles’s throat.

“Your Grace?”

A man’s voice nudged gently into Charles’s awareness. He looked up and met the dark gaze of his valet.

“Your Grace, you asked to be reminded when it was near time for you to depart for Miss Lottie’s.”

Charles nodded. “Thank you, Thomas. I’ll be down in a moment.”

Thomas glanced at the treasures surrounding Charles. “Several doors down there is another room filled with the items you discovered on your own travels.”

The trouble with good valets was the way they oftentimes were far too perceptive.

“They aren’t the same.” Charles looked at a jade pendant of an elephant with gilt tusks.

“You are a good man, Your Grace. He would be proud of what you’ve accomplished in such a short period of time.”

Charles nodded absently. His father wouldn’t be proud. Not after his failing to locate the Coeur de Feu. No, his father would be disappointed.

The thought sliced into him as he recalled his father’s last words, hastily scrawled with the desperation of a man with only moments left to live. And once again he felt the crushing weight of disappointment, because they’d been about the damned ruby.

Thomas bent in front of Charles and lifted the key from the floor. “When you’re ready, Your Grace?” He carefully set it on the desk beside the massive tome and departed.

Charles sighed, but the weight in his heart did not lighten. He had committed many wrongs in his life, and all the treasures of the world wouldn’t make it right. Getting those journals from Eleanor would be a start.

In truth, she had wormed her way into his thoughts several times since their discussion. Her forthright demand for what she might do to improve herself had taken him aback. And yet it had been refreshing. It was a rare thing indeed for a member of the ton to request an opportunity to better oneself. Not in dance or watercolor or singing, but in the general composition of their personality.

Charles got to his feet and strode out the door. He stopped at the top of the stairs and gazed down to the entrance hall below, where polished marble gleamed in the candlelight. He’d stood there so very many times before, watching his father prepare to leave for another trip.

When he was a boy he’d held onto the ornate railing, his small fingers curled around the cool wood, as if clutching it would keep his father from leaving again. When he was an adolescent he’d propped his elbow on its bannister and let his imagination carry him to the places his father would go, where Charles knew with the whole of his heart he would also venture someday.

And this was where Charles had seen his father for the last time...

The bustle of servants began to calm and Charles found himself alone in the foyer. His blood danced in his veins at the thought of the impending adventure awaiting him—the foreign lands, the excitement of experiencing everything he’d ever heard about from his father and had spent a lifetime dreaming of.

The back of his neck prickled with the awareness of being observed. He turned and looked up the curving stairs to where his father leaned heavily on a carved ivory cane just at the top.

They’d said their farewells already. Promises had been made to pursue the Coeur de Feu, and wisdom and advice had been passed from father to son.

The Duke did not make his way down to offer another goodbye. Instead he stood at the top of the stairs, leaning on the cane gone yellow with age, and nodded down at his son.

This time it was the Duke of Somersville who was seeing Charles off. And this time it was not just information which had been passed from father to son, but a role...

The memory wrenched at Charles’s heart. Not because he hadn’t been there to offer his father a final farewell when the Duke had passed on, but because he had failed.

There would be no moving on with Charles’s life until the gem was found. The dukedom could wait. It had been unattended for the previous six months, after all. Charles was young. He had time for life to wait as he finally fulfilled his promise.

The steel of determination set in his spine as he climbed into the waiting carriage. He would get those journals by any means necessary.