Forever and a Duke Read online

  “Then perhaps it’s Elsmore who’s headed for trouble, and not our Mrs. Hatfield, hmm?”

  Chapter Seven

  His Grace of Elsmore was becoming troublesome.

  With each little scheme and device Ellie uncovered, she expected him to thank her kindly and send her packing. All the arrows pointed in the wrong directions, and his whole financial landscape was beclouded by poor accounting.

  “And it is a vast landscape,” she informed the cat. On the street below, Elsmore disappeared into the chop shop, his head bare, his scarf flapping about his neck. “A landscape on which I can leave no footprints.”

  Ellie wanted to. She liked his humor, his energy, his honesty. He considered her findings, grumbled, and then accepted what she showed him as trustworthy.

  In other words, he accorded her respect.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” she murmured, curling up with the cat in the reading chair. “The fellows at the bank respect me, the same way they respect the flu and lung fever—with a side helping of dread. Elsmore’s respect is personal.”

  And he’d kissed her, which raised the real problem with Wrexham, Duke of Elsmore.

  “I am attracted to him, not like a giddy girl is attracted to any flirt, but…” Ellie fell silent, because her attraction to Elsmore was irksomely complicated. She wasn’t a blushing virgin, hadn’t been for years. Poor girls grew up early, and their neighbors didn’t judge them for it.

  Elsmore was different. In a society where few people admitted that a woman could handle extensive figures with authority, he’d trusted her as an equal.

  “Heady business, trust.” Dangerous business. Grandpapa Naylor had trusted the Earl of Winston, and that had led to tragedy upon tragedy.

  A sharp rap on the door had the cat bolting from the chair. Ellie admitted Elsmore, who set paper-wrapped parcels on the desk.

  “Why haven’t you a table?” he asked. “To partake of sustenance in the same place where you toil away by the hour seems wrong.”

  “The table is in the other room.” The bedroom. For grand ladies, bedrooms could be social spaces. They received early callers there, chatting away the morning during the pleasant business of hair dressing and wardrobe selection.

  Ellie was not a grand lady.

  “You are blushing,” Elsmore said. “Are the end times nigh?”

  Oh, possibly. Ellie slid his coat from his shoulders. She’d done the same for Walden and Joshua Penrose, but she did not remark the breadth of the gentleman’s shoulders on those occasions, did not treasure the feel of his body heat on expensive wool.

  “Have you considered that another auditor might be a more prudent choice, Your Grace?”

  “Getting cold feet over a pair of harmless kisses, Mrs. Hatfield?”

  “Yes.”

  He took his coat from her and hung it on a peg, then he collected the parcels of food with one hand and took Eleanora by the wrist with the other.

  “The soup is best consumed hot,” he said, leading her into the bedroom. “You might be surprised to know that I can come within sight of a bed and remain on good behavior. That wasn’t always the case. Once upon a time, I was a randy imbecile, but regretted folly, and the passing years have worked their sobering magic. You are entirely safe with me, madam.”

  “I never doubted that, but you beg the question: Are you safe with me?”

  She expected a jaunty retort—Elsmore was nothing if not self-possessed. Society expected men of his station to deal openly with the masculine appetites, and Elsmore was a good-looking devil. He’d have plenty of offers, and his overtures—if ever he had to make any—would rarely be rejected.

  He set the food on the table by the bedroom window and kept a grip on Ellie’s wrist. “I am safe with you,” he said. “I have pondered why that should be and whether it’s to my liking.”

  “And?”

  He drew her near, carefully, giving her every opportunity to pull away. Ellie stood in his embrace, torn between the longing to wrap her arms around him and the certain knowledge that to do so was errant foolishness. She averaged the difference between prudence and impulse by allowing the intimacy to go on, relishing the feel of his body against hers, and saving for later the regret that must follow.

