Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

G uarding her heart against her husband grew more difficult by the day.

"Where are we going?" she asked Nando as their carriage rattled through the streets of London.

"If I tell you, then it won't be a surprise, will it?"

"Why does it need to be a surprise?"

He grinned. "Because when you are excited, you wriggle your bottom about, and I find it utterly adorable. Also, I happen to be extraordinarily fond of your bottom, whether it is wriggling or not."

"I do not wriggle."

Did she? Certainly, she had never taken note of doing so, nor had anyone ever told her she did. But then, she hadn't had cause for excitement in years. Just a handful of days as Nando's wife, and she'd already experienced it more times than she had in the last decade. She shifted on her seat nervously at the thought, for she knew all too well that contentedness in her life was always followed by disaster. First, it had been her childhood when she and Mama had lived in that grand house, only to be thrown to the streets when her father had tired of her mother. Then, there had been the comfort afforded by the protectors who had followed, always coming to an abrupt halt.

Until there had been the last protector, and Mama had grown desperately ill—too ill to act, too ill to entertain her wealthy benefactor. In just a few short, terrible weeks, Mama had no longer been on her sickbed, and Eleanora had stood at her grave, alone in the world with scarcely anything but the clothes she could carry and the little money her mother had left her.

"Is something amiss?"

Nando, ever too perceptive, brought Eleanora back to the present with his question.

She blinked and smiled at him, thinking he looked unfairly well-rested and handsome for a man who had been up half the night making love to her. "Nothing is wrong. Why do you ask?"

"Your countenance is rather expressive, my dear."

No one had ever told her so before Nando. But then, she wasn't certain anyone had ever looked at her—truly looked at her—the way he did.

"Quite." She inhaled deeply, attempting to dispel old, painful memories. "I was thinking of my mother, if you must know."

Eleanora hoped he might accept her answer and change the subject, for speaking of her mother's death was not something she liked to do. It still, even after so many years, brought her to tears.

"Ah." There was a wealth of meaning in his tone as he took her hand, cradling it in both of his on his lap. "Do you want to tell me?"

Equally perceptive of him to give her the opportunity to speak of it or avoid the most painful remnants of her past.

And she was startled to realize that she did want to tell him. That she had been keeping the secrets of her past for so long and with such protective ferocity that sharing the truth with him would be a burden finally lifted from her shoulders.

She allowed him to keep her hand, studying him for a moment as the carriage rocked them in rhythmic motion, admiring the way the sunlight filtering through the Venetian blinds caught in his golden curls. How angelic he looked. No one gazing upon him now would ever suppose him capable of such sinful, wicked pleasures of the flesh.

"I was thinking about how all the times in my life where Mama and I were happy, we were quickly dealt a bad turn of Fortune's fickle wheel," she said softly. "It started with the man who was my father. Mama had been a famed actress when they had met, one of the most sought-after thespians in all England. He fell in love with her almost at once, she said, but he was a wealthy and powerful man, and taking an actress to wife would have proven too much of a scandal for his family to bear. So, he gave her a fine town house to use and installed her there as his mistress."

Eleanora paused, thinking of those charmed years, when she had yet to realize her true place in life and how tentative it was. Then, she had been a spoiled girl, for Mama's protector had spent a fortune on her, and Mama had diverted a great deal of that fortune to Eleanora. Nothing but the finest dresses, a polite governess to teach her everything a genteel lady should know, dolls, and whatever trinkets she had wished.

"If he loved her, he should have married her, whatever the cost to his reputation," Nando said with great feeling. "The man was a coldhearted coward, as evidenced by the manner in which he later so callously abandoned the both of you."

She squeezed Nando's hand in appreciation. "When he gave her the congé, it tore our world apart. I believe with all my heart that she thought he would keep her forever. That the three of us would be something like a family, even if he did have another wife and other children, who were legitimate, at home."

Her mother had been disconsolate for months afterward, scarcely able to force herself to resume acting. Only the need for a roof over their heads and food in their bellies had done so.

"Are you certain you don't know the bastard's name?" Nando asked, his voice taut, his jaw tensed.

He was angry on her behalf, and the realization touched her.

She shook her head. "My mother never told me, not even on her deathbed. I am grateful, in a way, because I wouldn't have wished to know him. If I had, I would have run the risk of recognizing him in society, and my emotions may have been too much to control."

