Читать книгу How To Tempt A Duke - Madeline Martin - Страница 16

Eleanor didn’t much care for a walk in the park two afternoons later—any more than she’d cared for the soiree she’d been forced to attend the prior evening. Not when all she could ruminate on was her utter failure.

And Lord Charles.

Blast it. Why had he regarded her with such appeal? And why had she reacted to it so?

She would be meeting with Lottie again that evening. Perhaps Lord Charles, too.

The very idea of it made her insides flutter and her palms grow damp. A sensation that was as pleasant as it was disconcerting.

She thought again of how he’d looked at her...when everything had faded to a dull focus and her world had seemed to right itself. A grin played over her lips.

Eleanor strode along the worn paths of Hyde Park with Amelia walking at her side. While her maid had been all too eager to join Eleanor that fine spring day, she seemed to sense her mistress’s need for solitude and remained in pleasant silence.

“Lady Eleanor.”

A familiar, warm voice interrupted Eleanor’s musings. Her stomach churned with myriad emotions: trepidation, fear, and most of all excitement. They all swooped and tangled together into a nervous whirl.

“Lord Charles.”

She turned in his direction and nodded politely as he bowed. There was just enough time for her to salvage her composure before he straightened.

“I hoped I might find you here,” he said.

He wore a pair of fine buckskin breeches and they gave him a casual, comfortable appearance. It was altogether very attractive, that look...

“You were looking for me?” She lifted a brow in the manner her mother often affected, hoping her face mirrored skepticism and not hope. Hope would be foolish.

Amelia quietly shifted to walk behind Eleanor, allowing her a modicum of privacy with Charles.

“I feared you might be disappointed after the last lesson,” Charles said.

“I wasn’t pleased,” she conceded. “I’m not doing as well as I’d hoped.”

He held out his arm to her. “May I walk with you a moment?”

There was no hesitation on her part, as there had been previously. She slipped her arm through his. “Of course. Thank you.”

As they began to walk together she could not help but notice the solidness of him beneath his sleeve. And he smelled of foreign spices—something pleasant and exotic she could not quite place.

“I’d like to be frank with you once more,” Lord Charles began. “That is, if you are inclined to hear my opinion on the matter?”

“I am,” she replied, despite the jangle of her nerves. “I wish to learn.”

But, while she was being truthful in expressing her wish to learn, the idea of hearing more criticism of her person dragged her lower into herself.

“Why do you wish to learn?” he asked.

“To obtain a husband befitting my station,” she replied readily. After all, it was what was expected of her—what was necessary.

“I think there’s more to it than that.”

His response took her aback, and the subsequent silence left her contemplation hanging between them. It would be easy to push the answer down inside her and bury it beside the rest of her emotions. But wasn’t she trying to unearth them all? Wasn’t she trying to be warmer? More approachable? Didn’t she want to have depth?

“I don’t want to live a life without passion,” she said, in a quiet voice only he would be able to hear. “I enjoy reading so I can experience the emotions of the characters, to revel in their liberation to express them. But they are fictional and do not suffer the consequences we do. I have always been envious of the ability to express oneself so completely. I want to be free to feel.”

Her heart raced at her confession. She had given merit to the truth and said it aloud for the first time in all her adult life.

Charles smiled warmly. “I think you are on the right path, Lady Eleanor.”

“Why, then, is it so difficult?” she asked.

“You did well initially the last time,” he answered. “But then you changed. I feel there was a reason for that, and I hope I might be able to help you identify what it might be.”

Eleanor was glad to be walking beside him, with the brim of her bonnet covering her face, lest he see the heat blazing through her cheeks. After all, such things were impossible to mask, no matter how one schooled one’s face.

She knew exactly what had been responsible for the change in her at their prior lesson. It had been her own foolishness. The way she’d so easily reacted to Lord Charles’s kindness, the recollection of her mistakes, and the reminder of how painful it was to love.

“Have I overreached in my frankness?” he inquired.

Eleanor realized she’d been contemplative for too long. “No.”

“How did you feel when you made the first introduction?” Charles asked.

Beautiful.

Desired.

“More genuine,” she answered. “As though you were meeting me as a person and I you, rather than just performing the stiff formality of introduction.”

“I thought as much.” There was a note of delight to his tone. “I felt the connection as well.”

Eleanor hated the little flip her stomach gave, and hated how difficult it was to force herself not to turn toward the allure of his handsome smile.

Lord Charles deftly guided her around an aging couple in front of them who walked at a much slower pace.

“And how did you feel after?” he prodded.

Foolish.

Embarrassed.

“Exposed...” she breathed, almost choking on the suffocating memory.

“Ah, yes.”

This time she did glance up at him and found him nodding to himself.

“You do realize the appeal of such openness?” he asked.

“No,” she said slowly.

“The stiffness of your formality is what you’ve conformed to. It’s not who you are. The feeling of exposure is what comes when you let your shield slip and grant others the opportunity to see who you are.”

His explanation served to heighten her sense of vulnerability.

“I don’t think I like that.” No, she knew she did not like that.

“Because it feels foreign?” He paused. “Lottie once asked what you were afraid of. Perhaps this is your answer.”

“Perhaps.” It was all she would allow. The full truth would stay locked within her.

A gentleman tilted his hat to Eleanor from a passing carriage, catching her eye. Only then did she realize it was Hugh, with Lady Alice. Clearly they had been in her line of sight for some time on the road ahead and she was seeing them only now.

Interesting...

So, too, was the lack of heady anxiety seeing the two of them typically produced in her.

“When the shield slips away,” Charles was saying, “it lets a man glimpse the true woman beneath.”

“And you saw me?” she queried.

“I did.” He said it softly, as if he were considering something.

“What did you see in me?”

Her pulse ticked wildly. After their last conversation, did she truly want to hear this?

“You’re bold...you meet challenges head-on rather than cowering back from them. And there is passion in you. It’s simmering below the surface, but it’s there and it’s beautiful.”

“Do you find me beautiful?” Eleanor immediately regretted the brashness of her question.

Lord Charles stopped walking. Improper though it might be for him to stop her rather than her stopping him, the offense fell away when she met the blue of his eyes and felt the way they seemed to swallow her whole.

“I do,” he said earnestly.

But Lord Charles was not a man she ought to want. Not a man who should make her stomach flutter with such confusing emotion. Certainly not a man who stayed in the company of a beautiful courtesan.

“Do you think other men will find me so?” she asked.

A muscle worked in his smooth jaw and he stared down at her for so long she felt all the hope in her begin to wilt.

“Yes,” he said at last. “Yes, I do.”

She breathed a sigh of relief and gently nudged them both forward into a walk, to avoid attention after being gone too long. Already she knew her mother would have more questions about the mysterious man at Hyde Park.