  “We have no pretenses between us,” Elsmore said. “You are honest with me. You don’t expect me to bring good cheer and ducal beneficence to every exchange. You skewer me if I toss out too much small talk, and I adore you for that. You do me the very great honor of dealing with me as if I am capable of grasping a significant problem and perhaps even solving it. To you, I am more than a prize to be hauled onto the dance floor.” He kissed her temple. “You scold me.”

  “Somebody should scold the pair of us.” Instead, Ellie’s arms, which had been obediently at her sides, wound around his waist, inside his morning coat, where all was warmth and intimacy. He was lean, muscular, and tall enough that Ellie could rest her full weight against him, like a woman overcome with fatigue.

  Or loneliness.

  “If you scold me,” he said, “I will apologize sincerely, and assure you that I won’t presume again.” He rested his cheek against Ellie’s crown, and she stole another moment of forbidden pleasure.

  This mutual interest in each other had no future. Not because he was a duke—dukes took mistresses, they had liaisons, they seldom made the most faithful of husbands.

  Ellie had no future in any intimate capacity with Elsmore precisely because she was not honest with him and never could be.

  “If you apologize,” Ellie said, stepping back, “then I must do likewise. I am disinclined to apologize for harmless familiarities enjoyed when we are in private. Those familiarities, though, are a distraction from my appointed task. We’d best eschew them going forward.”

  He cradled her jaw against the warmth of his palm. “Mightn’t you leaven that damned sensible pronouncement with a bit of reluctance, Eleanora?”

  Nobody, nobody ever, had spoken her name before with that combination of tenderness, desire, humor, and regret. A blow to the head would have been easier to withstand than Elsmore’s hand, gently touching her cheek.

  Ellie was ambushed by yearning and regret, a pair of emotions that could bring any woman low before she even knew she was under siege. What would it be like, to cast prudence out the window, and seize the duke?

  I am an idiot. But was she an idiot for declining what Elsmore offered or for craving it? Ellie stepped closer, pressed her mouth to his, and took one kiss to save against all the damned sensible pronouncements by which she was doomed to live.

  * * *

  “Our Eleanora knew Mick had played the Old Man at Dorset and Becker’s bank,” Jack said, bouncing the baby on his knee. The little bugger was quite solid, much to Jack’s relief. “Mick cashed out that account only last week, Pammie. He left town less than three days ago, and Ellie already has the details.”

  “Give me that child.” Pamela plucked the infant into her arms, just as the little varmint began squalling. “You are an idiot, Jack Naylor. A purblind idiot.”

  She put the baby to her shoulder and began a slow circuit of the little parlor. Elsewhere in the building, a talented tenor sang about wild geese who would never fly home.

  Damn the Irish and their penchant for despair anyway. “Ellie knew the name of the old gent Mick impersonated, his first and last name. How does an auditor for Wentworth and Penrose know the details of a rig at a rival establishment? The old man tried to cash out just yesterday afternoon, and yet, she knew all about it this morning.”

  The baby quieted, thank God. Jack could not abide a crying child. The lyrical Irishman wasn’t much more tolerable.

  “Clerks and tellers doubtless gossip,” Pamela said. “They probably all drink at the same pubs and live in the same boardinghouses. When a bank is out two hundred pounds, word spreads.”

  “Our Ellie doesn’t drink at those pubs or live in those boardinghouses.” She had a cozy two-room apartment in a handsome bui
lding right on the edge of a wealthy neighborhood.

  “But she works with the clerks and tellers, and they go to the pubs. Maybe the bank suspected something before the old man came in yesterday.”

  Jack was hungry and thirsty—cold weather always made him famished—but he wouldn’t ask for food or drink when Pamela and Clyde had three little mouths to feed.

  “Mick was careful,” he retorted. Be careful or swing, that was Grandpapa’s first commandment. “He figured out which teller was most recently hired, he picked a wet, raw day to go to the bank, and he cashed out the smallest of Butterfield’s holdings. Ellie must be listening at keyholes.”

  Pamela resumed her seat at the battered table. “She’s not like that—not like you. She notices details is all. We were all trained to notice details, and she remembers everything.”

