Page 62 of How to Tempt a Duke

Eleanor closed her eyes to stay the prickle of tears. Charles had not come to ask her to wed him, but to suggest she to wed another. Someone he deemed adequate.

A lengthy silence followed. There was something else. She straightened, her curiosity piqued, her pathetic hope reignited with a miserable spark.

“My father had several journals,” Charles began. “I believe you may be in possession of some. Possibly within your holdings in Scotland.”

Eleanor clenched her fists. Blast him and his dogged determination to get those journals.

“I know nothing of such dreary things.” The Countess sighed. “If there is nothing else...?”

There was another clink, more gently set than the other. “Thank you for your time, Your Ladyship. I’ll see myself out.”

Heavy footsteps sounded toward the door and Eleanor scrambled back to hide beside a large Oriental vase.

Charles had opened the door to a colorful life—one of feeling, of passion. All of that was now slipping through Eleanor’s fingers. She would be left with nothing. Nothing but the memory of how life might otherwise be.

Her chest heaved and her mind spun with the beginnings of a desperate plan taking shape.

Charles emerged through the door, looking smart in a pair of polished Hessians with dove-gray breeches, a deep blue waistcoat and a charcoal jacket. She waited for him to walk partway down the hall, near the alcove by the stairs, and then she darted after him. After all, this might be her last chance to avoid marriage to Devonington and to truly live her life—especially when she had the very thing Charles needed: those damned journals.

Chapter Twenty

Charles was so enraged he almost did not hear the whispered call of his name. He turned cautiously, still unsure he’d heard correctly. Eleanor stood under the stairs in a white day dress, her lovely red hair bound back. Something hard thudded in his chest. God, but she was beautiful.

She pulled open a door in the wall beneath the stairs, revealing a narrow room within, and waved him over. A surreptitious scan confirmed that they were alone. For now.

She slipped into the darkness and he followed suit, ducking into the small space so he wouldn’t bash his head against the low ceiling. She pulled the door shut behind him, plunging them into a darkness so great he could not see his hand in front of his face.

But he could smell her. Sweet jasmine, enticing femininity and all those memories, both tender and scorching.

“Charles...” she breathed. “I thought I would never see you again.”

The familiarity of her voice, soft and intimate, pulled at a place deep within him. He wanted to follow her words, to blindly locate her face. Devil take him, he wanted to do more than touch her soft skin. He wanted to press his mouth to hers, to be rewarded with her gasping cries of pleasure.

“I know you have no desire to marry me.” Her tone pitched slightly and she paused. “You told me to marry Devonington, though clearly you do not wish for that.”

His heart squeezed. How much of his conversation with the Countess had she heard?

“I do not wish to marry him either,” she said. “And so I have one final proposition for you.”

She rushed on before he could speak again, as though she were worried he would stop her.

“Marry me, Charles. Marry me and we will venture to Scotland, to Comlongon Castle, where the remaining journals are. I will give them all to you.”

Marry her.

The boldness of this new offer should have shocked him. But it did not. He knew Eleanor far too well for that. She was determined, stoic in her resolve. Such very admirable traits. And yet he could not clear from his mind the thought of Eleanor alone in the vastness of Somersville House, surrounded only by the invisible presence of servants and loneliness.

A memory panged in his heart—one of the boy he’d been and how very enormous Somersville House had seemed when there was no one to fill it.

Could Charles do that to Eleanor? Leave her there, wondering what he was doing, as she stayed in that large, empty space, her imagination spiced with the readings of their fathers’ journals. How could he confine her to such an existence?

“Am I truly so undesirable?” Her voice broke.

She bumped into him and the dull thump of her hand frantically patted the wall. Clearly she was seeking a way out. It was all too much—not only for her, but for him. The break in her voice, her desperation to leave. The knowledge that Devonington would have her, that the journals in Scotland could be his. Knowing he’d hurt her. Knowing that although he shouldn’t, he wanted her.

“Eleanor, wait.” He reached out for her in the darkness and sent something hard clattering to the floor.

The frantic sounds of her search for the door ceased. His hand found her shoulder. Using only the power of touch, he swept his fingertips over her fine cotton sleeve to the delicate hollow of her collarbone and up to her smooth cheek.