Seduced By a Lady's Heart (Lords of Honor #1)(13)

“How have I not been honest—?”

“You’ve hidden yourself away from me,” her cheeks warmed at the veiled look he gave her. “Your family,” she hurriedly amended. “Where is the honesty in that?”

His cheeks turned a mottled red at her charge.

Good, he should be ashamed of the way in which he’d shut her out of his world. “And when I do see you, you’re nothing more than a snarling, sneering, brutish beast I don’t recognize.”

“That is who I am,” he spat. He’d respond to that, then. Why? Was that the safer question? What had he hidden from?

She shook her head, dislodging a blonde curl. It fell unchecked over her brow. “No. No, it’s not.” And because she’d somehow dug deep to find the courage to challenge him, she pressed ahead. “You are the Viscount of Hereford’s son,” she reminded him.

The slight stiffening of his body indicated the volatile tension running through him but damn it, she had waited years to say her piece to him.

“And that matters because he is a noble.”

“It matters because he is your father,” she returned.

“My father is dead.” He spoke in such deadened tones, her body chilled over.

“No, he is not,” she said when at last she managed to speak. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from pointing out that soon he would be. In his fury, that truth likely wouldn’t make a difference to Lucien. Eloise reached for his hands and went still as she belatedly registered the loss of that precious limb. An aching pain pressed on her chest, but she buried those futile regrets. He’d never accept or welcome her sympathies and he deserved more than those useless emotions anyway. “It is time you return to the life you left. Your father, your brothers.” Me.

A hard, mirthless grin marred his lips, a cruel rendering that said he’d noted her misstep. “You do not approve of my new station, Eloise?”

She took his remaining hand between hers and ignored the nearly imperceptible narrowing of his eyes. “I would never, ever demean the work you do. I think it is admirable.” How many gentlemen would forsake the comforts known, even as a third born son, and instead embrace a life of servitude? That was the man of character he’d always been—the man she’d fallen in love with. Eloise turned his palm over, the large, callused hand, a hand that no longer belonged to a gentleman. Different. And yet, the same. The same hand that had caught her as she’d jumped from a fallen birch tree into the lake upon his father’s property. The same hand that had plucked the splinters from her fingers when she’d landed in a bush of thorns.

“I don’t need your lies or platitudes,” he spoke into the quiet and reluctantly she released her hold upon him. Lucien looked back and forth, of course the one who registered the place in which they discussed these intimate matters. He flexed his jaw. “If this is about me,” it was, “then do not come back. Let me live now as I would.”

They studied each other in silence; him icily aloof, she seeking signs of the past etched on the harsh planes of his face.

She touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “You were never indolent. You were…” Kind. Gentle. Loving. All things good. “You were never indolent,” she repeated instead, knowing he would only reject her words of regard. She pressed her fingertips against his lips and cut off whatever spiteful reply he’d toss at her. “It is time you come home.”

With that she marched down the hall, him trailing silently behind her, strangers once more.





Chapter 6


Lucien stared at the wide, closed double doors Eloise had just departed through. He had relied on his intuition to serve for the four years he’d spent on the Continent. The one time he hadn’t used his intuition had seen him with a Frenchie’s bayonet in the flesh of his left arm. It was a wound that, ironically, ultimately festered after he’d returned from battle. The loss of that arm had taught him the perils of not trusting his instincts.

It was that same intuitiveness that indicated there was more at play in Eloise being here. Now.

Something had brought Eloise into his life, once more.

And if he remembered at all the gap-toothed, grinning child with sun-reddened cheeks and an unfortunate tendency of repeating back anything he and his brother, Richard, had said, he’d be wise to be wary about the woman she’d become.

He gave his head a clearing shake and started down the corridor, the memory of Eloise and her damned, perfect mouth and her bold kiss emblazoned on his mind. His body still thrummed with a hot awareness of the feel of her in his arms. He blamed the surge of desire still coursing through him on the fact that he’d not had a woman since he’d left his wife and gone off to battle.

Lucien entered one of the marquess’ parlors. He came to an abrupt halt. Two maids, at work glanced up from their tasks. Annoyed that he’d be prevented even a moment’s solitude, Lucien waved them back to their work. The young women hastily averted their gazes, but not before he detected the flash of fear in their eyes. Over the years, he’d been an object of fear, pity, and sympathy. He tightened his mouth and wandered over to the window. Then, people had good right to fear him. Life had transformed him into a foul, sneering beast. There had been only two individuals who seemed unfazed by his presence, the marquess and marchioness. He frowned. No, that was no longer true. Now, there was a third person uncowed by his miserable presence. Eloise.