Page 79 of How to Tempt a Duke

For many summers her mother had taken her and Evander to Scotland. To familiarize them with their roots, she’d said. To learn to be strong Murrays, her father had clarified.

Either way, when they’d been in Scotland, beyond the watchful gaze of their father, who’d used the time to travel abroad, her mother had released the control she’d held over her children.

Together, Eleanor and Evander had run free about the castle and its grounds. They had been two scamps, romping and playing like hellions every one of those summers, until Evander had been sent away to school. He didn’t return home often, and when he did, they both treated one another civilly, coolly, with all the love and laughter stripped out of them.

Pain squeezed at Eleanor’s heart. For she had been the cause of his abrupt departure. She had been too excitable, her father had said, too desperate for affection. It was lowborn and improper. When once she had tried to stop her father from leaving on yet another trip, and had dared to shed tears, the Earl had shown his disappointment with blows and with the most crushing punishment: sending Evander away.

While she’d never regarded her childhood after that with fondness, she had cherished the years before. She’d tucked them somewhere private within her, and locked away the pleasant memories of those summer days with Evander.

They rose up within her now, sharp as a familiar scent, and tore through her with bittersweet joy.

Evander had possessed a high-pitched laugh when he was a boy—an unfortunate attribute he’d luckily outgrown as an adult—and he’d been quite a sight as a youth, or “a lad,” as they’d called him in Scotland, with his shock of red hair and his silly laughter.

And, oh, they’d had such times for him to laugh. Such as the afternoon they’d set a frog loose in the kitchen and it had propped itself on Cook’s large rump for the better part of an hour before she’d even noticed. Or the summer they’d released all the foxes caught by the hunt to liberate them from their terrible fate. Or the time—

Charles sat forward. “Eleanor? Are you crying?”

Was she?

She touched her fingers to her cheek and pulled it away to see they were indeed wet. “It would appear I am.”

Concern showed in his eyes. “What is it?”

The carriage bounced along, carrying them past the woods Eleanor had run through with Evander, and past the lake where she’d swum on days when the weather had been warm enough to make the loch only slightly less than freezing.

“I came here with my brother when I was a girl.” She shook her head. “I haven’t thought of those memories in years. I haven’t thought of...him.”

“Loss is never easy.”

He shifted in his seat and she recalled his own father’s recent death.

“I’m very sorry you’ve had your own loss as well,” Eleanor said gently.

His gaze was fixed on the gray face of the castle, growing larger as they made their way closer.

“It doesn’t seem real, does it? As if by not acknowledging it, somehow that might result in it never having happened. Which is foolish.”

“No, it’s not.”

The closer they got, the more Eleanor’s heart ached. For the young brother she’d played with and loved, for the serious grown man he’d become and the cold rift set between them. For his absence without reconciliation.

“I believe my mother feels similarly,” Eleanor said. “She seldom discusses Evander. Though I think we both expect...” She shook her head. “I cannot even say it.”

The carriage drew to a stop before Comlongon Castle and a ball of dread tightened in Eleanor’s stomach at the thought of the ghosts which might linger in those ancient halls. Not of Murrays long dead, but of the Murray too long missing. Perhaps it had been a poor decision to suggest the castle.

“We will heal with time, my dear Eleanor,” said Charles, and exited the carriage and waited to help her down.

Eleanor stepped down onto the familiar crunch of gravel. Her heart pounded in her throat and there was a headiness inside her which made her feel quite faint.

She hadn’t been honest when she’d told Charles she hadn’t ever had a confidant. When she was a girl, it had been Evander. And, although the years and their father’s demands had spread a gap of silence and maturity between them, Evander had gone off to reclaim the family fortune, to save her and her mother from ruin, and it had most likely cost him his life.

Eleanor clasped her hand tightly on Charles’s arm to keep her trembling legs from pitching her to the ground.

Charles knocked on the door and waited.

A butler appeared and lifted his bushy gray brows. “May I help you?”

“I am the Duke of Somersville and this is my new bride, formerly Lady Eleanor Murray.” Charles smiled down at her before continuing to address the butler. “We are here to spend several days in Scotland and to celebrate our marriage prior to returning to London.”