"The reserved Miss Brett?" Nando brought her hand to his lips for a reverent kiss on first her knuckles, then her inner wrist. "I doubt she could have been so lacking in circumspection."

"I think I've proven my lack of circumspection by now," she said wryly, thinking of how easily and thoroughly she had succumbed to her own wanton nature.

"No, my dear. You've just proven yourself deliciously susceptible to corruption." He winked, bringing her hand back to his lap. "And I am devious enough to capitalize upon that weakness."

There was something beneath his lighthearted quip that sank its claws into her heart. He excelled in self-deprecation, forever painting himself as the villain. And yet, for Eleanora, Nando had very much been the hero.

She swallowed hard against a sudden rush of emotion and forced her mind back to the original thread of her story. "The day that the man who sired me ended his arrangement with my mother, Mama and I had been shopping on Bond Street. We returned with a carriage laden with all manner of things, including a beautiful new doll made of porcelain for me, along with a miniature house for her to live in. When we had to leave our happy home, the doll and her house were some of the first to be sold off, along with Mama's jewels. Many of the gifts he had given her, we were to discover, were worthless paste, and the sum he had settled upon her had been a pittance too small to provide for a woman and child alone in the world for long."

Her heart ached anew as she thought of how much her mother had endured, how hard she had worked to ensure that Eleanora would continue to enjoy the sort of life she had once lived in that glorious town house, providing her with an education and fine dresses. Even if it had meant, as Eleanora had only realized far too late, sacrificing herself.

"How old were you?" Nando asked softly, stroking her palm with his thumb.

"A girl of seven."

He ground out something guttural and utterly foreign in his native tongue. It was the first time she had ever heard him speak it, and the abrupt switch startled her, for she hadn't expected it.

"What did you say?" she asked. "I'm afraid I don't understand Varrosian."

"And it's fortunate you don't." He was grim. "I said something that doesn't bear repeating. I'm sorry, Eleanora. Sorry for you and for your mother."

She managed a tremulous smile for his benefit, grateful for him, for his understanding, for this weight lifted from her. For everything.

"Thank you."

He shifted on the squabs suddenly, peering out the carriage window to the street, then rapped on the roof. "Stop," he called out loudly enough for his coachman to hear. "Stop right here, if you please."

The conveyance swerved and nearly sent Eleanora careening to the floor before coming to an abrupt halt.

"Is this where you are taking me?" she asked, confused.

"No." He kissed her hand again. "Stay right here, my dear. There is something I need to fetch. I'll be back."

"But—"

He silenced her protest with a swift, hard kiss before withdrawing and giving her a smile. A genuine one. Not his ne'er-do-well grin. But a true smile that reached his eyes.

"No protesting, if you please. I'll be but a few moments."

He kissed her again, and then he threw open the door to the brougham and leapt to the street, leaving her alone.

Nando stepped up into the carriage less than five minutes after he had left it to peruse the wares at Bellingham and Co. In his arm was a porcelain doll. He fretted over the impromptu gift, hoping Eleanora would like it.

She wasn't the seven-year-old girl whose doll had been sold, after all.

She was all woman now.

But his gift was for the woman she'd become and for the girl she had once been.

He settled on the squab at her side, offering her the doll. "Here you are, my dear. Not the one you lost, but an acceptable enough replacement, I hope."

She reached for the doll he had spied in the window of the shop along with toy soldiers and other games—a clever ruse by the shop owner. Every child passing on the street would beg his or her parents to go inside.

"A doll," Eleanora said, her voice strained.

He couldn't tell if she was pleased with him or outraged.

"One you'll not have to sell. I know it is foolish, buying a toy for a woman grown, but I couldn't resist?—"

She halted the nervous flow of his words with her lips, her turn now to silence his protests instead. Openmouthed and heady, her kiss told him more than words could. He slid an arm around her waist, drawing her tightly to his side.

Eleanora broke away from the kiss first, cradling his cheek with one hand, her eyes sparkling. "Thank you."

As he watched, a tear gathered on her lashes and then spilled down her cheek. He caught it with his lips.

"I cannot change the past, nor can I undo the wrongs which have been done. But I can damned well do my best to give you everything you deserve from now on."

What she deserved was so much more than objects. It was more than mere money could afford. It was love. He could give her that in full measure, but he wasn't ready to say the words yet. The depth of emotion he felt for this woman terrified and humbled him all at once.

"You are too good to me, Nando."

"No," he said firmly, turning his head to press a kiss to her palm. "I am not good enough for you."