  Did Eleanora remember how to smile? Remember that her family had always kept her safe? “I know my own cousin, Pammie. We were close once.” They were actually cousins at some remove—first cousins twice removed or second cousins. Jack had never been sure which.

  The fire on the grate was all but out, though Jack left it for Pamela to decide when fresh coals were needed. The older children were off with their father, and she was likely conserving heat until they returned.

  “You and Ellie were never close,” Pamela said. “She was infatuated and you were an idiot. That was a lifetime ago.”

  “We were young and in love.” Saying that sounded sweet, though Ellie would probably smack him for uttering the words. Jack had ended things with Ellie precisely because she hadn’t even been infatuated. She’d been weary, lonely, scared, and willing to settle for the devil she knew and sometimes regarded with affection.

  She had deserved better, even though to hear her tell it, she’d achieved a dream come true in her musty old bank.

  “If Ellie feels anything toward you,” Pamela said, “it’s exasperation and maybe some misplaced shame. Leave her alone.”

  Jack rose, moving closer to the feeble heat of the hearth. “I got sacked, Pammie. Damned sodding squire is off to the family seat until the first of the year. Thanked me kindly for my service, passed me a three-sentence character and a few coins, and heigh-ho, Jack Naylor is out of work again. He wished me luck, which means I’m not to expect my job back if he ever returns to London.”

  “He didn’t even warn you?”

  “His kind don’t. They just pike off, like you were a dog they no longer fancied. I’m supposed to slink back to the agencies and hope another position opens up, though half of London is leaving for the countryside, just when the coal man wants his tithe.”

  “Mick left us a bit of the ready. I’ll say something to Clyde.”

  This was the worst of it. Not the loss of the job, but the worry and pity from the family. “Don’t you dare. I’ll manage. I always do.” Though lately, the managing was harder. Jack had left Mick’s little scheme alone, because honest work and schemes didn’t mix well.

  Neither did honest work and regular meals.

  “You know what I think?” Pamela said, taking a loaf of bread from the window box and producing a knife from the dry sink. “I think you should nip up to York. Look in on the elders. They miss you, and you’ve been gone long enough.”

  Even with the baby perched on her hip, she managed to slice the bread with the efficient movements of a woman inured to motherhood.

  “The elders haven’t invited me, Pammie. I’d be another mouth to feed, and I refuse to burden them like that. They looked after the lot of us, good times and bad. I should be looking after them.”

  The loaf went back into the window box. Pamela fetched butter and jam in separate trips and liberally slathered three slices with both.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Jackson Naylor. Home is home. You go there when you please. London isn’t home. Clyde has been talking about moving up to Edinburgh. He knows people there, and the port is booming. They don’t mind if a man has a bit of a burr, provided he works hard.”

  She made a sandwich of two slices and passed it to Jack. Her own portion was the single piece made into a half sandwich.

  “Maybe I should go north with you. Mick could join us when he’s done larking about.” English laws didn’t reach across the Scottish border, which was ever a source of comfort when a man contemplated travel.

  Pamela resumed her seat and took a bite of her bread and jam. “Talk to Clyde.”

  In other words, maybe Jack should stay in London, while his family scattered to the four winds. “Mick was thinking about going someplace warm.”

  “He’ll end up someplace very warm, if he doesn’t watch his step.”

  Jack wanted to wash his hands before he ate, a clerk’s habit. An honest clerk. “You agree with Ellie, then. Work yourself to death for a pittance, go to church for a weekly scolding, die sober and broke with a sore back.”

  “Ellie isn’t broke, she’s not working for a pittance, and I’m fairly certain she doesn’t bother with services or disdain good liquor. Eat your bread.”

  “Ellie was lucky, Pamela. How many times do I have to say it? She was living hand to mouth along with the rest of us, and then she got lucky.”

  Pamela took another bite of her sandwich, chewed slowly, and set the remaining portion on the bare table.

