A Duke of Her Own(84)

He said something but she couldn't hear it. The knocking sounded again. "What did you say?" she asked.

His lips slid down her forehead, her nose, and he said it against her mouth. "Only the most beautiful woman I've ever met."





Chapter Twenty-two


"Gideon," Eleanor said, opening the door.

He wasn't so young anymore. His eyes were tired and little lines flared from the corners. And yet he had the same bone-deep beauty he'd had as a boy. "I had to apologize for my behavior this afternoon."

"You need not excuse yourself," she said, holding out her hand. The day had passed in such a fury of emotion that she hadn't taken a breath, hadn't thought. Everything that she'd ever dreamed of—no, not Ada's death, but the rest—had come true in one moment.



Gideon walked in, and they sat by the fireplace as if they'd been married for over a decade, as if young love had faded and turned to something stronger.

"I shouldn't be here," he said after a moment.

"In my bedchamber, or in Kent?" She smiled, trying to ease the tension in his face.

"In Kent," he said, not smiling. "I must leave at dawn tomorrow; all my people think I merely stopped here on the way to visit Ada's great-aunt. She had no other relatives."

The (on would certainly discover where he was, given the kiss with which he'd greeted her. But she didn't say anything. She kept searching his face, looking for that indescribable thing that had made him the man she loved above everyone and everything else.

"There will be gossip," he added. His mouth tightened. He was acquiring little marks by the edges of his mouth, likely from making that silent rebuke. Making it over and over. "I expect that's the case," she said, realizing that the room had fallen silent again. "I don't care."

Eleanor blinked. "You don't?"

"I have cared too much what other people thought. You never really understood why I married Ada, did you?" "Likely not."

"But you must have suspected that I could have ignored or overturned my father's will." Eleanor took a deep breath. It was absurd to think that she wasn't interested in hearing his reasoning. Of course she was interested. She loved Gideon. He was her true passion. "I thought perhaps..." But she stopped. He wasn't the sort of man with whom one could talk about lechery.

He was waiting, so she tried again. "We abandoned propriety..."

"It wasn't that, though I acted like a rakeshame when I took your virginity," he said, leaning forward.

His eyes were the blue of the Aegean Sea. "And even worse, when I turned my back on you. I know you must have considered taking your own life, Eleanor."

Eleanor coughed. "Well, I—"

"It took me a year, even longer, to realize that a love like ours comes once in a lifetime. Only once, and never again."

"You didn't seem to feel as passionately as I did," Eleanor said bluntly. "If I felt we shared the love of a lifetime, you did not agree."

"That's because I was a fool." He captured her hand and wove his fingers through hers. "I had no idea what it meant—how much it meant—to have a woman's desire. To know that I matteredX.0

you."

He stopped, so Eleanor said, almost reluctantly, "You were everything to me, Gideon.' And he had been. That fact didn't explain why her heart didn't catch now with that familiar agony, the joy of seeing him. She thought love like hers would last forever.



Of course it would. Shakespeare said that love didn't alter with days or weeks. And she truly loved Gideon. Then.

He didn't seem to catch the silent but that followed her You were everything to me. His grip tightened on her hand and he leaned forward again. "That's why I breached every rule of society in order to come to your side, if only for a night. I can't see you again for a year, of course. I must honor Ada and mourn her properly. But I can't let you marry Villiers. Not with the way you feel about me!"

"What about the way you feel about me?" Eleanor asked, pulling her fingers free. She was conscious of a strangely bleak feeling around her heart.

"I feel just the same way," he said without hesitation. "I survived my marriage, after the first year or so, by remembering how you—how you trembled when I kissed you, Eleanor. How you used to ask me for another kiss, and another. How you... how you invited me to..."

"I understand." She folded her hands in her lap.

"I shouldn't even voice such emotions," he said, looking at her earnestly. "Not a word shall pass my lips until my mourning period is over. Servants may gossip, but there will be no consequences."

He rose to his feet and held out his hand for her.