She frowned. "Why do you say that?"

"Because it's true. I'm a rake. You were an innocent. I've always taken what I wanted, and everything you wanted was taken from you. I don't deserve you, Eleanora, but I'm a selfish and greedy man, and I intend to keep you anyway."

Before he could offer any further maudlin sentiment, he rapped on the roof of the carriage, signaling for the coachman to continue to their intended destination. Emotion was welling up inside him, rising like a tide, but he felt woefully clumsy and incapable of articulating. Being with a woman had never been about feelings for Nando. It had always been about raw, animalistic need. With Eleanora, it was so much more, a vast and uncharted landscape.

He knew how to fuck, but he had never needed to know how to love. He could only hope that, in time, he could learn. That he could become the man and husband who was worthy of her.

"You are a prince," she reminded him as the carriage rocked into motion, "and I am far from noble."

"The circumstances of our birth don't define us," he countered.

"But we live in a world that decrees it does."

"Then perhaps we can change that world."

"How optimistic you are. What if the world refuses to be changed?"

"Then we will tell the world to go to the devil and do whatever pleases us anyway." He grinned. "That is what I've been doing my whole life. I highly recommend it."

His lightheartedness won a laugh from her. "You truly are incorrigible, do you know that?"

"I pride myself upon it."

They stared at each other, grinning like fools, as if they were the only two people in all existence, sitting in the charmed haven of their carriage, the sun shining in the window, the day crackling with possibility. How he loved her. He had never imagined such depth of feeling possible.

Before he could say anything more, the carriage came to a halt outside the bookseller he had directed his coachman to visit.

"Here we are, my dear," he said lightly, telling himself to wait. That there would be time aplenty for sentiment later.

She peered out the window, giving an excited wriggle despite her claims that she did nothing of the sort.

"A bookshop!" The delight was evident in her voice, in the radiance of her smile.

"I thought that perhaps you might like to fill the library with some books of your own choosing."

The library of his town house had been lined with shelves of books from its previous inhabitants. A great deal of Latin treatises, from what he had seen.

"How thoughtful of you," she said, smiling at him in a way that made his cock rise to prominence against the fall of his trousers.

An unfortunate state, because there was nothing he could do about it at the moment.

"As you know, I have ulterior motives for almost everything," he teased.

The look she gave him turned sultry. "I suppose you will want me to thank you for your generosity."

Ye gods. Eleanora was going to be the death of him. He was never going to be able to get out of this carriage.

"I accept gratitude in all forms," he managed tightly, trying to think about anything other than her implied invitation.

He had been bedding her for days, and she was still a fire in his blood. He wanted to fuck her a thousand different ways. To empty himself inside her again and again until there was nothing left of him.

Damn it, this vein of thoughts was not helping his current predicament.

Eleanora licked her lips, her gaze dipping for just one sizzling second to his lap before rising again. "You appear as if you are presently in need of…gratitude."

The minx.

He choked out a laugh. "How diabolical of you to notice."

She smiled. "I've learned how to be diabolical from one of the best."

She was using his own tricks against him. And he found it rousing as hell. She never ceased to surprise him, his Eleanora.

The door to the carriage opened, letting in a burst of cool air that did nothing to quell his raging cockstand. He forced himself to look at the doll perched on her lap and think about young Eleanora in tears when she had been forced to sell her precious toy, and finally, the beast within him subsided.

He handed her down from the carriage and followed in her wake, before offering her his arm and escorting her into the shop. Within, the place smelled of books and leather and musty paper. Not entirely pleasant.

But Eleanora inhaled deeply, her expression rapt. "Books."

He had chosen their destination well, it would seem. "Get as many as pleases you, my dear."

She walked down one of the narrow aisles, Nando trailing her once more. "I can't recall how long it has been since I've had books of my own." She traced a finger over the spines with a worshipful air. "When Mama died, I was forced to sell nearly everything I had."

The thought of her, alone in the world, selling her books and clothes, being forced to forge her own way, had him clenching his jaw. "Buy the whole damned shop."

She chuckled. "I suspect we wouldn't have room for that many books. But perhaps just a few…"

By the time she had finished selecting the books that appealed most to her, Nando and the footman who had accompanied them each bore a precarious stack of tomes.

"I do believe this is an excellent start," she said, smiling with anticipation as she eyed Nando and the footman.

And Nando decided that he couldn't agree more, but it wasn't books or the library he was thinking about.