  “You are lucky too, Jack. You are a handsome man and a quick study. You could do what Ellie does—the fancy bookkeeping. You know all the rigs, you see what others miss, but you’re always on the lookout for the easy swindle. You could paint portraits, do sketches, teach the young ladies their watercolors. All of that comes naturally to you.”

  I want to wash my hands. I want to wash my damned hands so everything I eat doesn’t taste like coal. “I wasn’t swindling the sodding squire.”

  “Not yet, you weren’t.”

  “Six months I worked for him, Pamela. Kept his books, told him when Cook was helping herself to the sherry and padding the marketing. For that I get three sentences and good luck.”

  “This baby is falling asleep,” Pamela said, which probably meant Jack should shut his gob. “Will you go to the agencies?”

  I want a family. I want people who are glad to see me when I walk in the door. That was the part of Ellie’s situation that bewildered Jack. How did she carry on year after year with no people to call her own? No mates, no sisters to gabble with once the children were all asleep? She spent maybe two hours a month in Pammie’s parlor, coming to call like some representative from the visiting charities.

  “I’ll go to the agencies,” Jack said, “but I’ll also keep an eye on our Ellie. She knows things she shouldn’t, and she’s not keeping her regular hours at the bank.”

  “Mind your own business, Jack.”

  He picked up his bread and jam, probably the last decent food he’d have for a while. “Ellie has had a lot of good luck, but luck can change. Ask Grandpapa how that works. When her luck turns sour, we will still be her family.”

  Pamela remained at the table, the baby cradled against her shoulder. “Just make sure you aren’t the reason her luck turns, Jack Naylor. Ellie has toiled too long and too hard for you to wreck everything with one of your schemes.”

  * * *

  Eleanora Hatfield is kissing me.

  That dazzling reality landed in Rex’s awareness like a match struck in stygian darkness, which made no sense. He’d kissed dozens of women—scores, rather—from his sisters and aunties and dear Mama, to opera soloists with a Continental view of intimate recreation, to the occasional frolicsome widow, and the even rarer courtesan.

  He knew the difference between a friendly peck on the cheek, a cheerfully naughty buss, a prelude to copulation, and the many gradations in between.

  Knew them and enjoyed them all.

  Eleanora Hatfield’s kiss wasn’t sorting itself into any tidy column. She pressed her mouth to his and her body to his in a lusciously erotic manner. Her hands—those marvelously competent, usually ink-stained hands—wandered his chest, r
ibs, and back as if she were wrapping arrows of desire around his entire person. Then she sank her fingers into his hair, angled her head, and gentled her kiss from plundering to wondering.

  Two minutes ago she’d told him they would focus strictly on business. All Rex could focus on now was her.

  He kissed her back, accepting her invitation to taste and touch. She was more slender than he’d thought, her clothes bulkier. Petticoats and corsetry frustrated the craving to touch her bare skin. He settled for stroking her hands and face, especially the tender join of her neck and shoulder and the soft flesh of her bare wrist.

  She turned her head as if to listen to the caress of his thumb against her palm and he dared to gather her closer lest she mistake the impact she was having on him. Rex had learned years ago to control his urges. There was no controlling his reactions, though, not to her, not this time.

  And what a relief that was, what a pleasure and a joy to be simply a man in good health enjoying a kiss with a woman who desired him for his own sake.

  Eleanora eased back and pressed her forehead to his chest. “The soup will get cold.”

  So plaintive and paltry, that display of common sense, so dear. “While everything else threatens to go up in flames.”

  “I hadn’t planned on…” She gave him a squeeze, then stepped away. “I miscalculated.” She patted his cravat, which was doubtless thoroughly wrinkled.

  For her to admit a miscalculation probably took as much fortitude as for Rex to admit his ledgers were a disgrace. He wanted desperately to kiss her again, to toss her on the bed and romp away the rest of this cold, snowy day.

  Even more than that, he wanted to banish the uncertainty from her gaze. She had for once allowed herself to indulge in a pleasurable impulse and her usual self-possession had deserted her. He could not allow her to doubt herself, could not be the reason Eleanora Hatfield’s composure faltered.